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Google Places
Jun 3rd
Offline Bricks and Mortar Businesses
Claim Your Google Places Listing
As a bricks and mortar business you may wonder what would be the point of being on the internet.
The answer is that it is becoming even more important to have some sort of presence on the internet and the good news is that you don’t have to have a website to achieve it.
The days where people pick up their local edition of the Yellow Pages or Thomson Local when searching for a service or product are numbered and potential customers are more likely to switch on their computer and search online.
Online search has grown massively in terms of searching for local businesses. Google states that 73% of searches are made looking for local content.
Google soon realised the potential of local search and as a result launched its Local Business Center which enabled any business to get a free listing regardless of whether they had a website or not.
Just over a year ago Google introduced Place Pages. A Place Page is a webpage for every place in the world, organizing all the relevant information about it. To tie in with Place Pages Google recently improved and re-launched its Local Business Centre under the new name of Google Places.
The new version includes all the features of the old Local Business Centre and a host of new options.
A Google Places business listing provides potential customers who are performing a local business search with valuable and relevant information such as opening hours, payment methods, photos, videos, reviews, special offers and real-time updates. Businesses can also include extra incentives for customers to choose them by offering coupons, including ones specially formatted for mobile phones.
It is important that local businesses claim their Google Places listing to give them a chance of attracting local search traffic specific to their business type and location.
To claim your listing you must first of all have a Google Account. Once you’ve opened your account and signed in you need to go to Business Solutions then Business Information. You can then add a new listing.
It’s not however just a case of entering in your business name, address and telephone number. There’s much more to it than that. If you don’t optimise it correctly then you won’t appear in Google Places.
Here are some of the options:
1) Specify the geographic area you service.
2) List your website and email details.
3) Choose your business categories – you can list up to 5 and one has to be from Google’s list.
4) Business Hours.
5) Photos – add up to 10 photos per listing.
6) Videos – upload up to 5 videos.
7) Payment Types Taken.
Coupons: Create online coupons to give people an incentive to visit your site. There’s a separate “coupon tab” that appears on your ‘View Report’ page.
9) Privacy: If you work at homë and have no storefront you can choose to make your address private in your listing.
10) Reviews – get your customers to write reviews about your business.
Google will tell you how much of your listing is complete as a percentage. Obviously if possible you should complete it 100%. You are also given assistance with completing your listing fully via the following help pages:
Once you are happy with your details you have to verify that you are the business owner. You can do this via mail or telephone. Once verified your listing will go live.
You can view how your listing looks to potential customers by logging into your account and clicking on ‘See your listing on Google Maps.’
Google also offers a new ‘View Report’ dashboard which gives you important feedback on the number of impressions (how many times users saw your business listing as a local search result) and actions (how many times users showed interest in your business listing) recorded for your listing. This is very useful information that can be used as part of the search engine optimisation of your listing and website if you have one.
If you’re a Manchester based business and want help with completing your Google Places listing then simply get in touch.
If you’re not listed there’s no better time like now. Local business online search is only going to increase in importance and the sooner you grab your position the better. It can attract targeted, free traffic to your business.
People are searching for businesses like yours online and Google Places makes it easier for them to find you.
Taking my eye off SEO Manchester
Jun 2nd
Neglecting My SEO Manchester Website
If you’re a painter and decorator probably the last house that gets decorated is your own. If you’re a plumber it probably takes you months to get round to installing that outside tap your wife’s been nagging on at you about for the last 2 years. If you’re……………..and so on.
The bottom line is that for the past 2 or 3 months I’ve somewhat neglected my SEO Manchester website. It’s always been a case of I’ll write that post tomorrow or I’ll add a new page next week.
That’s not good practice I know especially when I’d be telling a client to keep on top of their own website.
The good news is that the reason I’ve been a bit slack on updating my own site is that I’ve been busy with other things relating to Internet Marketing and SEO. I’ve picked up some new clients and been talking with other people in and around Manchester about doing SEO work for them on their own customers sites and joint venture ideas.
So, all in all it’s been a busy old time and I’m looking forward to the rest of the year and taking my search engine optimisation business to the next level.
Website Marketing Beyond SEO
Apr 26th
As well as helping businesses improve their underperforming websites using good SEO techniques they should also be made aware of standard marketing methods that can place them above their competitors in the eyes of potential customers.
If you’re in business you should be looking for any angle that can give you the competitive edge.
Take the recent Icelandic volcano for example. This event raised major questions for employers concerning employees who were stranded abroad. Now, if you were a switched on firm of Solicitors, for example, you could have earned some major credibility by getting together a bulletin covering all the legal issues and sending it to all your clients where this could have been an issue.
Turning the bulletin into an article or press release and also posting about it on your Blog (if you’ve got one) could have possibly attracted new clients.
Website marketing isn’t just about SEO.
Business Website Improvement
Apr 25th
Websites That Cost A Fortune But Simply Don’t Work
If you’re a business owner with a website the chances are you will read this and say “that applies to me.”
Business owners, after having been told that they must have a presence on the internet, will spend large amounts of money on having a website designed, only to find a few months down the line that it is doing nothing.
It’s not attracted any traffic, customers, sales or additional profit into the business.
How frustrating is that? You’ve got this lovely looking website which has taken a big chunk out of your marketing budget yet absolutely nothing is happening.
You go back to the guy who designed and built your website and ask what the problem is but you can’t get a definite answer. It’s not the fault of the website designer as he has done the job that was asked of him. He knows how to build a fantastic site but not how to market it.
This is the problem with the vast majority of business websites. They simply don’t work.
The good news is that in most cases this problem can be resolved.
By analysing the site itself and the marketplace a plan can be developed to gradually improve the website so that it places the product/s or service/s in front of potential customers.
The starting point would be to analyse the keywords that people are using when searching for the product/s or service/s. This would include an analysis of the main competitors websites to see if there are any additional keywords they are using.
Once the keywords have been identified the existing and new pages of the website need to be optimised so that the search engines (Google,Yahoo,Bing etc) have the best possible chance of finding them and liking what they find.
The next stage is to create a buzz around the site. Even though optimising the physical structure of the site will greatly improve on its original performance that is not enough. A number of search engine optimisation techniques will have to be implemented over a period of time to improve the positions of the website’s pages in the search engine rankings.
This process will dramatically improve your business website’s chances of doing the job it was originally designed for.
The next step should be to look at additional ways of promoting the business via the website and by using any additional online and offline marketing methods.
Business Keyword Research
Apr 11th
SEO Keyword Analysis & Research
An in-depth analysis of your keywords will form an important part of the search engine optimisation of your business website. Looking at which keywords you are currently targeting, those that your competitors are targeting plus researching keywords that you may not have thought of will all figure in your website SEO analysis.
Analysing how you are using keywords within the content on each page is also very important.
You may not have thought of targeting customers within certain areas and using specific geographic keywords could help you attract more traffic and customers via your website.
