Proven & practical local search marketing strategies for small businesses. Gain visibility in Google Maps, Yahoo Local Search, MSN Search Local & much more!
Google Maps can be a mess. Often it can produce duplicate listings for business(s) which can cause many issues when you are trying to get your Google Map Listing to rank well (ideally within the 7-Pack).
Sometimes its Google Map’s fault and other times it’s Merchant’s fault for not understanding how Google Maps works. Regardless of how you ended up with a duplicate listings, its never a good thing.
When you have a duplicate listing it causes inconsistencies which can result in unwanted merges, division of reviews and/or citations and a myriad of other unwanted actions.
If you find yourself with double listings on your business, here is how to merge properly them according to Google:
I follow these exact instructions often and it works like a charm.
Out every 10 clients I have, I find 30-40% of them have some sort of duplicate listing issues. This is typical and a fairly easy fix.
Now this only works if your duplicate listing is “not claimed”. If you find your listing is “claimed” and you do not have logins for it then it could be hijacked. In this case you need to go to the Google Map Help Forum and begin a thread, and pray the Google Gods that an G-Map employee will read your thread and investigate it. This is one reason to make sure you have claimed your listing(s), just for security sake. I can’t tell you how many listings in Google, Yahoo, & Bing are unclaimed – Crazy!
Let us know if you have any questions about merging Google Maps in the comment section below.
This is really cool. Not sure when Google LBC released this new feature, I haven’t heard anyone speak about it yet. I was in tweaking a couple of things with a fairly new client’s account and I noticed a new feature called “Post to Your Place Page”. It looks like this:
And then when it goes live it looks like this:
This new feature is really, really cool. I hope they are not just testing and to only watch it disappear in few weeks. I think this new feature can be used in so many interesting ways.
You can see here (in the example image above) that I am testing with my client as a daily call to action. I am going to take a few clients and write a daily call-to action on their Google Maps Listing and see if it pulls in some extra sales fro them.
It’s a great way to get small businesses to login and interact with their Google LBC more, creating a habit of using G-Maps. Which I am sure Google wants. The more interaction they can get with SMB’s the more ways they can then eventually monetize it.
This call-out reminds me of Twitter a little. It’s a micro message meant to be daily. It looks like whatever you write will expire in 30 days so they are pushing SMB’s to keep the call outs current.
Has anyone else seen this yet…? Tell me what your thoughts are about this new feature in the comment section below. How do you think a small business owner can use this new feature to increase sales & conversions…?
I noticed there was quite a few people who were having trouble understanding how to edit and/or delete their Google Maps Coupons on the G-Maps Forum. It looks like some of merchants where dealing with a bug, but some people just didn’t know how to navigate around on the Local Business Center. This video tutorial is for the ladder. Let me know if it helps…?
To Upload, Or Not To Upload, That Is The Question:
This has become a current question I have had to ask and consider with one of my more recent clients. This client has several hundred locations via a franchise and they want to monitor & optimize their Google Maps listings. The question we had been pondering is… would it better to bulk upload or hand submit each location’s listing…?
My thoughts are, it depends on whether you care to have full control over your Google Maps listing or not. Here is what Google says about bulk uploads:
However, this means that a listing submitted in a bulk uploaded isn’t trusted the same way an individual listing is. The information you submit in a bulk listing may be combined with other, third-party information and the best result displayed. Your listings will therefore look a little different than a single, verified listing on Google Maps, and can still be edited by the community. Bulk listings will take up to 2 weeks to appear in Google Maps. If you want to submit ten or more listings and verify them, you’ll have to submit each one as an individual listing.
A listing added as part of a bulk feed will look much the same as one added individually, with a few key differences: you won’t see the phrase “Provided by the business owner.” Source
With that lack of control it looks like we most likely hand submit for this client, even though it will take forever. I personally like to have our clients be able to control as much of the data possible. I’m a control freak and I think most business owners are too.
I know that Google created a “Whitelist” Google Maps bulk upload, but I have never used it and don’t know anyone who has yet (love to hear from someone, if you have used it). The “Whitelist” form is here, should you need it. What I like to know is if you get “Whitelisted” do gain back full control of your G-Maps listing(s)…? If anyone knows the answer, please let us know below in the comment section or email direct.
At this time, while not having full control over your listing I would opt to hand submit each listing. If Google Maps changes their rules to bulk uploads and gives the Merchants more control then I would of course opt to do bulk upload on an account this large. Maybe someone can shed some light on the “Whitelisting” process and that’ll possibly change my mind.
What would you have done if you had set-up 100’s of Google Maps profiles…? Would you hand submit or do bulk upload…? Let us know in the comment section below.
So we are quickly approaching 2010 and its becoming more apparent what is on Google’s agenda. It looks like they are moving forward to add a couple new elements to Universal Search. It looks like ‘personalize search’ and ‘real time search’ are two major elements of universal search that is not going away.
Real Time Search
These real time search results will draw from Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and numerous other sources. Just another reason to make sure you have your SMB social profiles filled out and create a strategy to be present with these social sites.
The personalized search results will be customized based on 180 days worth of your searching habits.
What do you think of these new blended search elements…? As a user do you like the idea of your search results being personalized? Do you like that you can see the opinions of your peers in the search results pages…?
It looks like there are more shifts taking place in the Local Search with Google.
Today one of my favorite bloggers (Greg Sterling) in the Local Search Industry writes about how Google has sent out physical window decals to these 100,000 businesses for them to display in their windows.
Now what is so cool about these window decals is that consumers will be able to use their social mobile technology to interact with Google’s Place Pages by simple scanning the bar code on the window decal into their smart phones.
They’ll be able to see:
Hours of operation
Cards accepted
Reviews
Brands carried
Menus (if applicable)
User-generated content
Coupons/deals (if they exist)
They’ll also be able to “star” businesses for later recall or write reviews if they’re inclined. I wrote a post (a year ago or more) about the power of these new smartphones and how they will become an integral part of marketing for Small Businesses. We are just looking at the tip of the iceberg of Local Search Marketing here.
Check out the full details on these Place Page’s window decals here.
Google is in beta testing on their Local Listing Ads, the question I have is why do you think its taken them so long to start to monetize these local listings? Do you think there was no need in the past because they didn’t display the 7-Pack in the organic search engine pages.
Now that the Google Maps 7-Pack shows at the top of the SERP’s 95% of the time (as long as their is a local modifier added to the keyword phrase), its become increasing important to make sure your business’s G-Maps Local Listing is optimized and actively managed for top rankings. Do think this is why they have finally chosen to monetize this section of Google? Let me know your theories in the comment section below.
Regardless of their reasoning, its a steal at a flat $45 a month. Any local business owner who doesn’t capitalize on this (in my opinion) is crazy. Now with Local Listing Ads you can now possible get a double listing above the fold. One listing for your business in the 7-Pack and one listing in their new local advertising slot. Like the way SOS Rooter has done shown below.
Who wouldn’t want a double listing like that for their local business on Google. These Local Listing Ads seem like a great deal for Small Businesses. Completely affordable and turn-key. The merchant doesn’t really have to anything except fill out their listing and press go. Here are some of the highlights:
Drive more sales. Over 80% of people look to Google for local information. Make sure your listing stands out.
See – and hear – the results. You’ll hear “this call brought to you by Google” with every call from your ad.
Free for 30 days. Try it out, risk free. You can cancel anytime.
Local targeting. We’ll make sure your ad only shows to people near your business, with no work for you.
In my opinion this is a winner and is a no brainer for most small businesses.
Maybe now that Google is starting to monetize their Google Business Listings, they will start to clean them up from all the spam. I always figured the reason why support and spam clean-up on the Google Maps was poor is because they make no $$, but now that they are looking to monetize it, I think maybe they’ll put together a team to clean it up a little. What are your thoughts on this…?
Too bad these services are only currently available in San Francisco and San Diego, CA. Even worse for us Canadians because once its released to the entire States, it’ll take another 6 months or more before we see. We just received access to the new Google LBC analytics dashboard a month ago, even though our Southern neighbors received access to it in June of this year.
What are your thoughts on Google’s new Local Listing Ads…? If anyone is currently using it in those cities I’d love to hear your experience thus far below in the comment section.
Claiming and filling out your Google Maps Listing is the easy part, but it’s usually not enough when trying to rank within the ultra competitive Google Maps 7-Box. The last place you want your local business to be listed in is in the “More results near…such, such city” which might as well say “More results near invisible city”.
Even if you do manage to get a decent ranking within the 7-Box by only claiming and filling out your listing, don’t hold your breath because soon your local competitors are going to realize that is a prized position to have and will compete aggressively for that slot. They may even hire a local search marketing company like ours to do it for them – then you’d better watch out!
You have to understand what Google does here is very smart. Similar idea to link building, everything Google does is kinda like a big social popularity contest. Google is always responsible to their users and so they want to serve up the most relevant results to them. As long as Google does a good job at serving up relevant results to user they’ll continue to dominate the search marketplace. So the way Google chooses which G-Map Listings are the most relevant is by which listings have the most activity associated with them via citations, reviews & user content.
Let’s look at why citations, reviews, and user content is the glue that makes your Google Listings stickier.
Citations
A citation is where your business name and address is mentioned (or cited) on another website. Citations don’t necessarily have links leading back to a websites since many business owners don’t have websites. Google crawls content across the web anywhere they find a citation on your business they give you a point. A citation is a mention of your business name, address, & phone number.
I am not positive if some sites citations carry more weight than others, but my guess is yes. I personally believe that traditional SEO not all inbound links are created equal. When it comes to citations the same rules applies. I believe some citations have more weight, that is most likely based on some Google Local algorithm similar to what is called Trust Rank.
Trust rank simply means some sites carry more authority and trust then others and if you have links or citations coming from these sites then you are given bonus points which ultimately increases your rankings. So sites like the BBB.org or Wikipedia or Yahoo Directory may have more authority and so Google may give you 2 or 3 points for that. Again the theme isn’t always about quantity, its also about quality.
There are tons of ways to get citations, from using directories to blogging, from having your business listed on your Local Business Association Website or mentioning your business on your local newspapers website. One great way is to look at your competitions citations (Google currently is listing them all) and see if you can’t get a citation from the same source. If your competition has a citation then you will most likely be able to gain one from the same source. Use the obvious.
One of the best places to get a good head start on citations is to submit your business details through Universal Business Listings, for $30 a dollars a year it’ll hit the top 30 authority directories & data providers like: Yellowpages.com, Superpages.com, infouSA.com, Acxiom and so on. BTW, this service is really only good for USA businesses, if you are in Canada like most of our clients then its not that great of service. I’ll be sure to put some great citations spots below for Canadians too.
If you can get your business information into these major databases (like Acxiom, Localeze, & infoUSA) which form the foundation of the search engines’ Local indexes and of a variety of second-tier portals as well, you’ll notice decent amount of citations point back to your G-Maps listing. This can take 2-3 months before your info populates into these verticals so be patient.
The goal with citations is to obviously to have more than your competition, but much like linking building you want to be consistently dripping in new citations week after week. Build slowly and consistently. Play for the long haul.
For our clients we have a long list of places we can add citations (all discovered from what Google already indexes as a citation) and we have been collecting this list for quite some time and have 100’s of easily accessible places to acquire citations from. You want to develop your own swipe list of great citation spots. I will post a 100 or so common citations at the end of this post where any business should be able to get a citation from. I”ll do this because I’m such a good guy. If you know of more great citation spots, why not add them to the comment section below and help the community.
We then drip in these citations consistently over time for our clients often winning them the number 1 spot within the 7-Box. Don’t go slamming citations, just like you wouldn’t hammer a 1000 links at a site over night, similar rules apply apply to getting citations. Think Drip, Drip, Drip.
When working with citations one of the most important elements is consistency. Your DBA name, address, and/or phone number should never change. If you have different information it can have the opposite effect you desire with your G-Map Listing. Even if you are thinking of using tracking phone numbers to monitor advertising/marketing efforts, I would highly recommend in this arena you find another way to measure data if possible. There is an interesting post here about using Tracking Phone Numbers in your Local Search Marketing that would be worth while reading. I am a metrics fanatic too, but by not having the same information about your business name, address and contact number builds dis-trust with Google (It would with humans too). Consistency is KEY from your citations.
Reviews
The Google Maps Listings allows the public to add reviews to your listing. Right now I don’t think Google is looking at the quality of reviews, but they look at the quantity of reviews, so even receiving lots of poor reviews will improve your rankings within the 7-Box (not the obvious goal, but interesting to note).
There has been some recent speculations that Google may put more weight on Power Reviewers or sometimes known as Maven Reviewers. These are individuals who have full fledge profiles and leave lots of reviews across multiple categories of business. You know how there are power bloggers, well there are power reviewers and getting a review from a power reviewer may just carry more weight. When dealing with power bloggers & reviewers approach them the same way you’d approach Oprah. Send them a free sample and press release to entice them to leave you a review.
From my testing, loads of reviews can out rank a competitor with lots of citations. Therefore, I say that reviews hold some serious weight to your G-Maps rankings. The Google Maps even will snag reviews from other authority sites and populate them into the G-Map listings.
Some common authority reviews sites you may want to focus on getting reviews from besides Google Maps are: Yelp, JudyBook, Yellowbot, Cityvoter, Citysearch, Yellowpages, Kudzu, etc. You may also want to look at finding authority review sites that are related to your category of business like Rate MDs for Doctors and Homestars for the Home Improvement Contractors.
Review management (also known as Brand Management) is a very real challenge for all businesses in today’s marketplace. Users can easily jump online and add their opinions (good or bad) to tons and tons of reviews sites about your business. What we recommend is that you find creative incentives to barter for reviews from your clients. On almost all our clients regional sites we trade discounts/coupons for reviews in Google Maps. We created a video showing people how easy it is to post a review and if they do we offer BIG discount or coupon that will be mailed to them or emailed them privately after the review is verified. The strategy works great!
I’ve seen some companies who have gone as far as to hire employees with laptop computers and their sole job is to ask customers before leaving if they wouldn’t mind leaving a review on such and such a site and by doing so they receive a such and such gift (usually a gift card or coupon redeemable on their next visit – you want them to have an additional reason to return, don’t you…?) The point being is you need to have a active and creative way to actively manage online reviews for you company.
Our company offers another review management solution (besides the online incentives) to our customers. We use a offline to online approach to helping our clients get loads of reviews for their businesses.
What we do is supply our clients with a 4 X 6 post card that asks people to write a review about the business they just received products and/or services from. Our clients make sure they put a pre-paid postage stamp on the postcard and ask the customer for a review after services have been rendered. They let the customer know they use a third party service to learn how they can improve their services and it would be really helpful if they could take 60 seconds to leave a anonymous review on the post card and stick it in the mail box.
Well, the post card comes to our P.O. Box and we have our team post that review online with one of our many maven reviewer profiles for that anonymous reviewer. We add the review to Google Maps or to some of the the other major authority sites that Google tends to pull data from.
We allow for each our clients to get up to 5-12 reviews a month (depending on their service package), any more (in our opinion) would be unnatural. If our clients use this to it’s maximum benefit that is 60-144 reviews every year. Now that is what you call actively managing your brand and online reviews. It’s one of the best ways to drive traffic and help convert online searchers into offline buyers.
You see we know understand that it’s very difficult to get people to review your business online because of the multiple steps involved to get a review. We recommend you come up with some sort offline to online review management strategy like ours for your business. We do want to warn you though of the potential risks involved with this strategy.
First off, don’t add fake reviews!
Some people ask if we edit the reviews. The answer is… we DO NOT alter the reviews from the postcards. We believe having some bad reviews is natural and it wouldn’t appear normal to only have 5 out 5 stars all the time. If fact, Matt McGee even thinks Negative Reviews are good for business and we agree with him. Because we only accept a maximum of 12 reviews per client per month we tell the Merchants it’s their job to make sure they hand out the review post cards to customers they know they have done a pretty good job at servicing, to increase their chances at getting a good review.
What you want to do, create a strategy that makes it easy for your customers to review online. Don’t spam and keep it real. People can always tell when someone is creating unnatural reviews. The reason our system works is because they are REAL reviews, we just facilitate them getting online.
Writing made up reviews about your business will not help you, be very very careful with this strategy and do not get spammy. You can always tell when they are made up and eventually someone will catch you and call you on it. It could even cost loads of cash. If you need to resort to fake reviews, then you should rethink why you are in business. If your business provides real value and you take an active roll in asking for reviews, you can easily get them.
If you are going to write a fake review (and lets face it some of you are) at least do it well. AND NOTE I DO NOT ADVOCATE THIS, but if you are going write fake reviews then you may want to read this post by Tropical SEO’s advice on How to Write Fake Reviews. If you do employ an offline strategy like our, don’t do stupid things like posting reviews under your business profile & posting multiple reviews in the same day. Remember even though you are facilitating your customers reviews to getting online it still has to appear natural otherwise this strategy can back fire in your face.
User Content
User content is when people create their own Google “My Maps” where they create unique (sometimes personalized) list on Google Maps. Anyone can tag a place or location on Google Maps. The more people the that tag your business on G-Maps the more activity you have about your business and again the more popular your business must be (or this is at least how Google thinks).
Therefore by having more references in people’s “My Maps” will give your listing a boost in rankings in the 7-Box. I have written a post in the past on how to use Google’s “My Maps” to marketing your business. Creating some user content on G-Maps is easy and quick. Create some useful content driven “My Maps” about your city and remember to find a creative ways to tag your company. Or run a local contest that involves “My Maps” and get a dozens of people adding your business to their own personal G-Maps. The ways to accomplish this are endless if you are a little creative and think about how you can add value.
Well, that pretty much wraps up how to improve your rankings within the Google Maps Listings. Most of this is obvious if you study the G-Maps a little closer and read between the lines. If you follow the advice listed above and actively manage your Google Maps Listing you can easily achieve those preferred rankings for your local business in the 7-Box.
If you like what you have learned here, but know you are the type of business owner who would prefer if the PROS managed your listings then please visit our Local Search Engine Marketing Services page. NOTE: We only take on 1 client per business category per city, so if you are considering using us please take action sooner than later, we’d hate to tell you we can’t help you due us helping your competition already. The early bird gets the worm!
BTW, let us know your thoughts and let us know if you have any questions in the comment section below.
Citation List
This list is in particular order. Any business should be able to get a citation from these spots. Most are 100% free.
It’s amazing how many things you can do wrong with these free listings. Just following our advice to filling out your Google Maps Listing within the Google’s Local Business Center (LBC) can be the difference of your business out ranking your competition in the 7-Box.
Before we get into the nitty-gritty of how to set-up your listing, you may just want to quickly read the Business Listings Quality Guidelines, so you fully aware of their terms when you are setting up your listing. I have seen example after example, of merchants who knowingly or through ignorance break these simple guidelines and end up being flagged and then banned from G Maps. Don’t end up like the many panicked merchants in the forums struggling to get help with their banned listing.
Before you post your listing you may want to go to GetListed.org and check to see if you have a listing already. If you do, claim it. If you don’t have a listing then sign-up for your Google Maps Listing at the LBC.
Here are the 7 Elements You Must Have in Your Google Maps Listing To Have a Optimized Listing.
Just filling out your local listing blinding with out any thought is a HUGE mistake. Treat this listing with the same respect you would for you on-page SEO for your website.
Here are the seven elements that you will want to put some thought into before submitting your listing. If you have already submitted a listing don’t worry all listings are easily editable.
Address: Make sure your address listed is closest to the core of the city you want your listing to show. If you are a contractor or work out of your home and your home address is not in that city then you may want to get a P.O. Box that has address and ZIP/Postal Code that correlates to the city core, otherwise you may find your listing not ranking as well as you’d like. NOTE: Make sure your contact address is consistent across all the web. Don’t have different sources showing different address for your business. Consistency is KEY when it comes to citations in G-Maps.
Category: There is a ton of chatter about how to optimize “Categories” in Google Maps, but I suggest you make sure you choose the most relevant category for you business in the ‘choose category’ section. Getting this wrong can cause your local listing not show for the GEO keyword terms you would like. My advice is don’t add local modifiers to your category keyword terms. My suggestion is to do some searching with category keywords in Google and note which keyword categories trigger a 7-Pack, if its pulling in the 7-Pack then you may want to consider using that category term. Make sure there is some search volume for the term too – do some good old keyword research. The one thing you want to make sure you do is to use ALL five category spots. David Mihm offers a good article on Google Maps Categories here.
Title/Business Name: Make sure you ONLY use your (DBA) Doing Business As Name when creating your Organization name. Don’t listen to others that tell you to keyword load your Business Name to try to get better rankings. That is against Google Map’s Terms of Use. You can still get great rankings being white hat.
Business Description: Make sure you have your product and/or service keywords listed in your business description. Now this is not as important as the Title, but it too is important. It is the equivalent of a website’s “meta description” for SEO.
Content/Media: Add rich media to your local listings. Add photos & video, etc. I not sure if it improves rankings in the local listings, but it can only help turn online browsers to offline buyers. Add before and after photos. Add video that demos your product or services (like ‘will it blend’ videos), add a video screen capture tutorial that offers value. It has been proven that video helps convert more click throus ten any other medium. Why not use this free gift give to you. NOTE: If you don’t add your own rich media then Google may pull that data on your business themselves from places like Flickr, Panoramio, YouTube, etc. and you may not like the media they pull. Therefore, it would be a good idea to go in and fill this section out to the fullest ability which is currently 10 photos & 5 videos. Also, remember to watermark all your images & videos before uploading them.
Coupons: Use them. This can be what differentiates your business from other competition found in the local listings. Not offering a Google coupon is risking losing business to those businesses that are. It also gives you a great way to track your sales generated from your local listing on Google. You can even create a XML Feed for your Google Maps Coupons and have them upload to be different every day, week, or season. Great way to have fun with timely promotions. NOTE: If you have coupons listed on other local listings make sure you make them different so you can track them all properly. This feature will become even more useful if Google starts releasing their Coupon Search feature again.
Double Listings:Don’t do it. Make sure you only have one G-Maps listing. You don’t want to lose your listing over something so ridiculous. People can easily report and flag your listing, I know I would if you were my competition and I saw you putting up Google Maps SPAM.
Now you may also want to track your your Google Maps listing using your free Google Analytics Account, I found this amazing how-to Guide: Google Analytics (GA) for the Google Maps 7-Pack. I highly recommend you go through the 7 tutorials on how to use GA to track your local search marketing campaigns.
That covers all the main points when setting up your Google Maps Listing in Google’s LBC. If you have any questions be sure to ask us in the comment section below.
Now on to (Lesson 3 within the Google Local Listing Course) the most important elements of ranking well within the 7-Box of Google Maps Listings: Citations, Reviews & User Content
Again, if you are a local small business owner and you rather let the PROS handle this for you, then please see our Local Search Marketing Services page.
Below is another example of how to verify your Google LBC Listing:
I may have rambled a little long in the video above , but the point I was trying to make is that a very large percentage of all searches have a local intent, so much so, Google is displaying a (7-Box) Google Maps listing in the organic SERP’s (search engine results pages) on many searched broad keyword terms.
When people are searching and add a local modifier to the searched term (like a city or postal/zip code), then the searcher has 100% local intent. Google knows this and then serves up the 7-Box Google Maps listing at the top of the organic search results page (above the traditional 10 website listings).
If you have a local business this is really important to know. If there hundreds and often thousands of searches every month for your businesses services where people also add in the local modifier to their searched term then you want to make sure you are actively participating in your Google Maps listing.
Look at some these other important stats/facts:
66% of North Americans use online search to locate local businesses
82% of local searchers follow up via a in-store visit, phone call, or purchase
80% of all retail transactions happen within a 15 miles of people’s homes
32% of people with smart phones conducted a local search
These are people who are looking for EXACTLY what it is you do and Google Maps is the first thing they see in a organic search engine results page. All you need to do is get your business information in front of this traffic and you will have a steady stream of new clients and customers.
Not actively managing your Google Maps listing is like flushing money down the drain. The Google Maps listings are totally free and you do not require a website to be listed. Getting a listing is free and easy, but it does not guarantee that your business will show up in the 7-Box Google Listing displaying in the organic SERP’s. Even though claiming your listing is a good start, its not enough in today’s market place to really secure a position within the 7-Box which receives the majority of the traffic for local searches. We will get into later on in this Google Maps Course how to increase your chances at securing that preferred rankings within the so desired 7-Box.
First things first, if you have not claimed your listing then you do so. Your chances of ranking well with the 7-Box are virtually none existent if you don’t claim your listing. If there is no listing of your business yet then simply create one.
BTW, let us know if you have any questions so far in the comment section below. If you add your question we will answer it.
NOTE: If you are like most small business owners, you may want to leave this type of stuff to the pros and we would be more than happy to manage your Google Maps Listing, please visit our local search marketing services page for more details.
I personally like to have our clients be able to control as much of the data possible. I’m a control freak and I think most business owners are too.
