Do you have Google Business Profile websites? If so, you may have heard that the service is shutting down.
As of March 2024, over 21.7 million sites created on the platform will be closed, and their visitors redirected to their associated Google Business Profiles.
What does that mean for you? In this guide, we’ll explain what the shutdown means and how you can avoid losing your online traffic.
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What Are Google Business Profile Websites?
Google Business Profile websites were a quick and easy way to generate a website for free using information from your Google Business Profile.
Previously, when creating a Business Profile, there was an option to add your website. If you didn’t already have one, Google allowed you to create one with its website builder.
Around 78% of local business searches end in physical visits within a week. And its these websites that helped drive traffic and in-person visits from local search results.
To be clear, Google Business Profiles (GBP) are not shutting down. It’s only the free website you could build that is closing.
With this in mind, let’s look at the details of the closure.
Google Business Profile Websites Closure Details
Here is all the information you need about the scheduled shutdown from Google:
- Google Business Profile websites will shut down in March 2024. Google did not give a specific day for this.
- Customers visiting a website made with Google Business Profile will be redirected to your Business Profile.
- The redirection will continue working until June 2024, after which they’ll see a 404 error.
Again, we want to repeat that Google Business Profiles themselves are not closing. In fact, we recommend that all local businesses and nonprofits make one.
Research from Whitespark found that Google Business Profiles are among the top ranking factors.
Information in your GBP can appear in multiple formats, including Google Maps, which helps potential customers find you more easily.
How Can I Replace My Google Business Profile Website?
Since you’ll no longer have a website when GBP sites close, we recommend looking for a replacement right away.
If you don’t, potential customers won’t have a place to learn more about your business before visiting. This may cause them to go with a competitor instead.
Luckily, you can replace your Google Business Profile website easily with WordPress.
Why Choose WordPress for Your Business Website?
WordPress is one of the most reliable and popular website builders in the world, powering over 43% of websites on the internet.
This free, open-source platform is over 20 years old, catering to all skill levels, from beginners to expert web designers.
More importantly, you own and control any site you create with WordPress. This means you won’t face any unexpected shutdowns, like what you’re seeing with GBP websites.
Beyond that, WordPress is incredibly flexible and scalable. You can create anything from a one-page website to a complete eCommerce store, with thousands of designs, tools, and plugins to make the process easy.
Lastly, WordPress is SEO-friendly, allowing you to optimize your website and attract more traffic from search results.
Steps to Replace Your GBP Website with WordPress
We’ll now walk you through how to replace your Google Business Profile website with a WordPress website that you own and control.
1. Choose a New Web Hosting Service
Although WordPress is free to download, you’ll need a web hosting service and domain name to run it. This is essentially the house and address of your website on the internet.
Many web hosting providers these days include domain names in their hosting packages, which makes the process easier. You can see this list of the most popular hosting services to help you decide.
For the purpose of this guide, we’ll go with Bluehost, an officially recommended WordPress hosting provider. Its plans start from as low as $1.99 p/m and come with 1-click WordPress installation, a free SSL certificate, and a free domain name for the first year.
To get started, visit the Bluehost website and click the ‘Get Started Now’ button.
Next, click Select under the plan you wish to choose.
From there, you can search for a domain name for your website. If you already have one, you can use that.
After choosing your domain, fill in your account information and confirm your package.
You may see package extras on this screen, which will increase your costs. It’s safe to uncheck these boxes if you don’t need them.
Now, enter your payment details and complete the purchase.
Next, Bluehost will create your account and send the login details via e-mail. After logging in, Bluehost will also install WordPress for you.
To log into WordPress, click the Edit Site button. From there, follow the on-screen instructions to create your website.
2. Design Your Site with a Website Builder
Bluehost does a great job of setting up your website with a simple design. However, most small businesses will want to customize their site to suit their brand and niche.
You can do this by installing a new WordPress theme, hiring a developer, or designing your site yourself with a WordPress website builder.
WordPress themes are a good choice if you only want a simple website with minimal customization. Developers, on the other hand, come with high fees.
That’s why our favorite choice is to use SeedProd, one of the best drag-and-drop WordPress website builders.
With SeedProd, you can design, build, and customize every part of your website without code. You can even create a custom WordPress theme from scratch.
It comes with hundreds of templates to start with, and its visual drag-and-drop editor makes perfecting your site’s design quick and easy. Simply click, drag, and drop.
If you need an example, check out WPCode’s website, which was made using SeedProd.
For a complete walk-through, you can see our guide on how to create a custom WordPress theme.
3. Optimize Your Business Website for Local SEO
After building and designing your website, you’ll want to ensure it appears in local search results, commonly known as local SEO.
It involves adding business information to your site with schema.org markup. This is code that search engines can find and use to display your business details in search results.
While it may sound technical, you don’t need to write this code yourself. There are many WordPress plugins that can do it for you with a few clicks.
Our top choice is All in One SEO, one of the best WordPress SEO plugins. It helps you optimize your website for search engines without overwhelming you with complex settings.
To benefit from its easy Local SEO features, you’ll need to visit the AIOSEO website and get the Plus plan. Then, install and activate the plugin on your WordPress website.
For help, you can see this guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
After activating AIOSEO, you’ll see a setup wizard where you can follow the instructions to get everything set up.
Once the setup is complete, navigate to All in One SEO » Local SEO from your WordPress dashboard and click Activate Local SEO.
This will tell the plugin to download, install, and activate the Local SEO features. After that, you’ll find yourself in the Locations tab.
Here, you can enter your business information, including your name, logo, address, and phone number.
You can also turn on the ‘Multiple Locations’ toggle if your business has multiple physical stores.
Next, click the Opening Hours tab and select your business hours.
You’ll also want to ensure the ‘Show Opening Hours’ toggle is set to the ‘Yes’ position.
Now, click the Maps tab where you enter your Google Maps API key to show your business location in Google Maps on your website.
For help with this, please see our guide on how to add Google Maps to WordPress.
After completing these details, click the Save Changes button.
All in One SEO will now add the schema markup to your website so search engines can discover it.
4. Add Your Website to Google Business Profile
The next step is to add your new website to your Google Business Profile. This will help potential customers easily access your site from your Google business listing.
To do this, visit the Google Business Profile website or search Google with your business name and click the Edit Profile option.
Scroll down until you see the ‘Website’ section, and click the pencil icon. Now remove your old website address, enter your new one, and click Confirm.
Now, anyone who clicks the ‘Website’ link in your Google Business Profile will go to your new WordPress site instead of the old Business Profile website.
5. Redirect Your Custom Domain Name
Chances are, when you initially set up your Google Business Profile website, you also chose to get a custom domain name. This allowed you to use a domain like ‘mywebsite.com’ instead of Google’s default ‘mywebsite.business.site’ and redirect it to your Business Profile site.
If that is the case, you’ll need to change that redirection and point it to your new WordPress site instead.
Similarly, if you want to start using your custom domain as your primary domain, you’ll need to point it to your hosting provider’s nameservers.
To do this, go to wherever you registered your domain name and log into the Domain Management area.
We’re using Domain.com for this. However, the settings are similar across most providers.
Look for the DNS & Nameservers section and remove the existing entries. Then, add new nameservers for your hosting provider.
For example, if you host your WordPress site with Bluehost, your nameserver details will be ns1.bluehost.com and ns2.bluehost.com.
After saving the changes, it may take a few hours or days for everything to update.
Bonus: Get More from Your Business Website
Replacing your Google Business Profile website is one step toward growing your local business. But there are many other tactics to get the most from your new website, which we’ll dive into next.
Build Landing Pages for Google Ads
Previously, Google gave users free ad credits when adding their site to Google Business Profile. If you used these credits and they did a good job of bringing people to your website, sending them to your new website is a good idea.
Since you’re using a website builder now, you can create professional landing pages for your Google Ads campaigns. If you used SeedProd to build your WordPress theme, it takes even less time because the landing page builder is already installed.
All you need to do is click SeedProd » Landing Pages from your WordPress dashboard and start creating with drag-and-drop.
We’ve even written a complete step-by-step guide to show you how to create a Google Ads landing page in WordPress.
Install Recommended WordPress Plugins
To extend your website further, consider exploring the many WordPress plugins that are available. They offer many benefits, such as increased site protection, actionable analytics, and much more.
Here are some must-have plugins that many small businesses use:
- WPForms – Use this plugin to create and embed contact, payment, survey, registration forms, and more.
- MonsterInsights – Connect this plugin to Google Analytics to understand where your visitors are coming from and what they do on your website.
- Duplicator – With this plugin, you can back up your WordPress site, store backups in the cloud, and restore them with a few clicks.
For more suggestions, please see our list of the best WordPress plugins.
Final Thoughts
We hope this guide has helped you learn more about the closure of Google Business Profile websites and what steps to take next.
You might also find the following guides helpful as you continue to grow your website:
- How to Create a WordPress Coming Soon Page
- How to Create a New Website Launch Marketing Plan
- 10+ Best No Code Tools for WordPress Websites
Thanks for reading! We’d love to hear your thoughts, so please feel free to leave a comment with any questions and feedback.
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