Google Places - now known as Google My Business - is the #1 search engine for local business listings. If you're already on Google Places, that's certainly a good thing, but have you done EVERYTHING to make the most of your Google My Business listing?
Firstly, if you have a Google Places Listing without a Google+ Page, you're seriously missing out. Competitors that already have both in place are much more likely to rank higher. Make sure you have both Google+ and Google Places active for your website.
1. Granite Worktops
YES! Every single listing in the Google results has a Google+ Page. Not only that, the higher listings tend to have reviews!
Google's recent efforts to blatantly favour websites with Google+ integration whether it's +1, Authoring or Google+ Pages means you can't afford to avoid the importance of a Google+ dominated SEO Campaign.
1. Setting up your Google Places & Google+ Page
Making sure your business or client is listed on both Google+ and Google Places is a good start. But what should you be doing "on- page" if you want to optimise your listing for consistent quality traffic?
Well, it's much the same as if you were doing on page SEO for a website. You need to have a unique description as well as a unique title. It also means setting up the entire profile correctly too. This means completing the opening hours sections, adding extra product details, prices, images, etc. - the more info you add, the better.
Take a look at some of your competitors' listings. I guarantee that if they're at the top of the page, they'll at the very least have a Google+ page and a detailed Places listing. This means a comprehensive business description, tags and a good title, with relevant keywords added.
Google doesn't have a specific algorithm which throws out huge keyword densities in your Google Places and Google+ searches. You shouldn't go overboard, but having a couple of specific keywords, twice, maybe three times in the description should certainly give your listing a boost.
2. Reviews
Now, I'm not saying that asking genuine customers to add (10 or more) reviews is going to get you to the top of the search engines, but it's certainly not going to hurt. I'll give you an example.
Blend Creative Minds have a client by the name of Marble Creations on Google Maps search. We had a couple of previous customers add positive reviews. We also linked the Google+ page to their Google Places listing.
Within a day, their listing was in a higher position on Google Places, boosting impressions by an extra 200 per month, and thus making our client VERY happy.
3. Directory/Business Listings
Having additional business listings on reputable directory sites may also positively influence your site's rankings, due to the extra backlinks to your website. Just take care to research these carefully and avoid spammy, low-quality, low domain authority listings sites.
Global - Yelp (TLD) & Yell (previously Yellow Pages)
USA - White Pages, Insider Pages, Local.com, Kudzu, nsphere.com & MojoPages
UK - BrownBook, FreeIndex, Thomson Local, First Directory, Apple Maps, Hotfrog
Thanks for reading, and don't forget to take a look at our SEO Packages if you really want to supercharge your website's performance in the search engine rankings.
