How To Add Social Media Profiles To Google My Business
Google will feature social media profiles on Google Business Profiles (formerly called Google My Business) if the profiles are relevant and prominent. Although social media profiles cannot be directly added to listings, it’s possible to control indirectly.
Follow these steps to add social media profiles on your Google My Business listing:
- Add your website link
- Externally link to social media profiles
- Include schema markup on your website
- Grow your audience by promoting posts
- Frequently create quality posts that get engagement
- Add social profile links on other properties
By following these steps, Google will gain confidence that the social profiles belong to your business, recognize the relevance of your social media profiles, and feature them on your Google Business Profile. This includes Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn.
1. Add your website link
Within your Google Business Profile, ensure that the website link points to the homepage or other relevant page on your website.
This helps to ensure that Google understands the connections between your profile and website. This also helps to prepare for the next couple steps.
Pro Tip: The website URL should be secure with the https protocol to ensure that your listing has a higher chance of ranking in Google Search & Maps. Use this guide to add backlinks to your website from your Google Business Profile
Including your social media links across all pages on your website reinforces the relationship between your website and social profiles to search engines.
2. Externally link to social media profiles
Once you’ve added your website to your Google My Business Profile, ensure that the website contains external links to your social media profiles.
Note: This is usually done in the website’s footer. Double check to be sure that these links are 100% accurate (meaning the links shouldn’t redirect or 404).
3. Include schema markup on your website
This step is a bit technical, but your website should include Local Schema Markup with the sameAS property for all of your social media profiles.
Here’s a basic example:
<script type="application/ld+json">
{
"@context": "http://schema.org/",
"@type": "Attorney",
"name": "The Fang Law Firm",
"alternateName": " The Fang Law Firm, P.C.",
"description": "At The Fang Law Firm, our Denver personal injury lawyers are passionate about personalized service for your unique personal injury claim. Contact us today to learn how we can help you.",
"url" : "https://www.fanglawfirm.com",
"logo" : "https://fanglawfirm.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/hero_logo-01.svg",
"image" : "https://fanglawfirm.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/hero_logo-01.svg",
"telephone": " (303) 993-4323",
"priceRange": " Free Consultation",
"openingHours" : "Mo-Sa 08:00-19:00, Sun 12:00-16:00",
"address":
{
"@type": "PostalAddress",
"streetAddress": "1515 Wynkoop Street #360",
"addressLocality": "Denver",
"addressRegion": "CO",
"postalCode": "80202",
"addressCountry": "USA"
},
"sameAs":[
"https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-fang-law-firm-p.c./",
"https://twitter.com/fanglawfirmpc",
"https://www.facebook.com/FangLawFirm/"
]
}
</script>
The markup should be added to the head section of the website. Once indexed, search engines will have a clearly defined relationship between your website, Google Business Profile, and social media profiles.
4. Grow your audience by promoting posts
For some, this is the hard part.
Google typically only features social media profiles that are relevant, meaning they have to be active with a following. This can be challenging for new businesses, but Facebook & Instagram ads can help quickly grow an audience by promoting appealing offers.
Pro Tip: To my knowledge, there’s not specific criteria for follower or post count, but you can start with this Google Business Profile checklist & template to audit the competition. This will help you set a baseline for which social media profiles competitors are using, how many followers they have, and what kind of content they’re creating.
Additionally, you might want to check that you have a solid social media foundation with an optimized Facebook page and other profiles.
5. Frequently create quality posts that get engagement
Staying active on social media can also be difficult, but it’s necessary to ensure that you’re building a following and engagement to ensure Google knows your profiles are relevant.
6. Add social profile links on other properties
Additionally, it’s important that your social profiles are linked to each other across the web. Many local citations and social media profiles allow you to add links to other social media profiles.
Pro Tip: This step can be submitted using BrightLocal to dozes of local listings and citations. However, I recommend creating and updating the profiles below with social links manually. This is because it’s super quick, and it’s generally enough to achieve the features profiles on Google My Business. This is because the social profiles and citations below are highly trusted sources of information about local businesses.
Facebook allows you to add several links to other social media profiles on your company page. Once these links are added to your Facebook Page and indexed by Google, this can help the search engine better understand the relationship between your business and its social profiles.
Follow these steps to add links:
- Login to Facebook
- Navigate to your page’s About section
- Select Contact and basic info
- Scroll down to the Websites and social links section
Note: Be sure that you’re logged into a Facebook account that manages your company page. Otherwise you won’t be able to make edits to your business page.
YouTube
YouTube also allows links to other social media profiles to be added.
Follow these steps to add links:
- Login to YouTube
- Click the Customize Channel button
- Select the Basic info option
- Scroll down to the Websites and social links section
Note: Similar to above, be sure that you’re logged into a YouTube account that manages your channel. Otherwise you won’t be able to make edits.
Other profiles
There are dozens of local citations and business directories that allow you to add your business information and links to social media profiles including Bing Places, Foursqaure, Crunchbase, Mapquest, and niche directories (like FindLaw for lawyers).
If you’ve followed these steps, you should notice social media profiles being featured on your Google My Business profile. If not, walk through these steps again to check URLs for accuracy, and keep building your followers and brand engagement!
Happy SEO-ing 🙂