Marketing Your Business With Google Local

The internet is a different place from ten years ago and internet marketing strategies have had to keep up. When having an internet connection was a status symbol, businesses that were following the latest trends invested in a website to act as an online shop-front. As a bonus, they might have invested in getting their site well placed in the search engines.

Today it is taken for granted that companies must have a website that ranks well in an online search. The holy grail for many website owners is to be the first listing on Google and there are companies out there who promise to deliver top results. Successful Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) services that boost the performance of a business website can attract a premium fee of anywhere between $100 and $1,000 a month or more, depending on the site, the business and the market it is targeting.

SEO companies can either advise changes for a client's webmaster to put into effect or they may be paid to implement those changes using their own in-house developer. The various services they can provide include

• Improving site structure and content for improved performance
• Generating links to the site, or back-linking
• Recommend listings in specific directories, both free and paid
• Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising

Paying an SEO company to improve the performance of a website is a substitute for time and effort requried to develop the knowledge and experience of seasoned marketing campaigners and their established deep links.

Essentially, the top result in organic Google search can be expensive, either in financial terms or in time and effort.

Fortunately, there is a way to get your business ABOVE the top organic result with a Google Local Business listing.

Google has for some time listed search results for local businesses alongside an area map above its search results.

Amazingly many business owners have failed to notice this addition to the page or to add their business details to the directory.

At its simplest, if your website appears once on the results page with a relevant search, by adding a Google Local listing, your website and business will appear twice on the results page.

We've had great success for clients' businesses through Google Local listings, for example one B&B in Hunstanton we have helped boost their search engine visibility and their occupancy levels.

Adding a Google Local listing will potentially DOUBLE your coverage in Google search results.

Even better, a Google Local listing will cost you precisely nothing!

To add a business listing to Google Local you must first have a Google account with a username and password. Once you have an account, follow these steps:

1. Log into Google
2. Go to Google Local Business Center
3. Click on "Add a new listing"
4. Provide all the relevant details for your business
5. Select appropriate classification(s)
   
6. Add photos and other information
7. Verify your listing
8. Sit back and wait

Eventually your listing will go live, but the exact time this takes will vary from a few minutes to a few days.

At present, the statistics available in the dashboard at Google Local Business Center may not correctly reflect the number of impressions. Statistics may even be completely absent. The best way to find out if your business is listed is to search on Google maps.

Once your Google Local listing has gone live, you may find it languishing at the end of the results instead of appearing alongside the map on the first results page.

Improving and optimizing the performance of a Google Local listing requires more time and patience and will be covered in a subsequent article.

SimonSaysMedia provides marketing services to small businesses and can create and optimize a Google Local listing for you.