For businesses that serve their local market, life just got easier. At least that’s the case for those smart enough to take advantage of the huge marketing gift Google has offered them.
What is remarkable is the fact that Google has created pages not only for those companies that already have websites, but also for millions of companies that do not.
However, the trick is to “Claim” them and, once claimed, have them appear in the Google 7 bundle within your local market.
Claiming is easy, but to stay on top of the local market, there are a few extra steps you need to take. First you must fill in your information as completely as possible.
Plus, you’ll need to rack up citations from other sources and get reviews if you want to maintain top billing. In the short term, for most businesses, the initial challenge is getting their forms to meet the 100% complete criteria. Since less than 3% of all Google pages have been claimed so far, you can already get discovered on the first page of Google or, if not, significantly increase your chances simply by claiming the site.
But as more and more companies learn, it seems that those who do the best job of filling out the form will rank higher than those who only do a partial job.
If you just do the basics, business name, address, city, state, and zip code, plus your primary phone, you’ll get credit for 40% of the completion. Adding your website and email address will add another 15%. If you don’t have a website, you can set up a Squidoo page or even a Facebook fan page and use it.
The website’s place is worth 10%, so it’s important to get a web address of some kind. It is estimated that even today, up to 50% of small businesses do not have a website. That will soon change.
Putting any type of description of your business will add 5%. But don’t just put something in to get 5%. Let your prospects know what you can do for them. Remember we are doing this to attract customers.
Next, be sure to add hours of operations. At first I didn’t because I’m kind of a 24/7 operation, working from home like I do. Google allows you to not list any hours, but you will get 5% for completing your hours. And another 5% for switching any of the payment options.
This is all pretty straightforward, but what Google loves to see are images and videos. They have space for 10 images and want you to use all ten spaces for full credit. So get out your digital camera and take pictures of your logo, your front door, yourself, your staff, your product, yourself at work, your cat or dog or whatever. Clearly, the more business and value related these photos are, the better they will sell to your potential customers.
Don’t think these have to be studio portraits done by a professional. But with that being said, the better the image, the better the print. This rule also holds true for the last big hurdle for many businesses, which is video. Right now it seems like you only need to post one video to get full credit. This can be as simple as a quick video with your digital camera or phone to a PowerPoint presentation outlining the key reasons to do business with you.
Finally, there is a place for additional details. Putting a one line statement here will add a final 6% to your completion score.
Your first goal is to claim the site. The second is to fill out the form completely, the third is to go back and improve the quality of the content. Once this is done, you will have a Google Places site that will display your business properly.
Your Google Places listing is the new yellow page, and you want your listing to be accurate and persuasive. In the short term, this may be all you need to benefit from a first page listing in your niche in your community. In the future, you’ll need to do more to stay in that spot, but we’ll talk about that in future posts.
Now, before I go, let me share with you one more benefit that you probably didn’t realize. By setting up a Google Places page, you’ve outperformed many of your other competitors who have web pages but aren’t set up for mobile phones.
Half of Internet traffic is likely to come from mobile devices in 2011, not traditional computers. Your Google Places page is set up to display correctly on people’s cell phones, giving you access to this rapidly growing class of customers. Most of your competitors, even those with big, fancy websites, probably aren’t set up to display correctly on cell phones. That’s a real advantage for those who are smart enough to take quick action and be seen.
