I logged into one of my customer’s Google Local Business Centers today and had a pleasant surprise. As you can see on the image, Google has finally addressed the problem of businesses that service customers outside of their immediate area. Until now, my customers with lawn services, out-call massage, and plumbing businesses had major issues coming up on the map outside of their immediate metropolitan areas.
Today they enabled the “Service Areas and Location Settings” area in the Local Business Center. Businesses have the option of choosing whether their customers come to their business location or if they serve customers at their address. They have the option of showing their address or not and they can choose which area they service. The service area can be chosen as a radius from their address, or they can put in geo-modifiers such as zip code, city name, or even county name. I used both methods for several of my customers, choosing a radius or choosing counties or cities as appropriate.
It’s too soon to determine how this new option will affect rankings or if hiding your address has a positive or negative affect on listings. This literally changes how I advise my customers in their local search efforts. I’ll let you know my results as time goes on.
I’m in Google Maps every day as a part of my job promoting the hell out of Local Search and I came across an interesting change in Google Maps. When you click on “more info” from Google Maps, but not yet from the Google 10-pack, you get a different, more expanded version of the Local Listing. That’s a screenshot of my own listing there on the right.
Highlights include:
Visible Business categories
Distance to the nearest major intersection
Nearby bus stops! (They obviously don’t know Tampa! Who uses the bus?)
Full business description and a sample review
Google Map of the location and a picture of the business from the street
Expanded versions of tabs that you used to have to expand in the old style of listing including Details, Photos & Videos, Reviews, Web Pages, and User Content
I really like the new layout, let’s see if they roll it out to all the local listings, or if it stays strictly on Google Maps.
Update: So I just found an article, and posted a link, identifying these as Google Place Pages. The official blog states that one exists for every spot on the map!
A recent study done by David Mihm among 27 prominent bloggers and practitioners of local search engine marketing showed the following factors that positively affect local search rankings in Google and Yahoo, beginning with the most helpful:
Having the local business listing in the city where the searcher is in
Having citations from the major data providers
Being associated with the proper categories in local business listings
Having claimed the local business listing
Having the product or service keywords and key phrases in the local business listing title
Having off-page criteria such as directory listings
Having a high volume of customer reviews
Having high quality customer reviews
Having strong on-page website criteria, such as domain strength and landing pages strength
Having the full business address on the contact page
Being near the centroid, meaning “downtown”, as defined by a local search engine
Having high quality inbound links
Having citations from hyperlocal and web crawls
Having the product or service keywords and key phrases in the local business listing description
Having location keywords and key phrases in inbound anchor text
Having customer reviews right at the search engines
Having location keywords and key phrases in the local business listing title
Having the product or service keywords and key phrases in inbound anchor text
Having the name of the city and state in the title tags
Having customer reviews in third party websites
Having location keywords and key phrases in the local business listing description
Having a high quantity of inbound links
Having the name of the city and state in the contact page title tags
Having the product or service keywords and key phrases in the URL of the website
Having the product or service keywords and key phrases in the local business listing custom fields
Being associated with marginal categories in the local business listings
Having location keywords and key phrases in the URL of the website
Having a local area code in the phone number listed in the local business listing
Being associated with local business listing videos
Having a local phone number on the contact page
Having user generated content such as customized Google My Maps
Having a homepage with a high pagerank
Being associated with local business listing photos
Having created a keyhole markup language (KML) file
Having positive ratings from customers
Having location keywords and key phrases in the local business listing custom fields
Having the business address in hCard Mircroformat on the company website
Having a high page rank for the landing page of the local business listing
The age of the local business listing, with older listings ranking higher
Including coupons in local business listings
Paticipating in local pay per click campaigns
On the other hand, these are the factors that negatively affect local search engine ranking in Google and Yahoo, starting with the most harmful:
Having multiple local business listings with the same business address
Having multiple local business listings with the same telephone number
Having no physical business address and using only a post office box
Having multiple local business listings with the same business name
Having only the Internet 800 Directory number on the contact page
Having negative ratings from customers
Having multiple business addresses on the contact page
Using the Internet 800 Directory number in local business listing
Make sure to use this checklist in evaluating your own local business listing.
For any business, local searches are definitely more valuable. It has been proven that people who do local searches online are closer to making a decision on buying certain products or services. They are seeking the final factors that will make them decide one way or another. When you lead these searchers to your website, you have that very valuable opportunity to make them decide on choosing your products or services. Since local searches mean that the searcher is in your vicinity, immediate sales are very probable. So are searches converting to web visits, phone calls or physical walk in visits to your store or office.
According to statistics, 74% of internet users do local searches. In fact, of all searches done online, 35% are local. Of all those local searches, 82% are followed by phone calls or physical visits to stores and actual purchase. Among Americans, a high 66% use local search to find local businesses. It is also interesting to note that people spend 80% of their budgets within 50 miles of their homes. Shouldn’t you be taking advantage of this trend as soon as possible?
It is evident that having your website listed in local searches has become a very important requirement for business. Even if other innovations crop up, as they surely will, local internet searches are here to stay and will remain a very influential factor in marketing.
It is free to have your business listed in many local listings like Google Maps. Make sure you claim your listing and that the information associated with your listing is complete and accurate. If you fail to do this, many search engines still list you using third party information that they get elsewhere online. The danger is that the information may be inaccurate and misleading. Even worse, someone else may intentionally sabotage your listing.
Remember that your business address should be listed both in your local business listing and your website. They should be identical. This is critical and will facilitate your high ranking.
Other business listings require a fee for an upgrade, giving you the ability to gain more control over your listing. The cost is often worth it, especially since you need every advantage you can get over your competitors.
Many business listings include client reviews. Make sure your products and services are of optimum quality in order to garner positive reviews. Encourage your satisfied clients to show their appreciation and support by posting positive reviews. You should also monitor these reviews for any negative comments. You have to immediately check their validity so that you can respond accordingly.
Having your business listed is not all there is to it, though. Just being listed is useless if your business does not appear on the first page of local searches, preferably high up there if not on the first place. Achieving that goal is not easy, though. You will be able to achieve it sooner with the help of search engine marketing experts.
Investing in the services of experts in search engine optimization and search engine marketing may be the best thing you can do for your business. Do it to maximize your use of local business listings for greater sales. It can more than double your income.
How do you know whom to hire? One of the best ways is to go by the results they show. Find who among your competitors rank highest in local business searches. Then check the service they use. Business Local Listings, for example, is indicated in all the listings of its clients. And you will find these clients at the top of their respective local niches.
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I logged into one of my customer’s Google Local Business Centers today and had a pleasant surprise. As you can see on the image, Google has finally addressed the problem of businesses that service customers outside of their immediate area. Until now, my customers with lawn services, out-call massage, and plumbing businesses had major issues coming up on the map outside of their immediate metropolitan areas.
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