Google Places listings have been something of a hot topic with many of my small business clients lately, and for good reason. Small business owners are beginning to notice that consumers are turning less often to the phone book, and more often to the Internet for local business info. Even technical or niche service providers – like water well drillers – are noticing the shift from Yellow Pages to Google.
Google Places & online directories vs. the phone book
If you compare the costs of advertising in the phone book versus Google and small business directories, it’s a no brainer. Yellow Pages routinely asks upwards to $5,000 or more per year from small business owners for slightly more prominent print listings – combined with something like a whopping estimated 90 extra visitors per month from their online listings (of which I’m very skeptical, considering yp.com is nowhere to be found on the first – or second – page of Google for most local business terms).
The cost of claiming and optimizing Google Places and other online small biz directory listings: $0
Unless you hire a consultant to do the job for you (hint hint). Even then, you’re still looking at only a fraction of Yellow Pages’ asking price for minimal exposure.
What is the O-Pack?
The first – and really most critical – online space for small businesses to dominate is Google Places. Google Places listings (formerly known as Google’s Local Business Center) are local business listings that appear both in Google Maps and in Google’s regular web results, when you search for local business terms.
Depending on the search term, Google’s main web results page displays from zero to seven Google Places listings above regular website results. Most common local business search terms yield seven Google Places listings, aka: the O-pack.
How to optimize your Google Places listing
While there’s still some mystery surrounding Google’s ranking formula for Places listings – even for us SEOs – there are several proven, basic steps business owners can take to boost their Places listing’s rankings. Optimizing a Google Places listing is, thankfully, typically much easier than optimizing a website. No SEO hocus pocus required, just common sense.
Ok, maybe just a little bit of SEO hocus pocus – but nothing most small business owners can’t handle.
1) Claim your listing. If you haven’t already, then this is where you need to get started. But first – check to make sure your business doesn’t already have a listing (you don’t want to create a duplicate – that can cause problems). If you’ve been in business any amount of time, chances are you do.
To search for an existing listing, search for your company’s name under Google Maps. If your business pops up, click on the hyperlinked company name, which will bring you to the Places listing itself. From here, click “business owner” in the upper right hand corner and follow the steps to claim your listing.
If you don’t find your business listing, simply go to google.com/places (while logged in to your most frequently used Google account) and follow the instructions for adding a business.
Keep in mind that in order to verify your ownership, you’ll need to use either the phone number (instant) or mailing address (2-4 weeks) associated with the business listing.
2) Completely and accurately fill out contact info, hours, service radius, etc. This is a simple but important step. Be as complete as possible when filling out company info and contact info – including (and especially) your company’s website, phone number and physical address. Google will cross-check this information against other citations of your company online, so accuracy is important.
Pay special attention when editing your “service area”. For example, if you would like to provide service to customers within a 30 mile radius of your physical address, then include that under “Service areas and location settings”.
3) Use descriptive keywords in listing description & categories. This step is critical! When writing your company description, be thorough, and use keywords that are descriptive of your products and services.
For example, if you own a women’s consignment clothing boutique, you will want to make sure the words “consignment clothes”, “women’s clothing”, “shoes”, “apparel”, etc. are contained within the description. Don’t make Google guess what it is that you do/sell.
Same goes for filling out categories. Don’t simply pick one category – use all five, if you can, including peripheral services and searching for alternate ways of phrasing your products/services to ensure they’re being represented.
4) Upload photos and videos. Upload your company logo, pictures of your storefront, products and/or staff. The more, the better. If you provide a service, include pictures of you on the job. If you provide products, upload ample product pictures. Videos aren’t a deal breaker, but if you have them, certainly add them to your company listing.
5) Get reviews! Now the fun part! Once your company listing is complete, it’s time to start giving it some clout – and that means consumer reviews. There are plenty of ways to go about getting customers to review your listing, starting with posting a link to your shiny new Places listing on social media sites and asking customers to review your business.
Other methods might include:
- asking for reviews and linking to your Places listing in email newsletters
- making online reviews a part of customer satisfaction surveys
- offering incentives for reviews (e.g. 20% off next purchase)
6) List your business in other online small business directories. Google Places listings dominate Google’s results pages, but below the O-pack are results to other important small business directories. Like link building for website SEO, the more often your business name/contact info/address/website are cited online, the more credibility your Places listing will have. In other words, take advantage of as many free small business listings as possible. You can start with my top ten list:
- Yelp.com
- MerchantCircle.com
- Hotfrog.com
- Yellowbook.com
- Kudzu.com
- CitySearch.com
- Superpages.com
- YP.com
- Manta.com
7) Repeat steps 5 & 6 continually.
A few qualifiers
There are never any guarantees when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO), and Google Places is no exception. While the above steps are by and large accepted as best practice by most SEO professionals, they’re not failsafe, and Google doesn’t always spit out the results we expect.
In the O-pack listings in the image above, for example, you would expect XO Asian Cuisine – a business owner verified listing and holder of 63 Google reviews – to rank above Angel’s Thai, which is not owner verified and only has 16 listings. But it doesn’t.
When you look more closely, however, these do seem to be playing by the rules – albeit not in the order we would expect. Angel’s Thai has a ton of citations around the web, including mentions on some powerful local media websites, while XO only has a few minimal listings in other directories. In this case, it looks like Google is giving Angel’s Thai’s listing more authority because other, authoritative websites are talking about the business, sidestepping the fact that XO has more than 3x the number of reviews.
Just another reason to give your business visibility in as many online sources as possible. A well-rounded local SEO campaign should include more than just a Google Places listing – which will, ultimately, end up helping your Places listing!
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