As an accounting firm, you probably know how important it is to be found by your local community. A Google Business Profile is a great tool for improving your local SEO and helping your business become more prominent on search results. However, there are many different aspects of a Google Business Profile that often go untouched by business owners, which can make it harder for you to rank above your competitors. One of those areas is photos.
Adding photos to your Google Business Profile can go a long way in building trust with your audience and improving your rankings on Google search results. In this article, we’ll help you understand what Google Business photos can do for your accounting firm and give you some important Google Business profile photo tips for accountants.
How Do Photos Benefit Your Google Business Profile?
Adding photos to your Google Business Profile can do a lot of positive things for your accounting firm. The first thing to note is that Google encourages business owners who have a Google Business Profile to use images, as they will send out emails and notifications to users encouraging them to add more images to their profiles. This means that the Google algorithm uses photos and marks them when crawling your account. It’s always best to listen to the experts, so if Google is suggesting you use photos, it’s best to listen.
Another reason that photos can benefit your Google Business Profile is that they help customers learn more about your business and provide a richer experience when they are browsing through search results. For example, when a user is looking at your Google Business Profile and sees photos of your office and building exterior, they can get a better understanding of the physical location of your accounting firm and where they can find your office. You can also add photos of your staff or your team, which helps create a stronger connection to the business.
You can also use photos generated by users to help boost your Google Business Profile and add more images. When a user creates content that you then share on your Google Business Profile, it lets the Google algorithm know that people are interacting and using your business, which can help boost your profile up the rankings for local accounting firms.
More Engagement with Your Brand
Businesses that have photos on their Google Business Profiles get more engagements from searchers than profiles without photos. While descriptive text and detailed explanations of your services are certainly helpful, many people are visual learners and searchers, even if your photos are just of your building and team. These photos go a long way in helping your potential clients visualize their interactions with your business and see it as more than just a text listing.
Builds Trust with Your Firm
We’ve all seen Google Business Profiles that leave us wondering if they are real or not. Profiles that have very little information and are missing elements like hours of operations, customer reviews, services, and contact information. If your profile is missing photos, your listing might not look as legitimate as your competition, which could lead a user to mistrust your Google Business Profile. Having photos builds immediate trust with viewers and lets them know your business is legit.
Gives Information Without Clicking
Every step that you take that reduces the number of actions a potential client needs to take is a helpful move towards streamlining your lead pipeline. You want to have as few clicks as possible for your users to take in order to join your business. Having photos and images in your Google Business Profile helps readers visually understand more about your business without having to click on your website. It provides a virtual tour of your business and can give you an advantage over your local competition.
Understanding Google Business Profile Photos
Now that you understand why having photos on your Google Business Profile is important, let’s dive into some Google Business Profile photo tips for accountants and help you learn more about the regulations and best practices for adding photos to your profile.
Photo Categories
There are many types of photos you can add to your Google Business Profile, even if you are an accounting firm without products to display. These photos are organized into the following types:
- Logo: A high-quality logo of your business to help your firm be recognized.
- Cover Photo: The featured image on your Google Business Profile
- Interior Photos: Photos of the interior of your office, including reception, waiting rooms, offices, conference rooms, break rooms, and other internal spaces
- Exterior Photos: Photos of the exterior of your office building from different angles and in different seasons or times of day
- At Work: Behind-the-scenes type photos of work being done in the office
- Team: Photos of your employees and your team
- Video: Short videos (under 30 seconds) that showcase your business and brand
Types of Photos
You can have both photos that you take and add to your account and user-generated photos attached to your Google Business Profile. For example, if a customer leaves a review with a photo, that photo becomes attached to your account. This can be very helpful to you, but there are also some potential negatives to this type of photo content. For example, a poorly shot photo might not match your clean business aesthetic, or a photo that portrays you in a negative light might be on display. Users might also attach an image that isn’t appropriate for your business or is unrelated to your services.
If there are user-generator photos on your account that you don’t approve of, you can go through a process to get that photo removed. You can click on the “report a problem” option and report the image. You can then select from these options:
- Offensive, hateful, or sexually explicit
- Legal issue
- Privacy concern
- Poor quality
- Not a photo of the place
- Other (with description)
Once you submit this form, Google will review the image and if it does violate these conditions, the photo can be removed. If the photo is not removed and you still have an issue even after reporting it, you can reach out to Google support for more options.
Photo Requirements & Guidelines
It’s important to make sure that the photos you are uploading to your Google Business Profile fit the guidelines and requirements put out by Google. You want to first ensure that all your photos adhere to the Google guidelines and don’t show anything that would get flagged for being inappropriate. It’s also extremely important that you are following the Google sizing recommendations for your photo ratios.
Different Google photos will have different ratio recommendations. For example, a Google Business Profile cover photo will be different from a regular photo. Make sure to look up the recommended sizes and resolutions for these images on Google before you upload any image so that you don’t have issues once that image is live.
Schedule a Demo of Our Business Intelligence Marketing Software
At Surefire Local, we understand how important it is to manage a Google Business Profile and how difficult that can be for your accounting firm when you are juggling many other marketing tasks. That’s why our platform makes managing your Google Business Profile easy and pain-free.
Surefire Local provides business intelligence marketing software that allows you to manage every aspect of your Google Business Profile and other marketing channels in one place. Instead of logging into multiple accounts with different usernames and passwords, you can assess all of your marketing assets in one location. This allows you to upload 3 to 5 new photos every month for your Google Business Profile and meet the requirements that Google sets for images.
With the help of Surefire Local, you can easily share social media posts, add reviews to your business listings, send emails, monitor your analytics, create content, improve your SEO, and much more. Our platform is truly the one place for all of your marketing initiatives, helping you launch new campaigns and market your accounting firm with ease.
To learn more about our platform, schedule a demo with Surefire Local and discover how we can provide Google Business Profile photo tips for accountants and help your firm grow its local SEO and Google rankings.