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Google Places optimization has never been more critical for your local SEO then it is today in 2012. With the shift in how potential customers will find your products or services (Iphones,Ipads,Androids,etc.); it is critical that you take the necessary steps to properly optimize your Google Places page. If you won’t take my word, here is a few stats to soak in.
- Around 70-75% of all online search activity is to find local content. (reference: Google)
- Over 80% of local searchers will call you or come to the local business location. (reference: TMP/comScore)
- 66% of Americans use local search as primary way to research and find local businesses (reference: comScore)
Finally if you are still not convinced of the importance of Google Places Optimization, have you took notice of the new changes that Google has done with it’s search listings. Local search listings are now starting to rank higher than organic search results. So if the big Google is taking local search serious, I hope this will convince you Mr. Business Owner to take your local search rankings seriously.
Ok enough preaching – let’s get to google places optimization tips and techniques to help with your local search rankings.
Basic Tips For Google Places Optimization
- Claim Your Listing: Well this google places optimization tip is obvious but you will be surprised how many business owners fail to this basic step.
- Complete 100% of Listing: After claiming your listing, you need to complete all fields. This means add all the pictures and videos you can, add business hours, add coupons, fill out everything. Without adhering to this google places optimization tip – everything else will be of no use.
- Encourage Customers to Leave Recommendations: This can be tough to get customers to log in and leave details. Google doesn’t make this process any easier, as the user must have a google account. One thing we at Chase Web Solutions recommend to our customers is a service called Review Cards. We have seen customers reviews increase by leveraging a 3rd Party service like this.
So the above google places optimization tips can almost be considered as mandatory (maybe not reviews), I would say the major common mistake that most business owners make initially is not completely filling out there places data – I can’t tell you how critical this step is.
Advanced Tips For Google Places Optimization
- Use Keywords For Categories: Now this google places optimization tip requires that some keyword research or competitive analysis be done. But what we have found to work really well is for your first category choose one that Google provides. The rest of the categories (you have 5), you should create custom categories that combine your keywords. Also never use more than 3 words for a category, and a category should be “Who You Are, not What You Do?” – Very Important!
- Use Keywords In Description: This google places optimization tip allows you an opportunity to rank for more keywords. Your Description should still read well, but we always use keywords that we couldn’t use as categories in our description. This allows for the potential to rank well for more keywords.
- Optimize Photos and Videos: This is a nice google places optimization tip. Now I won’t get into details here as too how to optimize the photos and videos, but I will say this – we never upload our Photos directly to the Google Places Page, we also use the URL option. We store our Photos on Panaramio (Google owns this!), and we then link our Photos from Panoramio. The filename of our photos are the category keywords, and we also use keywords in the photo description. We do the same thing for videos, we host them on Youtube. What we have found is this google places optimization really helps rankings in competitive niches like Lawyers and Dentist – every little trick counts.
- Don’t Miss Out On Coupons: Coupons is another place where you can perform google places optimization. We have seen that this also helps with ranking second tier keywords.
- Get Listed In Other Directories: Also known as citations, it’s key to get as many citations as you possibly can. Google uses these off page citations as a ranking factor. In competitive niches this is critical to any success to show up on the first page local listings. To spy on your competition, this is a nice tool we use – Whitespark Local Citation Finder.
Now if you adhere to these google places optimization tips above you will be well ahead of most of your competition. For the remaining competition you will need to dig in deeper.
I can’t get into the details here (maybe another post), but you will need to build off page linking strategies (not to your google places page) to your website, youtube videos, and other directory listings that you have (i.e. Yelp, Bing, Merchant Circle, Kudzu, etc.).
Also you will need to do some tricks on your website that if done right will cause your website and google places page to work in tandem (very powerful technique).
Google Places Optimization is Key to your Business Success, don’t get left behind.
Corey Ellis is the Founder of Chase Web Solutions and an SEO Consultant in Raleigh, NC. Follow him on Twitter @chasewebsites
If you learned from this article on google places optimization, and want a 30 minute consultation concerning your Local Google Places Optimization then please schedule an appointment
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I agree that Google places is an excellent way to get a top ranking and it is highly targeted. The people who are typing in your local area are more than likely, local potential customers looking for some solution related to the kind of product or service you are offering. The majority of businesses still have not made a Google Places listing and this gives anyone who has a significant advantage and a high ranking, targeted listing.
Those are pretty startling statistics. They have convinced me to quit ignoring or procrastinating filling out my Google Places listing. One thing I have heard about Google Places is that you can easily write something in your listing and wind up getting your listing rejected. I have heard this coming from several persons who experienced such a thing. So now that we are convinced that a Google Places listing is effective, we could use some advice on how to avoid getting banned.
Hi Mary, thanks for the comments. Yes I can put up a post on things that you shouldn’t do concerning your google places page. That’s a good idea.
I like the idea of hosting your photos and videos on high traffic networks like youtube. I don’t see why optimizing your remotely hosted photos and especially, your You Tube videos won’t have a significant benefits on your ranking. I usually host all of my images on my own web server, but I have never thought of using Google’s Panoramio. In fact, I had never heard of this until I read this article. Thanks for these tips.
Glad I could provide you some useful information Roberto. Thanks for stopping by
This blog has some really great information, if you weren’t convinced already that people use Google for searches you really will be by the end of the first two paragraphs. I had heard about this before but knew nothing about it so this was a very interesting blog for me. I am just now getting started in the whole internet business world so this is really good to know.
Thanks Louise for the comments, yes local search is really big, and business must start to take it seriously.
I was reading a blog about this Google places about a month ago and thought at that time this would be something I would want to use for blog and my web site. I am glad that you brought this to our attention because I had forgotten about it to be honest. I am going to go to the web page for this and do some more research before I forget this time.
I think this is great information; this is the same site that offers a google map with the information right? I use Google Maps a lot when I’m out on the road and I want my web site to have a map of where my business is located. I heard awhile back that Google was going to start doing automatic updates to peoples web sites when new information was found, is this part of that?
Filling out 100% of the listing should be a given shouldn’t it? If you are going to put an add in the paper or in the phone book you fill out all the information so that it makes it easy to find you correct? Well this should be no different, this is all you information, a map, coupons all kinds of things. You should try and get as much on your listing as you can.
I totally agree Jacob, thanks for stopping by.
I’ve heard of this Google Places and I’ve wanted to try it for quite some time now. I have a blog and website, would you put both of on this Google Places or would you list one with a link to the other? I want to make sure that I do this so I can incorporate a map on there, I was told the map is actually free, is that true or someone blowing smoke?
Hi Martha, Google Places is actually a listing service for small businesses. You would not place a blog on a Google Places listing unless that Blog is setup as your business website. Concerning the map, this is handled automatically once you submit your google places listing, your business address will show in the map.
In the profession that I’m in I use Google quite often because I am going from city to city across the eastern half of the United States and I know that I can pull up Google at anytime put it an address and it will show me right where it is. This Google Places sounds like something that every business should use because there are people out there like me using it all the time.
Do you think that Google will ever put weather on their searches? I am looking places up all the time because I travel for work and it would be nice to have everything you need right there at that one search. You did a great job putting this information together and I think this is going to take off big when businesses catch on. Thank you for the heads up.
I agree completely with you on this being a critical move in the internet business today. I have been studying the trends and growth in mobile marketing and it is big already but I have a feeling with the growth I have seen it is going to be huge by 2015, I think that most people are not even going to need PC’s or laptops anymore. Very good blog you did an excellent job.
Thanks Cynthia and I agree with your comments, I believe mobile will be huge in the next few years.
Out of all of the basic tips from this blog, I think the most significant one happens to also be the most simple tip of them all. There seems to be one recurring statistic that resonates in every research study I have come across, and that is the fact that most small to medium size businesses have not even claimed their Google Places listing. Naturally, this creates a great opportunity for the marketer who focuses on local businesses.
I totally agree Alex, thanks for stopping by
With mobile marketing taking off the way it has in just this last year I would think that this is going to be a service that is going to be required in order to move forward in this industry. And your right it will be a necessity for your SEO service. If Google starts making automatic updates to our sites when they find new information is that going to include mobile sites as well?
Hi Ernest, thanks for stopping by, yes you are correct mobile sites will become a critical aspect to your online marketing efforts. If you don’t have a mobile optimized site I believe this will effect your rankings in the future as we move into the smartphone error (and Siri), we will be performing more and more searches using our mobile devices, and google’s ultimate goal is to provide a great user experience, so they will return mobile friendly sites that match the search criteria.
I think I realize why my Google Places listing has been rejected several times. I think it is because I did the opposite of what is suggest in the tip about categories and how you should choose the one that Google provides for the first category. I changed that one. And because my web site is of an adult nature, maybe that explains why they were so quick to reject it whereas I have seen competitors with well established listings.
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Thanks for the post! I’m trying to get ahead on my places account, and these tips are great. I tried linking the photos through panaromio but it looks like there is some issue at the moment… hope they resolve it soon.
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Places/thread?tid=6c4bb3c86ee8dd6e&hl=en
Hi Pete,
Thanks for stopping by, yes you are correct – only recently there has been an issue with the linking of photos, we were told by Google support that they are in the process of rectifying this issue. You can still load your photos and then when this is resolve, apply the linking strategy at a later point. let me know if you have any further questions, etc.
I’d love to learn more about your powerful technique to get one’s website and Google Places page to work in tandem?
Any chance you’ll write a blog post about that someday … soon?
Hi Ken – thanks for stopping by – yes the more advanced post is definitely something I want to do – it’s in my to do list. I will try to get it up soon. Glad you enjoyed the post.
Cory,
One more quick question about citations; would Google allow you to place a short (i.e. one sentence) testimonial in the ‘Additional Details’ section of your Places page? I’m tempted to do so but if Google sees that as an attempt to spam them, I could get my Places listing banned altogether and that’s something I don’t want to risk.
Any thoughts?
Hi Ken,
We don’t recommend that – we only use the additional details section to incorporate secondary keywords into the places listing. If you want to place a testimonial – then why not just add it as a Review – you can also optimize the review with secondary keywords.
Thanks
Corey
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