This episode tackles the verification gauntlet Google My Business puts digital-first companies through when attempting to establish their online storefront listing. After two rejections and $5K+ invested in SEO infrastructure, the verification process demanded continuous video documentation including physical signage, business cards, and address confirmation—requirements that don’t align with modern home-office operations despite legitimate EIN documentation and WordPress backend access.
Key Takeaways:
- Google’s Verification Evolved Harder The platform now requires continuous-shot video showing physical signage and business materials due to AI-generated fraud concerns, creating friction for legitimate digital businesses without traditional storefronts.
- Print Temporary Verification Materials Digital businesses can satisfy physical signage requirements by printing company logos and business cards specifically for the verification video rather than ordering expensive hard-stock materials.
- Strategic DBA Sequencing When managing multiple DBAs under one LLC at the same address, verify the primary business first before attempting secondary listings to avoid triggering duplicate address flags in Google’s review system.
Listen to the full episode to hear the complete verification workflow and specific tactics for satisfying Google’s requirements as a digital business.
(Podcast transcript below)
Welcome to get serious, a shorter episode today, very tactical in focus, but it’s going to be pretty helpful for pretty much any business owner out there, especially if you have any type of web presence. So we’ve invested pretty heavily into SEO strategies, that’s where most of our leads come from nowadays from an inbound perspective. And when you
consider return on just investment. Yes, ROI. Obviously, I am a capital related business. So I have to remind myself. The ROI on our investments into SEO have just been really, really solid and pretty cheap.
Come, you know, takes, takes a good amount of work and it’s like, uh, it’s a, like a longer ramp up. So you can’t, you had to be patient with it and continue to work through it. So like, I don’t really do almost anything myself personally for it other than kind of setting. Our general strategy on how to build out the SEO content, um, that helps, uh, both my operations manager as well as, um, the, uh, uh,
SEO expert and web developer who we contract out to, to help kind of optimize our business in that regard. So since we’ve continued to up our monthly investment in that area, one of the key things our SEO consultant was just mentioning is like, okay, it looks like you guys had started doing a Google My Business listing.
You know, both for serious land capital and land funding partners. Um, at least, we got further in the process for serious land capital. I think, yeah, like a lot of entrepreneurs, you just like some projects get started and then you just forget what, might be going on. it’s, uh, may have called a lack of focus sometimes on what’s right in front of you versus what to continue on. Um, but I didn’t know there was like some verification process. And so I was trying to have our ops manager handle that.
But it requires, I think it’s more recent change with Google just because there’s been so much AI slop and fraudulent businesses that have been getting set up is that they have a harsher review process to fully get verified as a searchable business. Google My Business, when you, I don’t know, look for a restaurant or service business, that…
that kind of storefront listing on the right side of Google’s page, or if you’re in mobile, it kind of just shows up right at the top of your search results. So apparently that is very helpful from an SEO perspective, is to have a Google My Business. And again, I don’t know all the particulars. It’s not critical for me understand that. Other than my consultant saying, go ahead and do this, it’s going to help. I’m taking that seriously.
to do that and he’s been very, very knowledgeable about this. So we’re trying to follow through. But part of this verification process is that Google, want a, and I’m not sure if anybody else has ever done this and I’m sure a lot of you guys can relate to kind of the perceived issues here is that Google wants this continuous video shot of
both the, or including the storefront of the business and the address that it operates out of. It should show like physical signage or business cards related to the business. And then, kind of more interior shots where business is generally conducted or can you show verification of EIN or other.
documentation or access to business related websites, et cetera. Um, so they, they want all of that done within a continuous video shot for them to verify that this is truly a, uh, um, business that, you know, it’s not fraudulent. Um, and should, should, you know, show up within their searches. And I’m sure they have a lot of AI backend algorithmic review of this. Maybe they do have some human review. I don’t know.
All these large companies are a complete black box. It’s a whole nother story dealing with Google and YouTube issues in the past here that were not pleasant. But that’s yet another story for another time. I feel like I say that a number of these podcasts and then I just forget to return to them. This is just onto another topic, but that is a fun story to return to sometime. Let’s see if I remember.
And, you know, at first I was like, oh, this, like I operate out of my home. Um, like I really don’t want, you know, just from a risk perspective, like anybody to really see, um, you know, my home address here, like my family’s here, all, all, all that, like that’s going to be attached to our Google listing. Um, like this doesn’t seem worth the risk to me, but then, you know, further understand understanding and going back to our consultant on this, like, you know, this is only for the point of.
verification purposes, plus on your Google My Business, you can say, you know, don’t share my address publicly to anybody searching for the business. Um, so that reassured me there. And, uh, you know, so I, tried to go through it initially and like was outside my house showing, Hey, here’s like the, I, you know, use chat GPT. Okay. Like how, you know, I’m a digital business here. Like I don’t.
I don’t have a storefront. don’t have, I don’t even have a business card. Definitely no signage or anything like that. How am I supposed to do that? And so it’s had, know, plenty of people operate out of home offices, digital footprint rights, like here’s kind of the pathway to still get approved to do it. So like I was outside of my house, said, know, Hey, this is where serious land capital operates. And, you know, I’ve showed the number for my address and the street name.
and went upstairs and, again, all the continuous shot, right. And then like I showed my workstation and Mike and, I had the EIN up. showed me at access to the WordPress backend, you know, Gmail account. and yeah, this is where serious land capital does business, et cetera. And, submitted that for verification. and was denied within a couple of days after, because they’ve said.
you know, it wasn’t hitting like the physical signage piece. Like I went back to chat GPD, like, okay, what, you know, how, how do we update this? I do. Okay. Well, you can actually just go ahead and print out, some type of, of, of sign, like put it on, you know, like office door. Like Google just wants to confirm that. It’s not like an AI generativity. Again, I don’t know their full verification, but it seems like, if you can print out something, you know,
that maybe they think people can just like fool it through AI generated video of addresses and what can show up on your computer. Just like hacking your way through it. I don’t know. So I went ahead and had my ops manager create a sign for the business, a business card. So I printed that out. I wasn’t going to order hard stock business cards for this. I just need to get verified on Google. So I printed all that out. I put on my office door, just print out serious land capital there. And so I went back.
and try to do, here’s the address, here’s the actual office, the physical sign, here’s the business card, and here’s like the online connectivity. Submitted that again and then got denied again. This time they said they couldn’t approve the address. So even though I got approved the previous time, it said, no, you need to resubmit again. And so then I tried to be even more careful structuring it all the way through and submitting it. And this time it’s been longer. They say they’ll get back within five days. And I think we’re right.
Maybe now it’s been, been four days total here, but the previous times it was definitely faster. think if you fail the verification a number of times, like they’ll try to escalate the verification process. So maybe I’m closer to that anyway, but like, again, it’s such a, you know, checks and balances type thing. get Google trying to prevent fraudulent businesses here, but like, it’s a pretty big hurdle for.
for us to jump through, especially like these digital footprints, like you just think we don’t really have a storefront, right? But I also run a, like a real business with like an obvious workstation. Like it’s just, know, it’s 2025, right? Like how a lot of businesses are run now. So just trying to jump through those hoops and get verified. So TBD on that finalization there, plus like,
We have DBA cause like I have my core LLC and we, you know, we’re just run serious land capital as a DBA and land funding partners technically would be a DBA too, even though it’s like not as much. like probably just, I’m not trying to do two at once here. Like I want to get SLC approved first and verified. And then I would try getting our land funding partners site up too as just another DBA. you know, again, I don’t know who’s viewing this on the backend of Google. Like, oh, you’re really recognizing.
the same address, whatever. I have no idea how they’re handling that, but I don’t want to risk doing two at once. I’d rather get one approved first and then see if we can work the other one in. but just wanted to mention that, um, I, know a lot of you guys probably listening, you know, I might have more, not necessarily like you probably, I mean, certainly have an online presence, but a lot of your stuff is probably more direct marketing out, um, outbound type stuff versus inbound, but you know, nevertheless, um, you know, if you can have.
You know, even inbound that is coming to your business. Like if they try to search for you and they can see a Google My Business listing. And it definitely was easier because we definitely had one for one of our previous brands prior to funding and it was so simple to set up. So yeah, Google must have just like more recently significantly upped the the ante for just the hurdles to get a business listing up.
on Google here. So if you already have one, great. If you haven’t, here’s the process on how to do that. Obviously, I’m still working to get it done. But again, SEO, organic traffic, just building trust with potential customers or sellers that might want to work with you like you never know. You might just be one kind of verification in terms of trustworthy.
Uh, you know, confirmation to, you know, somebody who can make you a hundred, a hundred thousand dollars. So, um, you know, every step counts, especially in an economy like this, if it’s just an extra, it’s an extra piece to stand out a little bit further, maybe get you one extra customer, buy you some more time through a slow period. You got to do what it takes. Right. Uh, so just wanted to mention that, um, and
Hopefully it helps your business as well. So serious land capital for any of your funding needs. Again, 50K minimum, 150K purchase price preferred, plus preferred. And land daily diligence Facebook group, zero cost review land deals and landpricer.ai for the most reliable land pricing tool on the market. Subscribe and share everybody. I will be back tomorrow. Take care. Bye.
