Last October, Google rolled out Google Place Search, a new user interface for local search that organizes information around location. These changes merged the Google Map listings and organic results in a new way that makes it critical to pay attention to your online presence. Gone are the pack of 7 or 3 results at the top with a map, replaced by blended results that incorporate pieces of your website, your Google places listing, citations about your business from other sources and reviews from sites such as CitySearch, Yelp, Yahoo, Merchant Circle, InsiderPages and other Internet Yellow Pages sites and directories. The major objective of the change is to cluster search results around specific locations so you can more easily compare results and select the business that best meets your needs.

Google Places Blended Results

After 3 months, the effects of this change has become very apparent. In some ways this change created new challenges for those of us who succeed in getting our client’s websites on the first page of Google’s organic search results. Prior to this update, those organic results would be very visible below the Google Map and associated businesses. Now, to be listed prominently, you need to create a quality Places page that provides greater information to those who are interested in what you have to offer and continue to work your website SEO for organic results. Those businesses that do both very well will reap the benefits of this change.

How to achieve prominence on the “Map”

There are a few important factors for ranking well in Google Places.

The number of citations (mentions of your business name and address) for your business on business directories, news blogs or a social networking sites

To Google, citations are a vote of confidence in your listing and those from authoritative sites, such as your local Chamber of Commerce or Better Business Bureau, carry more weight. Citations have a positive effect on your Google Places ranking and should be considered an important element of a local Search engine marketing campaign. However, your citations must be consistent and contain the same information. Use the same business name, address and telephone number across all. Having your business listed as ABC Plumbing and Heating on one site and ABC Plumbing for another could result in them being considered different businesses. Search for your company name and see where it shows up. If you can claim and edit the listing to make it consistent, do so.

The number of quality reviews for your company on Google other review sites

It is important that businesses get customers to provide reviews through review sites in order to move their local listing up in the results pages. After you have created listings for your company on all those that are relevant to your industry, provide links to these profiles via your website. Put these links on your testimonials page so when you ask a customer for a review and point them to that page, they see what others have said and will be encouraged to do the same. Make sure your reviews are spread out across different sites for the best effect so encourage your customers to write a review on their preferred site.

A well written, optimized Google Places page

After you claim your page, attend to the details to create a quality Google Places page. Review Google Place’s Quality Guidelines to ensure you stay within their criteria and stay visible.

1. Accurately provide your name, address and local phone number. Don’t put your phone number or town in your business name. Although there are still some listings out there with them in the names, shortly those may be banned or buried in the results.
2. Provide an email account on your own domain.
3. Use a local phone number, not an 800 number.
4. Use all five categories available starting with relevant standard categories that Google provides and then create others using your important keywords.
5. Display your address if at all possible. If you list a service area, keep your address visible. PO Boxes are not allowed.
6. Add links to the “Additional Details” area of your listing to give people the opportunity to contact you. Any page that has a contact form is a good candidate.

This is just an overview of what you need to do to create a quality online presence that helps your business stand out.  Once you have your online properties established, you need to work on getting reviews and keep your information up-to-date. What have I missed that is an important item for ranking well locally?

©2012 Masterful Marketing. All Rights Reserved.

Google Places – Best Practices for Local Search Engine Optimization is an original post from Debra Murphy, Small Business Marketing Coach: Masterful Marketing - Marketing in the New Media World. If you enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Debra on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.

I got a call from a small business owner yesterday that reminds me why I focus on helping small business owners market their businesses. It disheartens me when someone spends a substantial amount of money with a company for pay-per-click or SEO services that do not get them any results. These companies charge $500 – $3000 per month for these services of which only a percentage of it is applied to your actual campaign. The rest goes into their pockets. They also redirect your website to a copy that they maintain, replace your phone number with one of theirs (to measure phone calls from their services along with clicks) and basically eliminate any ranking you may have in the search engines. They basically hold you hostage.

In most cases, what they actually provide can be done yourself with a little knowledge or with someone who can help you get your advertising off the ground for a lot less. Here is how you get started.

Determining Your Keywords

Finding your keywords are easy to do yourself with tools such as Google AdWords External Keyword Tool or the Google Search-based Keyword Tool. Both enable you to plug in your website and they return keywords that they associate with your website. They provide search volume and competition for the keywords. The Google Search-based Keyword Tool also provides a suggested bid price if you want to set up an AdWords campaign. These keywords can be exported so you can organize them into groups for optimizing your pages of your website or to build your pay-per-click campaigns.

Taking Care of Your Online Marketing

Before you rush into implementing a pay-per-click advertising campaign on any of the search engines, you want to make sure your website is optimized first. I just recently wrote a post on Five Easy Tips to Optimize Your WordPress Website so make sure you’ve implemented those tips and let your website get indexed by all three search engines.

Next, you want to set up your local listings in all three search engines local business centers. To make this effort easier, create a profile that contains the following information: name, address, phone numbers (office and mobile if you want folks to know it), web site address, contact email, hours of operation if relevant, payment methods, description of your business, products, services, brands and specialties, certifications, company logo, and a half dozen photos of your work if relevant. Put the content in a document where you can cut and paste it as necessary and have your images available for uploading. Then create your local business listing in Google, Yahoo!, Bing and Best of the Web. Here are the links to all three:

• Bing Local Listing Center - Log in with a Windows Live ID to create your listing.
• Yahoo! Local Listing – Log in with your Yahoo! ID to create your free listing. Yahoo! also offers enhanced and featured listings, but wait to sign up for those until you get all your free listings established.
• Google Local Business Center – Log in with your Google account to create your free listing. Google provides a dashboard that enables you to manage your listing. It gives you simple analytic data about activity and search queries used when people saw your listing. They also enable you to offer coupons with your business listing and post a message to your place page.
• Best of the Web – Create an account and submit your free listing.

I usually like to get the above done and let the search engines “do their thing” with indexing your site. Give them time to position your site for your major keywords. Then, if you still are looking for more traffic to your website, now consider creating a pay-per-click campaign. Google, Yahoo and Bing all have pay-per-click advertising that enable you to set up your campaign, manage your daily budget and monitor its progress. Setting up your campaign is simple in all cases. I usually recommend that small businesses start with a low budget and watch how the campaign sets itself up by monitoring your analytics information. You can see where your traffic is coming from, how the search engines are delivering visitors to you, which sites are referral sites and how many people come to your site directly.

In many cases, small business owners don’t really want to do this themselves. But if someone calls you with something that sounds too good to be true, most likely it is. Before you spend your money on these types of services, buyer beware – do your homework. Search the web for these businesses, looking for reviews by other small business owners before you give them your money. Better yet, consult with someone you trust to work with you on your online marketing efforts. You won’t be sorry.

Have you received these types of sales calls? How did you handle them?

©2012 Masterful Marketing. All Rights Reserved.

Why You Should Control Your Online Marketing is an original post from Debra Murphy, Small Business Marketing Coach: Masterful Marketing - Marketing in the New Media World. If you enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Debra on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.