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With MY MAPS showing up on Places Pages, its obvious that they have weight on the local ranking algorithm for the 7-Pack. Why not use this obvious knowledge to your advantage.   (If you are not a familiar with  what the 7-Pack is, then you may want to take our Google Maps Course – its free).

Creating a really good MY MAP can even bring you tons of traffic.   Look at this example I found of a MY MAP that someone created of Children Indoor Playgournds in Toronto.  It’s a perfect example of how adding value can pay back 10-fold with traffic.  This MY MAP has received over 200,000 views.  Amazing!

One of the best ways to market your business is to bring added value to your community.  Let’s say you own a restaurant.  Well, why not create a local tourism blog with other business owners in your community and you all can contribute to create interesting things to do in your city/town for locales and people visiting.

For example, make a walking tour map (like the example video above) and have the tour end up at your place of business.   You could have a lot of fun doing this and it could lead to some really great joint ventures with other local businesses.

An interesting note… this is the exact type of thing local TV news station, papers & magazines eat up.  Once you make your local community blog and some content like some interesting Google Tour Maps, be sure to send out some press releases.  I’m sure someone will pick up the story, which will obviously just bring more traffic and sales to all the businesses listed along the tours.

Now interesting enough (from my understanding) these MY MAPS can even get indexed and show up in the organic search engine results pages. Now I haven’t seen an example of this yet, so you know of one or find one add to the comment section below.  Assuming this is true, where MY MAPS can get indexed & display in the SERPs you will want to make sure you think carefully about the name of your map – just think Title Tag as your Map Title.  Also, why not consider creating a link building campaign back to your MY MAP, who knows you just might get some great traffic from the SERPs.

Some other tips you may want to consider when making your MY MAPS:

• Add images & video to your maps.
• Build links to your customer maps – even a simple link from your website or blog.
• Embed your map on your blog or website.
• When writing the information bubble content make it interesting.  Think sales copy.
• Design customized placemarks.
• Include links in the infomation bubble content back to your blog or site.
• If you are trying to get more user content to show up in your small business Places Page then make sure your map  has the same name for your placemark as your business name displays in the Google Maps directory.
• Remember to include useful details such as addresses and phone numbers for placemarks.
• Build out your Google Profile page. You can leverage brand name value with a well-chosen profile name. When you hover over MY Maps Profiles it will show your photo icon and links to your site.  Use this to your advantage.  Think marketing, brand management, and bread crumbing.

It’s amazing how your business can greatly improve in sales when you contribute back to the greater good of your local community.   Just some food for thought.  Let me know what your thoughts are in the comment section below…?  If you create your own local tour map, be sure to leave the link in the comment section below so we can all see what you’ve done.