Google Business Listing | Google Places Optimization

Local listings are a great way to gain additional visibility.  Google has recently been talking a lot about tailoring their search results to the individual user, and part of this comes in the form of local listings.  If you have a business, you should get a Google business listing on Google Places.  It does not take long, and the benefit is qualified, local traffic from people searching for you.

The great thing about Google Places local listings is their placement in the search results.  When they do show up, they are right there at the top.  They are shown based on the location of the searcher, so if you offer local services, getting listed and then doing a bit of Google Places optimization could give you added visibility and targeted traffic.

For basic Google Places optimization, you want to go through and include information that will allow people to find you.  Optimize your business’s title.  It should be the name of your business, along with your general location (city, county, area, etc.).  Include keywords that you would want to rank for normally in your places page description; don’t keyword stuff though!  Choose the right categories for your site.  You can choose more than one category, but don’t choose a category that is not relevant.  Finally, be sure to complete you entire Places page, incomplete pages tend to not do as well as fully complete pages.

For Google’s local listings, you can follow this link:

http://tinyurl.com/ygwxjto

It will take you to a local listing page with step by step instructions on how to set your Google Places account up.  You can enter contact information, web site URL, hours of operation and more.  If you have not done this yet, take a few minutes and do it now.  Having a Google business listing is better than a yellow page ad.  Think about it, when was the last time you used the yellow pages?  Chances are you simply did a web search for what you were trying to find.

There are many other local listing type sites and services out there, and with the momentum for localized search growing, getting listed in as many places as possible is never a bad idea.  At the very least, we suggest getting listed with Yahoo as well as being in Google Places.

Yahoo’s local listing is pretty similar, except they do not require a phone verification, only a 3-5 day review period to accept your listing.  You can get on Yahoo’s local listings here:

http://tinyurl.com/ybj7e6j

Take the 20 minutes and get a couple of local listings today.

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