TVS Internet Marketing, LLC.

Websites, SEO, and PPC for Small Business Websites

Travis Van Slooten

Add Your Business to Google Places and Google Maps in 9 Easy Steps

by

add-business-to-google-maps-google-placesMany business owners want to know how to add business to Google Places and Google Maps. They understand the importance of creating a search engine optimized business listing that gets their business ranked on the first search result page.

However, these business owners do not know where to start when it comes to adding their business to the most popular local search engine.

Google has made adding businesses to Google a simple 9-step process. The search engine giant summarizes the process by stressing three important points.

First, you must submit all of your business information, including accurate contact information, videos, and photographs.

Second, you verify that all of the information to appear in your Google Places business listing is accurate.

Finally, and here is the tough part, you may have to wait up to two weeks before your business listing appears in Google Places and on the Google Maps.

Follow the 9-step process to add business to Google and you will be on your way to establishing a strong Internet presence for your business.

Research Google Places

As our grade school teachers used to remind us, “Read the directions before you start.” The same principle applies to Google Places.

You cannot add your business listing to Google Places until you read Google Places quality guidelines and the local listings content policy.

Google Account

Sign up for a Google Places account before signing up for a Google Places account. You allow access to other users to your Google Places listing only by sharing your Google account information. Google Places accounts do not transfer to other users.

Review Google Places Home Page

Take a few minutes to review the options on the Google Places home page. After the quick review, click “Add New Business” to add business to Google.

Does Google Have Information about Your Business?

Select the country where your business is located. Enter the primary phone number of your business, and then click “Find business Information.”

Review Search Results

If you do not find any information, now is the time to add all of the relevant content that best describes your business. Click “Add a New Listing,” which will take you to the next page.

Input Basic Business Information

One of the biggest mistakes business owners make when they add business to Google is submitting inaccurate information on the basic information page. Make sure you submit the officially registered name of your business, the standard mailing address, primary phone number, and the URL of your business’ organic website

The more, the Better

In order to maximize your business listing’s search engine optimization, you must complete every field that Google Places presents in its database. You can enter up to 5 categories that describe your business. Complete the hours of operation and payment options fields. You can add up to 10 photographs and 5 YouTube videos, which enhance your Google Places SEO. Finally, add as much information as you can in the “Additional Details” field.

Review Listing

Take your time to ensure that you have inputted accurate information about your business. Preview the information on the right side of your screen. Click the “Submit” button” after reviewing your business listing information.

Verification

Google Places will prompt you to choose how you want to verify your information. After you inform Google how you want to verify your business listing, the last step in the process is to click “Finish.”

You will receive a PIN, otherwise known as a verification code, to either your business address or phone number. Once you receive your PIN, you can then enter it into your Google Places account and verify your business listing. Remember that the key to optimizing your Google Places listing is submitting accurate information, and lots of it, when you add business to Google.

10 Ways on How to Improve Google Places Ranking

by

google-places-rankingA high Google Places ranking should be your small business’ first priority when it comes to maximizing the power of your local search engine strategy. The expansion of local listings across such platforms as Google Places, Bing, Yahoo!, and social media websites has made it imperative that your business establish a high ranking in local searches.

However, Google Places dominates local searches, sometimes reaching a 65% share of local search results.

Late in 2011, Google took the unprecedented step of listing local searches alongside organic search results. This means your business must completely optimize its local listing in Google Places.

If your business does not rank in the top 7 of search results, you need to revamp the way you present your business on Google Places.

Here are 10 ways on How to Improve Your Google Places Ranking:

Claim and Verify

You will only optimize your business listing once you claim it on Google Places. After making the claim, verify all of the information is correct before you establish a business listing on Google Places.

Optimize

Optimizing means more than strategically sprinkling a few keywords throughout your listing’s content. It means correctly filling in fields and providing detailed information in every field.

The phone number listed should be your main business phone number. Your business website URL must match the URL you input for your business listing.

Do not forget to input the correct hours of operation, your business address, and the category that your business operates. Upload every photo and video that a ranking in Google Places allows.

Geographic Optimization

One mistake some business owners make is incorrectly inputting the geographic location of their business. If you operate a restaurant in Oak Park, do not use the geo-location of “Chicago Restaurant” Local searches mean exactly that: people search for businesses located in the town or city in which they live.

Local Submissions

Focus on the two primary main local submission portals that provide information to rankings in Google Places. If you have incorrect information in the Localeze and InfoUSA databases, you will find the same incorrect information funneling into your Google Places listing.

These data providers help your business build credibility across the web. Maximize the information you present by getting into as many local submission databases as possible.

Online Reviews

In the ever-changing world of Google Places, online reviews have become an important factor that determines your Google Places ranking. Identify the third part review websites that are pertinent to your business.

Then, encourage your organic website visitors to post reviews. Google indexes all of your online reviews and collects them for your Google Places listing.  This is important because it boosts your Google Places ranking.

The Key to Customer Service

How many of us have expressed disappointment with a product or service and received absolutely no response from the business? You enhance your business’s reputation, and thus its Google Places ranking, by responding to customer reviews of your business on third party websites.

Build Credibility

Your Google Places ranking benefits from credible online citation sources. Citations are comparable to word of mouth referrals. The more quality referrals you receive for your website, the better chance you will see a boost in the ranking of your business on Google Places.

The Social Media Connection

Claim your Facebook, Twitter, And Foursquare listings. More important, use your Facebook listing as a second business website, one where people go to learn about promotions, new products, and discounted services. Google factors in Hyperlocal listings when calculating local search rankings.

Cross-optimization

No, this is not some bio-engineering term. Cross optimization simply means take the promotions that work on your organic website and apply them to your Google Places listing. Promote special events, popular pages, and your Facebook page.

Keyword Match Types When Doing Keyword Research for SEO

by

Keyword research is the first and most critical step in the entire SEO process. One tool that we use when working with clients to determine which keywords to rank their web pages for is the Google Keyword Tool. This is a SEO industry-standard tool and the best part is, it’s free for anyone to use!

By default, the Google Keyword Tool returns data for the broad match but it can return three different keyword match types when doing your keyword research. The three types are:

  1. Broad
  2. Exact
  3. Phrase

Broad Match

Let’s assume the keyword you want to target and rank for is “dentist minneapolis.” If you go to the Google Keyword Tool and type in that phrase, you’ll get this result:

keyword-match-type-image

The first thing you’ll notice is that the keyword doesn’t have any quotation marks around it or brackets. When you are looking at broad match data, which is what the Google Keyword tool returns by default, you’ll just see the keywords listed without any quotation or brackets around them.

The next thing you’ll see is the competition indicated by low, medium, or high. This is the pay-per-click (PPC) competition – as in how many people are paying for traffic for that keyword.

The next columns are Global Monthly Searches and Local Monthly Searches. You want to concentrate on the local monthly searches as that is the number of searches done in the country location you have set in the keyword tool – which by default is the U.S.

For our example, you see 9,900 local monthly searches. This is the number of monthly searches for keyword terms that contain the words in your targeted keyword phrase but in any order.

Let me give you some examples to make this easier to follow. If your targeted keyword is “dentist minneapolis,” then the broad match data you see takes into account the number of searches for keywords like:

best dentist in minneapolis
childrens dentist in minneapolis
affordable minneapolis dentist

Those keywords have the words, “dentist” and “minneapolis” in them, but not in any specific order. They “broadly” match your targeted keyword. What this means is, there are 9,900 searches done every month (on average) for keywords that have the words “dentist” and “minneapolis” in them.

Exact Match

The data shown for exact match type is the number of monthly searches that are conducted for the exact keyword you are targeting. Here is what we see for exact match data for “dentist minneapolis”:

dentist-minneapolis-exact-match-image

Notice the [brackets] around the keyword phrase? Brackets around a keyword phrase indicates it’s an exact match. There are 390 monthly searches conducted for the exact term: dentist minneapolis. This means people are literally typing in “dentist minneapolis” (and nothing else) when they do a search on Google.

Phrase Match

This data reflects the number of monthly searches conducted for keywords that contain your target keyword phrase in the same order as your targeted keyword phrase. For a phrase match search for “dentist minneapolis,” we see this result:

dentist-minneapolis-phrase-match-type

This time the keyword phrase has “quotation marks” around it to indicate it is a phrase match. There are 1,300 local monthly phrase match searches conducted. For the phrase match search data, it would include the monthly searches for keywords like:

top dentist minneapolis
affordable dentist minneapolis
dentist minneapolis mn

Notice how our target keyword phrase, “dentist minneapolis,” is included in each keyword term and the order stays the same. The searches for the keyword, “minneapolis mn dentist,” would not be included in the phrase match data because while it contains the words, “dentist” and “minneapolis”, they are not in the same order as our target keyword phrase: dentist minneapolis.

What Keyword Match Type Should You Use for Keyword Research?

We use broad match data only to generate keyword ideas and to determine the relative popularity of keywords. For example, if we’re working with a Minneapolis dentist, we might want to know if more people search for dentist (singular) or dentists (plural) so we’ll look at the broad match data for “minneapolis dentist” and “minneapolis dentists” and here’s what we’ll see:

keyword-research-image

Looking at the broad match data, we see that more people search for the singular version (9,900 searches) than the plural version (4,400 searches).

The next step we’ll do is look at the exact match data for keywords we uncovered during our keyword research using the broad match data. Since we discovered the singular version is more popular than the plural version, we’ll look at the exact match data for “minneapolis dentist” and we’ll see there are 170 monthly searches:

minneapolis-dentist-exact-match-image

That’s actually a decent number of searches so we’d likely stop there and put that on our list of keywords to consider targeting. We’ll look at the competition next before we ultimately decide to target that keyword but during this phase of the keyword research, it will be on the top of our list.

If the exact match data didn’t look too promising, then we’d look at the phrase match data. Take the keyword, “minneapolis dentistry,” for example. Here is what the exact match data looks like:

minneapolis-dentistry-exact-match-image

There are less than 10 exact match searches. That isn’t good because the number is too low. We like to see at least 25 exact match searches. We’ll then look at the phrase match data:

minneapolis-dentistry-phrase-match-image

It’s still showing less than 10 searches. While we might not totally eliminate this keyword from our list at this point, it will definitely go towards the bottom of the list. In many cases, you’ll find that while the exact match search isn’t high, the phrase match is decent – at least 100 or more searches. If the phrase match data looks o.k., then we’ll consider targeting the keyword.

The Bottom Line of Keyword Match Types When Doing Keyword Research

The main things to remember are that by default, the Google keyword tool returns broad match data, which isn’t too useful to determine which keywords to target. Broad match data is only useful to give you keyword ideas. To determine what keywords to target, you need to look at the exact and phrase match data – and in that order. Once you’ve identified keywords that have decent exact and phrase match searches, you can start looking at the competition and then decide if the keywords are worth targeting!

The 5 Basics to Boosting Your Google Places Page in the Rankings

by

Do you see that dusty collection of phone books in the corner of your basement? That has become the fate of the Yellow Pages. We no longer refer to the Yellow Pages for local businesses searches. Instead, we use our mobile phones to search for local businesses that deliver pizza, provide emergency roadside services, and repair heating systems. ComScore recently released a study that there are over 3 billion local business searches conducted each month, most of which occurred on mobile communication devices. As a business owner, you need to tap into this growing lucrative market.

Large, colorful Yellow Pages ads attracted more customers than the basic small print ads. You need to create a Google Places page that attracts both search engines and potential customers. As a small business owner looking to increase revenue and retain loyal customers, you need to know the 5 basics to boosting your Google Places page in the rankings.

Use Popular Keywords

As with organic websites, the primary objective of creating a Google Place page is strategically using the right keywords to enhance your search engine ranking. Integrate relevant keywords in your Google Places listing to increase search engine optimization. Google Analytics, another free service from Google, provides you with the keywords that search engines rank high in local business searches. Remember that Google penalizes businesses that overuse keywords in their Google Places listing.

Consistency

One glaring mistake that some businesses make is presenting different content across online business directories. For instance, a business may present their physical address on Yelp, but provide a Post Office box number in their Google Places listing. Conflicting business information hurts your Google Place ranking. You achieve consistency by linking your online business profiles. Use the same images on each of your online profiles to ensure you present a consistent brand image. Consistency also means updating your Google Places listing to reflect management or ownership changes.

Fill out Every Field

Google Places provides numerous fields for you to complete before claiming your business listing. Most business owners only complete the fields that are most relevant to their businesses. You will achieve a high Google Place ranking if you complete each field, even the optional fields that most businesses skip. Optimize your business listing to include photos and images that customers connect you your brand.

Feedback

Why should you do all of the optimization work, when your customers can do some of the optimization work for you? Customer generated content in the form of reviews is a powerful optimization tool. Encourage reviews that reinforce what you claim on your organic website and local business listing. Uploaded video testimonials and photographs will improve your Google Place ranking. Make sure you respond to reviews and moderate comments on your website and social media pages.

Promote Your Strengths

Highlight your business strengths, while using the popular keywords that describe those strengths. Describe current promotions and service discounts. Potential customers want assurance that your business will solve their problem. You provide assurance with clear and concise content that entices customers to contact you.

As with general Google searches, you want your business to rank high for your Google Places strategy to attract new customers. In fact, your business must rank in the top 7 of local search lists. Start attracting new customers today by optimizing your Google Place page!

4 Easy to Follow Google Places SEO Tips

by

google-places-seo-tipsGoogle Places SEO is an ever-changing marketing strategy that will attract new customers to your business.

At first, a small business simply claimed and verified a listing on Google Places. In less than two years since the inception of Google Places, the primary goal of a business listing has changed to ranking high in the local search results. The change in philosophy stems from the fact that 97% of consumers use the Internet to find local products and services.

Moreover, businesses must rank in the top 7 of Google Places business listings. Any rank outside of the “Magnificent 7” is a waste of your time and marketing resources.

What is Google Places?

Google continually fine-tunes a unique database that collects detailed information about a business. Your business submits information such as: business name, phone number, mailing address, email address, and website URL.

Google uploads all of the information about your business and establishes a “Places” page for that business. You rank high in search engine results by creating popular Google Places for SEO keywords.

The Importance of Local SEO

ComScore released a search engine report in 2011 that stated more that 11.6 billion searches went through Google in just one month. Local searches comprised nearly 2.3 billion of the 11.6 billion searches.

In late 2010, Google increased the importance of local SEO, by allowing local search results to dominate their search engine results. Most small businesses have not yet taken advantage of Google’s new local search platform. They have not effectively implemented an effective Google Places SEO strategy.

4 Google Places SEO Tips

Google will continue to favor local searches its search engine calculations. Since most businesses have not yet capitalized on this trend, you have an unprecedented opportunity to take advantage of this momentous shift by implementing 4 Google Places SEO tips.

Create External SEO Citations

Create external SEO citations before launching your Google Places SEO campaign. Use a Universal Business Listing (UBL) to establish a presence for your small business online. You enhance local search results by submitting to directories such as Yelp, Merchant Circle, and Yahoo! All of the information that you submit for your business must be accurate and current.

Index Your Citations

Never assume that your citations will be indexed. An effective SEO for Google Places strategy includes developing back links to increase citation search values. Social bookmarking and Web 2.0 articles provide the most popular way to create back links.

Reviews

Google Places SEO has more impact when you collect reviews within your listing. You want to collect 30 reviews over a thirty-day period that consists of 4 or 5 star ratings. The same keywords that help you build effective SEO should appear in the reviews. Moreover, encourage reviews on other search engine portals, such as Bing and Yahoo!

Best Google Places for SEO Practices

As with any SEO strategy, use the right number of keywords in your Google Places content. Google penalizes content that overuses keywords. Make sure you list current information that includes a local phone number and business address.

Toll free numbers and Post Office boxes do not optimize the city where you operate your business. Effective Google Places SEO encompasses discounted products and services that you mention in your listing.

2012 will continue see changes to how Google presents local search results via Google Places. As a small business owner, you cannot afford to fall behind the Internet marketing curve. Stay on top of the rapidly changing Internet marketing landscape by getting your business ranked in the “Magnificent 7.”

What Is Google Places? A Quick Primer for Small Businesses

by

what-is-google-placesAsk ten business owners that question, and you will probably get ten different answers. One business owner may say Google Places is a micro website. Another business owner may call Google Places an electronic version of the Yellow Pages. A third business owner claims that Google Places is a virtual storefront.

All three business owners are correct in their descriptions of what is Google Places. Their varied descriptions of perhaps Google’s greatest innovation provide us with the underlying theme of Google Places. Google Places is what you make of it!

The Origin of Google Places

To acquire an understanding of Google Places, you must understand how the revolutionary business listing service came to be. Google combined Google Maps and organic search results into a separate concept called “local searches.” The search engine leader developed a new search filter unique for finding local businesses.

Google created, and then fine-tuned, a unique database that collects detailed information about a business, such as name, phone number, mailing address, email address, and website URL. Google uploads all of the information about a specific business and establishes a “Places” page for that business. Google has developed a platform that allows businesses to tailor their information for potential customers who visit the Google Places business community.

Getting the Most out of Google Places

The more information your business provides on its Google Places page, the more likely your business will rank high in local searches. You can list hours of operation, forms of payment accepts, and current promotions. A SEO friendly 200 word general description of your business will give you a boost in the local search rankings. You can upload up to ten images and five YouTube videos. Google Places allows you to select a business category and geographic descriptor to reach your target market.

Google recently added a tool that can further strengthen you business listing for local searches. The search engine company gathers online reviews and consolidates the information for potential customers to review before deciding whether to contact your business. Reviews come from online business directories and third party review websites. Yelp and Angie’s List are tow of the more prominent third part sites. Customers can also post reviews directly on your Google Places page. The power of this tool has prompted shrewd business owners to solicit positive reviews from their regular customers.

Savvy business owners grasp the meaning of what is Google Places. They understand that businesses must rank in the top seven of local search results for their listings to have a significant marketing impact. They understand that the greatest benefit of Google Places is that the listing service does not cost them any money. After they claim and verify a business listing on Google Places, savvy business owners know how to use tools that allow them to see how many people have viewed their Google Places page and from where the visitors conducted their local searches. These business owners communicate directly with their customers through their Google Places page.

What the Future Holds For Google Places

What is Google Places has now entered a new phase in its revolution. Having a mobile device friendly Google Places page has become paramount in developing an Internet marketing strategy. Google understands the explosion of mobile device users, and the company has responded with its own apps foe iPhones, Androids, and Blackberrys.

Google established Google Places in April 2010. A surprisingly large percentage of small businesses have not taken advantage of this free service. If you own a small business, you must take advantage of Google Places to market your business to people on local searches. First, you need to learn everything there is to know about what is Google Places.