on marketing, traveling and living…
Discussion about how Google does what it does so well…
Getting on Google’s First Results With Google Places
May 20th
Google has recently released Places Search which makes it possible for websites to be listed in Google Places (formerly Google Local/Google Maps). Businesses can have their websites listed as the top search results for local searches. If you are a business that offers products or services in a particular area, it is very important that your website is listed in Google Places.
It is important that you consider some things before you listed your website in Google Local. You should provide the location of your business, the industry that you’re in, the keywords that you are targeting and other things influence your listing in Google Places. You must put your business in a city or state your keywords are related to so you will get high rankings on that local searches. If you want to be found for local searches in Australia, then your business must have a physical address in Australia.
But make sure to put your business in the list of the correct category in Google Places. Specify the correct category when you submit your website. For example, if you provide Search Engine Optimization Service then your website should not be listed in the real estate category.
Your business should contain the keywords for which you want to be found to increase the chance of getting listed in its search results page. If you provide web design services, then put “web design” as your keyword.
Citations or the web references can be also a big help in getting your business in first result page of Google Places. It should mention your business name and address on the other web pages even if some web pages do not link your website. The more web references your business has, the more your chance to be listed for local searches. It has similar effect on local searches as back links have regular website listings. To show Google that your business exists, you need to get your website address listed on as many websites as possible.
Google Places is a great place to get recommendations and good reviews from your customers, clients and other people interested on your website. But if your business offers poor products and services then it would be hard for you to be recommended by many people. So to get good reviews, you must have good credentials from your customers and must also encourage them to write positive reviews about your business if they are happy with your offered products and services.
Steps Needed to Optimize Your Google Places
May 19th
Steps needed to optimize your Google Places listing by way of a number of simple techniques that work collectively to create an overall, competitors-crushing strategy. The mix of these methods is greater as a complete than is the sum of its elements…and while you can absolutely skip a few of the seemingly small techniques that make up a part of this technique, it’s going to subtract from the dominance you gain by employing all of the steps together.
Local Search is the Answer, As a Local business, you’ve got a huge, wide-open alternative to dominate your local competitors by getting a free, distinguished listing on the high of Google, using Google’s Places search features.
You will have possible seen not too long ago that if you do a search on Google, often times your search results involving the local map with a number of local enterprise listings next to it. These listings are easily identified as a result of they contain distinguished map markers subsequent to every of those listings. These listings are also easily seen as a result of Google locations them on the very high of the search results.
Local search can greatest be described as any on-line search that takes the place of a conventional search involving the local phone book’s yellow pages.Local search is usually categorized as a search being made with the intention on discovering one thing (enterprise, product, service) in a particular geographic. More specifically, local search might be identified by looking on-line for a transaction that can happen offline in one’s local area.
Google Places is a revolutionary and totally free service that can actually catapult a small, local enterprise from obscurity to insane profitability virtually overnight. By profiting from a Google Places listing, you possibly can spotlight your business’ services and place your data in entrance of hundreds of native prospects who are searching for your specific type of business in your specific native space through Google.com.
There are lots of ways to get your small business listed aside from Google maps. The rationale why you need to get listed in many locations as doable is that you simply achieve more citations. Citations make what you are promoting popular. The more citations you have got, the more common your enterprise becomes. web optimization calls this link popularity. Google and other search engines like Google and yahoo consider the number and quality of hyperlinks you have got in relation to link popularity.
Google Places and Local SEO
May 19th
Search engine optimisation was a mystery to me when I got my first website onto the internet and I certainly didn’t know that there was such a thing as Local SEO too. But it wasn’t long before I realised the relevance of keywords and the importance of local searches.
Statistics have shown that most customers will buy from businesses located within five miles of their base. It’s almost as if they trust a business more if it has a local physical address.
I now know that the key to getting on the front page of Google for local keywords is to rank in the seven-pack list of Google Places pages with one of those red balloons These are the websites that Google is giving away for free to those businesses that they recognise as being the ‘go to’ places for a particular service/product in that location.
Google makes the decision as to who gets into the top seven by the relevance of the website’s description to the search term, its proximity to the centre of the location and how often they have seen that business mentioned in a variety of local listing directories/social media platforms. That’s what makes the difference between the award of a red balloon and a red dot.
However, as a small business owner with no knowledge of SEO, local or otherwise, I was not aware of the thinking behind the selection. I knew I had to have a Google Places page but, over the months, there was conflicting advice as to the best way to get one.
Some experts advised that an existing Google Places page should be claimed immediately to stop any mischievous competitor from taking it and messing around with the phone number or address whilst others suggested that it was better to get all the information needed to complete the various demands for company information and then claim it.
Still more said that, if Google had not already deemed you worthy by preparing a Places page for you for free, then you should just create your own and another group insisted that was wrong and you should promote your online presence until the big G had been nudged into noticing you.
The one thing that they all eventually agreed on was that you shouldn’t try to influence Google or any potential customers by stuffing keywords into the Title of your business listing. Sadly, it was too late for me because, by then, I had already submitted my entry with explanatory keywords after the main name of the business.
The next thing that became a consensus was that you needed to have an absolute address. P O Boxes and virtual addresses would not do at all since verification was now done via postcard and no proper address meant no possibility of proving that you did do business from that address. However, again, this became a fact after I had entered a second entry (with an incomplete address to preserve my anonymity as a home worker) because Google Places seemed to have eaten my first.
Two months later, I typed my keyword and location into the Google search box and discovered that both entries were now showing – and that neither had the correct details. To my consternation, one had a big red circle with a letter and the other the standard red lettered balloon.
That’s when I met someone who did know what they were doing and, under their guidance, we were able to start again and do things properly, in the right order, so that Google could present me with my own free website showing all the required information for local customers to get in touch.
