Google Business Listings

Google Places, formerly Google Local, is easily the strongest free marketing tool available to local firms. Introduced in March 2004, Google Local displays local business information at the very top of lots of Google's organic search results accompanied by a map. As of June 2010, Google Places lists consist of one, three or 7 companies for most searches. Considering that most localized searches provide millions of organic search results, showing in the top seven of Google Places can be useful to a business.

Breaking into the top seven takes data and time and staying there takes effort. It all begins with claiming and optimizing your Google Places local business listing.

Visit Google and search for Google Places. Register for an account. Follow the rebounding ball until you can click the button that asserts "Add a Business".

As a quick apart, it is assumed that anyone that would read this knows that Google Business only allows one listing per telephone number. While you can in fact create multiple listings with the same number and harvest the benefit for a little while, eventually you'll find that all your listings have vanished into the void. Don't play games with Google Places. It isn't worth the time and effort it takes to roll back the damage should you cross the dozens of capricious, invisible bounds that Google has in place to try and make the entire process "fair" for each business.

The first page of the submission form is typically fill in the blank, but there are three vital opportunities to optimize the listing.

Company / organization : choose your company name cleverly. Nobody audits the lists to confirm that the company name matches your incorporation documents, but take care. If you company's legal name is "Paul's professional Services, Inc.", you want to scrupulously tweak it for the purposes of Google Places optimisation. 2 common methods are to add a keyword descriptor or your first city. For instance : "Paul's pro Painting Services" or "Paul's Painting Services of Dallas". Monkey with your company name too much using glaringly manipulative methods for cramming keywords into the field and you can eventually realize that your Google Places listing has been confined to a black hole by Google. Generally this is the direct result of your competitors reporting your listing to Google. Simply conduct a Google search for "locksmith Google spammers" and you will find some insight on why you do not want to get on the bad side of Google Places.

outline : Carefully craft a two hundred personality outline of your business targeting pretty much exclusively on your key goods and services. Don't waste space here for selling talk like "Proudly serving the DFW area since 1974". Do not waste space here by including geographic references. The geography is nearly entirely controlled by the city you list for your address. Inclusion of additional cities does nearly nothing when it comes to optimising your Google Business Local.

For our hypothetical painting company, Paul's professional Services, an optimized outline would go something similar to :

home and commercial painter focusing on interior and exterior painting. Services include wall painting, ceiling painting, textures, pretend finishes and colour matching. Free ballparks.

Note the example include not only the company's top services, but also includes multiple uses of the primary keyword in various forms - "painting" and "painter" are the top 2 keywords in searches according to Google's Keyword Tool. In addition, "free" is a top search word for just about any search phrase.

It is important to recollect that the outline is meant to reach a broader search audience - not win awards on Madison Avenue. Make it simple and include your top keywords. Two hundred characters is not a huge amount of room, so take care not to waste space.

Class : Google Places requires the use of one standard class. Start by typing your top keywords and choose the most relevant class. Google Places provides the facility to include 5 categories. Employ them. If your top keywords are not standard categories, then use one or two closely related standard categories and use the remaining three slots for categorical keywords.

The new Google Business Local business listing may not be active until validated. Usually, corroboration can be completed by causing a telephone call from Google's PCs to the phone number of record for the listing. In some examples, Google requires corroboration thru a postcard mailed to the address of record for the listing. Postcards can take up to five weeks to arrive. Once authenticated, the real work begins.