Banking and insurance: why add services to your business listing

Services are a recent and still underestimated Google Business Profile feature. They are available to all businesses and easy to configure, but very few points of sale take their time to add services to their listings. 

However, giving up on the services is knowingly depriving oneself of a significant competitive advantage. In particular, for some sectors like banks and insurance companies. This feature has been recently launched and not many actors use it for now. 

Especially these institutions have a strategic interest and it would be a shame not to take advantage of it. We will explain why. 

The strategic potential of services

When users search for a bank or an insurance company on Google, their first contact point with the institution is its Google Business Profile listing.

It is a fact, the search engine local pack comes up almost systematically. You can check by typing the queries “bank London” or “insurance Brighton”. It is therefore paramount to optimise your listings to stay ahead of the competition and multiply your chances to be chosen. 

Adding services is precisely one of the most powerful drivers to make it happen. At the same time, your listings need to be completed, updated and optimised.

For each additional category, Google gives the opportunity to add some services. Their aim is to help businesses specify their offer.

It is also a section of your listing (together with Posts) where Google gives you more room to express yourself: in addition to the default services based on your categories, you can also add the services that are not automatically proposed – there is a dedicated free text field.  

Why is it important for banks and insurance companies? 

Mortgage, consumer credit, car loan, repurchase of credit, account opening, saving, disability insurance, car insurance, professional insurance… you propose plenty of services to your clients.

The services list available on the listing of an insurance company

This is perfect, the goal of Google Business Profile services is to inform your potential clients about them when they check out your listing. And they also have a strong impact on local SEO.

Specifying your services leads to two main advantages in terms of SEO:

1. It allows you to rank higher on keywords and queries strategic for your activity 

An insurance company that specifies “car loan” in its services list significantly increases its chances to appear on the search “car loan Amsterdam”. Google always tries to provide users with the most relevant information. If you let the search engine know that you offer the service “car loan”, it will draw the conclusion that your institution is more relevant on the associated queries. 

Moreover, it is a good way to increase the number of keywords on which users may find you. And consequently, to maximise your online visibility, your web-to-store traffic, and your conversion rate.

Keep in mind that you really need to think it through when choosing the right keywords on which you want your listings to appear.

Other than the enhanced visibility on the discovery searches, services can also make you move up on product queries. This is significant, especially in the banking and insurance sector.

2. It allows certain businesses to rank higher thanks to justifications

65% of Google searches do not generate any click. Users make their choice relying on the information that the Google results page shows. Then, for the points of sale, the decision is often made from the Local Pack. 

However, services regularly appear in the shape of justifications in the Local Pack. Google informs users that you propose the service they are looking for directly on the results page. The search engine provides them with the information they need in order to choose you.

This is critical: the now informed user will more likely contact you rather than your competitors who did not make the effort to add their services to their listings. And there are very few banks and insurance companies that do it. 

Manage your services with Partoo 

You can already configure your services on Partoo. Our platform allows the business to centralise and manage all its services from a single interface. You can choose to make individual changes or changes in bulk for all of the points of sale of your network.

Management of Services from the Partoo interface 

Indeed, our teams encourage our partners to add services which correspond to their activity. It is easy, quick and the added value is clear.

Any questions about this subject? Do not hesitate to contact us.