With the world going more and more global, over the last two years we have also witnessed web searches getting more and more local. And its not an exaggeration to say that Google Places has dramatically changed the way that local businesses deal with search engine marketing. Local SEO has become the latest ‘hot niche’ for location based businesses.
According to Google’s statistics, 20% of all searches contain local terms and keywords with 97% of consumers searching for local products and services online. And that figure is continuously growing, especially with the increasing number of smartphone owners.
Despite being a free service and being around since 2010, many businesses either find Google Places too complicated and do not quite get it, therefore do not really use it; which is a shame, as these companies could be missing out on 20% of their potential customers, according to Google’s findings.
What is Google Places?
Google Places (formerly Google Business Centre) is a search platform by Google, which allows companies to reach their most targeted audience in the exact geography they are offering their services and products.
Getting Started With Google Places
To get started with Google Places, a business needs to complete the following steps:
- Register with Google and create a Google Places profile;
- Verify your name, address and phone number;
- Create a company description which promotes your product or service;
- Gradually build a good number of customer reviews, which Google calls ‘citations”. These reviews can be from third party sites, but recently Google has prioritized reviews from within Google itself, so its better to ask your customers to review directly from your Google Places page;
- Link your website to your Google Places page
- Add images and videos to your Places page
Now let’s look into these steps and see what you have to know about them.
Your Google Places page
Make sure you have your Google Places page 100% completed. Choosing the right categories is a critical factor for your ranking in Places. Keywords are the most important thing for categories, so make sure you get this right and do your keyword research beforehand.
Keep your customer in mind when adding data, photos, videos, links and offers. You should ask yourself whether it inspires trust from your customers and bring legitimacy to your business?
Name, Address and Phone Number
Make sure your name, address and phone number is consistent across all online references of your business. If it isn’t, be sure to update it. Google likes consistency in profiles and considers this a key factor in determining the legitimacy of your business.
Many businesses overlook this point, but ignore it at your peril as the web is moving more and more towards trust signs, which is tied to verifiable data such as name, address and phone number.
Reviews
Like it or not but the system is so cleverly designed that you can’t do these by yourself or get your friends, staff, etc. do them for you. The only option is to get them from real customers who will publish them on the set of sites trusted by Google which you need for your citations.
And it won’t do you any good if you have got 14 reviews from two customers. Your reviews should be from different users, with different IP addresses if you want Google to add any significance to them.
Ranking
Google Places provide two types of ranking results: Pure and Blended.
Pure results rankings
They are directly driven by your Places page and Maps algorithms and show less information (link, website, ranking, reviews). What matters here are your business category, keywords and location in the geography searched.
Yet, it’s all about the balance so don’t over-optimize your site, stuffing it with keywords everywhere or Google will ban your web page.
And it makes sense, as Google doesn’t wants to have its service discredited. Similar thing happens when you create duplicate records as Google splits the links which results in lower rankings.
Pure results ranking are also affected by the data on you website. It should be enough to prove what you claim to be so that search engines can find and trust your web page.
Critically important to Pure ranking are business reviews as well. It is recommended that you have both positive and negative reviews in order to get more legitimacy and look more realistic.
Blended local results
They are a combined effort of your Google Places and Organic search listings. Besides the information provided by Pure local results, Blended results display additional information about your business.
But here’s the thing - even if you have a cleverly optimised Place page but fail to get it associated with your website you won’t get any blended results.
That’s why the keyword here is ‘website optimisation’ for offering (products/ services) + location. After you do these, build links to support your optimization and help boost your rankings.
You will also need authority links from diverse sources and anchor text as well as authentic quality reviews with a balanced amount of keywords which have been gradually generated in the course of time.
Does this sound very different from what you have done so far? Yes, probably.
Until recently local SEO was perceived rather like a luxury service; nice to have but not necessary. The truth is that search engine optimization is continuously evolving and local SEO is now an important, developing niche.
If you’re a local business, then Google Places is just a stage in this evolution. If you don’t get it right, you could be missing out and will have to play catch up with your search engine rankings.
Granted it’s a bit more complicated than conventional SEO techniques, but the sooner you implement it (or outsource its implementation to a professional), the easier it will be for your clients to find you. After all, isn’t that the point?
Rita is a marketer at London based web design agency Activate Media. Connect with Rita on Twitter @ritaauta and Google+. You can sign up here for a free 5-part course on how businesses can really get more sales and leads online.
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I have been really curious about Google Places. I have a global network, but if I ever wanted to promote something local I would need to know this stuff. Thanks for the great in depth article.
Thanks for your comment Sara- glad you found it useful!
Hi Rita,
Very informative article.
An excellent method for using google to promote business effectively is by thinking about what google is trying to accomplish through it’s services. They want to make users’ search experience better and thus making search results as close to home to the user as possible. If we can align our methods with google’s goals for its customers then we can achieve a lot.
Google will always try to offer results that are within the user’s location so if we want to tap into the local market, businesses need to take advantage of google places and other location based services / directories.
My thoughts exactly Robyn. You can’t go far wrong by providing information the Big G
and your customers will appreciate. Google’s main business is search and your customers are searching for your business after all.
just a quick question , i have a website so if i include it into Google places will it increase in search engine ranking? even if i don’t have any physical office ?
thanks.
Hi Saad, even if you don’t have a physical office (or work from home) you can still benefit from Google Places by listing by only providing your general location. Good luck!
Hey Rita,
Thanks for the great tips about Google places. It really is a great tool for marketers and many really has been overlooked by many.
Thanks,
~Jeremy
Thanks Jeremy, I’m glad you liked the post! It’s true, sometimes the oldies really are the goodies. Hope this inspires people to go check out this awesome free tool
Hi Rita,
you reminded me that I have to be careful. I just changed my business address and that always brings problems. But, I had not thought about how missing one or two address updates could affect my standing with Google. Thanks for pointing that out to me.
Hi David, thanks for your comment. Sorry to add to what’s probably a long list of to-do’s for your business :), but consistency in the online presentation of your company information is increasingly important in Google’s quest for more transparency and trust online.
I didn’t know the trick with Google Places
I love it! I usually use Google Insights to find keywords. Thanks for sharing your experience with us.
Thanks Elena- now you have another tool to add to your Google collection
I haven’t tried Googel places and was thinking to try it. I think this time i
will need to apply for my business. thanks for the tips.
Hello Becca, I’m glad you found the article useful. Thanks for your comment!
Yes! from the previous to now, Google Places has changed a lot, giving out more accuracy on the map even. Btw nice post by Rita
I can’t stop finding something new about Google, they really offer a great number of various opportunities, especially for those people who have any kind of business
Yes its true that Google has many free tools for SEO and small businesses. I hope you’ll find Google Places particularly helpful
Hi Rita,
thanks for sharing your knowledge.
Google Places is a great way to let people know about your business.
It brings you traffic and people targeted for your activity.
Big G is really becoming the magnifying glass that controls the whole world.
Thanks Erik- I appreciate your comment!
i didn’t noticed one thing in google . its showing root map’s also for few companies . maybe i think its a paid advertising by adwrods .
It’s look like very research based post. I really didn’t know more about Google places. i ‘ll surely try it. thanks for sharing deeply informative post.
Thanks Rosey- I hope I succeeded in demystifying Google Places a little bit
I have been really curious about Google Places. I have a global network, but if I ever wanted to promote something local I would need to know this stuff. Thanks for the great in depth article.
Thanks Andreas, I appreciate your comment
I think that after the introduction of different versions of Google search engines for countries local SEO is more important than ever.
Google places is good for local SEO but the new iPhone Siri service pulls its data from Yelp so you should also be sure to list there… pretty soon most phones will have this kind of service built in so worth keeping an eye on where they get their data from.
Thanks Mike for that useful addition. It seems Yelp is definitely something worth looking into.
I didn’t heard about Google places before. Making conclusions from your article I anderstood that G places is the very helpful tool. I will try this in the near future.
Thanks you very match for sharring this useful post.
Hi Daniel, thanks for your comment. I’m glad you found this post helpful
HiGoogle will always try to offer results that are within the user’s location so if we want to tap into the local market, businesses need to take advantage of google places and other location based services / directories. and get the our page rank decided.
There is truly a need nowadays for local businesses to learn web marketing strategies. The traditional modes like newspapers and yellow pages are becoming ineffective with the increasing number of people being who are using the web to find products and services.