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Your Google Places (now merged with Google + Local) listing can be an important part of your marketing mix. Some small businesses might not even need a website anymore if they optimise their Google Plus listing sufficiently and keep the good content coming. Having said that I will say that having both a website and a Google Plus listing for your business is even better than just having the Google Plus listing but, realistically, do you have the time to keep both up-to-date. It’s up to you how you’re going to grow both. Is your website a simple brochure site with 5 pages, without a news or blog section, with no reviews, no testimonials, no video, nothing to keep your visitors coming back for more, no special offers, the list goes on… If this sounds like your website then this type of online presence isn’t going to do as much for your business as a well-optimised website can do. A Google Plus Local listing is capable of containing reviews, video, company description and so on. So it really does depend on your approach. Ideal approach have both a website (but a well-optimised one and a Google Plus Local listing). If you don’t know the difference between Google Places and Google Plus Local (it’s a bit complicated because they aren’t exactly mutually exclusive…there’s overlap) then read our Google Maps, Google Places and Google Plus local guide.
Just having a listing is not good enough
I have a rant every so often about websites with blogs that don’t get updated or did get updated at first with a few blog posts then this stopped. It’s the same with Google Plus Local listings. They aren’t just a set and forget solution. You need to promote them, optimise them, SEO them, promote a few quality back-links to them, create some citations or directory listings which point to them. After all, the higher your profile appears in the search engine results, the more traffic your listing will receive. But this takes effort and competition is increasing all of the time. Lots of your competitors are likely to be doing this. They may have read this blog post or some similar resource. They are taking action…so should you!
5 Easy steps to optimising your Google Places / Google Plus Local profile
- Familiarise yourself with Google’s Guidelines – Contrary to popular belief I don’t think that Google has an hidden agenda when it comes to messing us around. I just think they genuinely do want to rid the Internet (or at least Google search) of rubbish content which doesn’t satisfy users’ search queries. Having said this this will knock a listing on the head is it appears fishy in any way. This includes fake reviews, over-optimisation and so on. Just don’t do it and play by the rules.
- Citations (in business directories – There are lots of business directories which will help to boost your profile’s status and, therefore, position in search. Use them and have a clear plan. Some are good, some are bad so choose wisely. Some are even specific to your business niche. Go in the main ones but also find some nice, juicy industry specific ones too.
- Choose categories wisely – My rule here is to choose categories which are as generic as possible. This means if you are a local locksmith then “Locksmith Services” should be one of your categories but not “Locksmith Barnsley” or “Good Locksmith Services”. Think business directory style not spammy keyword optimising style.
- Make your content good – I will advise you to include keywords in your content but please, please, please write for your human target audience and not to trick search engines. Don’t put “We are web design Barnsley and here at web design Barnsley we provide web design Barnsley services for your Barnsley website design needs”…this is spammy! Also, include videos and images in your content, people like to have a multimedia experience and Google appears to see content rich profiles as more complete profiles.
- Encourage reviews – Are your customers happy with your products/services? Then ask them to be so kind as to leave a review and yes they do need to be logged into a Gmail account to do so. Do not leave fake reviews!
If you’ve done the above and it’s part of your regular process but you still aren’t ranking as well as you think you could be then call Internet Marketing Platinum on 0800 0340304 or contact us hered as we have some more advanced process which can help.
