If you run a local small business or service and you need to receive local customers from your company website, then the Google Places Business Directory is where you want to be.
Local search engine marketing through Google's Local Business Directory can make it possible that when someone locally enters keywords relating to your business, your company will be listed on the very first page of the search results with other competing local small businesses.
Before Google Pages came along, getting local traffic from Google was a major problem to small business owners. Local companies would normally receive traffic from all over the world causing a very poor conversion rate which definitely affected sales.
Business owners were either wasting time and or money on SEO campaigns. Whether SEO was outsourced or done in the back office, many companies were unsure if this was worth the time and money for such little results.
Local search engine marketing is nothing more than an online version of the Yellow Pages where people can search for local small business providers. The computer and the smart phone has made it very convenient to search for a local small business or service by entering keywords into Google and clicking SUBMIT.
Google (maps) is not the only search engine that has this local marketing capability. Other major search engines like MSN (Bing), Yahoo, and Ask are also allowing people to search for small businesses or products locally. Searches can also be narrowed down to city, state, zip code, area code, etc. Maps have also been incorporated to help finding these local small businesses much easier. People are starting to buy smart phones at an alarming rate and that means local search is really going to get bigger and better.
It's really not that hard at all to optimize your local small business to improve your rank for local customers. First of all, you must follow the normal SEO guidelines with good keywords relating to your business. Give your visitors some quality content about your business or service and make it easy to navigate through your listing. Make sure that you add a location in the description or title of your listing. For instance, if your small business target keyword is 'Pizza' and your are located in Tampa, Florida, you can write 'Pizza in Tampa Florida' in the title or somewhere in the description.
Don't hesitate to add your business listing to other search engines or local directories besides Google Places. When Google notices that your business is listed in other directories with the same information, they will give your local business special treatment when it come to ranking your small business in the search results. When listing your business with other local business directories, this is known has having citations. For every directory that you are listed with is one citation, and the more citations you have the more Google Pages will love your local business. It's called having 'Citation Juice.' So when you get the chance, sign up for as many local business directories as you can.
A few other ways that you can rank on the first page of Google for local search is by getting backlinks from other local website owners. Make sure that you use the location name and keyword for your business as the anchor text.
You can also join and participate in local forum discussions, just make sure that you add a link in the signature of your account back to your website.
Donating to local charities is also a great way to get some local links because some charities will add a link to your website for the donation.
Also, try to add a Google map on your business website to allow visitors to know your exact location.
These are just a few of the important techniques that you can use to rank better in the Google Places Business Directory and other search engines for local search.
Also, Google has introduced its new Google Business Pages feature via their Google+ social network and this is very huge for local small businesses and professionals. Did you know that the Android operating system is currently the leader in market share for all smart phone devices and some tablets? Well, it is said that Google will be activating over one million android devices a day!
Their new update (v 4.0), which will be coming out on all of the top of the line android devices this year, is called Ice Cream Sandwich and what is so important about this is that the structure of how the phone will be used, everything will be integrated with Google+ and Gmail!
So that means that everything that you do on this phone will be tied into Google Plus!
That statement above should get you excited enough to get your local small business listed with Google Pages, Plus, and Maps right away.
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