In June, 2017 Google released a simple website builder for very small businesses. For the 60% of small businesses that don’t have a website, this is a nice way to start for free. And it can tie into your Google My Business listing, which every business should optimize for your brand. For the rest of us with websites, this Google Small Business Website Builder can create a nice citation.
Google’s Small Business Website Builder is nice to have out there…as an alternative to a full blown site, neatly contained for small business who don’t have a web presence to speak of.
Google released a one-page website builder in June, 2017. Located within a company’s Google My Business account and simply called, “Website”, this seems like a nice tool for two reasons.
- Small business without a website can have a presence
- Provides an additional “About Us” page with links to a local businesses’ main website.
Savvy local businesses will eventually see the Google website builder when they login to Google My Business. We did. And we threw up a little About Kansas City Interactive page with links to our primary website and social media.
A Warning about Hitting Publish
Be Careful When Publishing This Website
The RED FLAG we saw at the end will clobber some not-so-savvy local businesses. When publishing the site, a box is checked by default to “Make this my website address on Google Search & Maps.”
That could hurt some local businesses who want to drive that traffic to the websites they’ve invested a lot of time and money into.
Uncheck this box before you publish if you’re not sure.
I’ll include a follow up to show how to undo this. It could be an important mistake for local business websites that are ranking highly in organic search results. By checking this box, you’re redirecting search and maps traffic to the one-page site instead of your main website you’ve undoubtedly invested time and money into.
Optional Custom Domain for your Google My Business Website
Google offers a custom domain for your website. It’s $12/year and the one-page site is free. It’s a great deal for a small business that simply wants an about page with pertinent information like phone number, hours of operation, and a few images that are automatically fed from their Google My Business image gallery.
For a micro business with low competition, this may be all that’s necessary.
Business Email Under Your Custom Domain
For business email, we use and recommend G Suite, formerly Google Apps for Business. It includes more storage space than the free Gmail and offers business class Gmail, Drive, Docs and more.
Side note. the more images you upload to your Google My Business profile, the better. We use 10 minimum. It helps with rankings. And based on analytics, people view them.