Ranking and reviews can make or break your business. According to Google, 97% of consumers search for products and services online. So why not take advantage of this potential traffic?
Google wants to help you with Google Places so that your business gets more visitors. So what is Google Places all about?
Google Places
Google Places is a free listing on Google tied to Google Maps. The listing storess information such as contact details, maps, hours, coupons, videos, photos, reviews and more. The service also offers real-time updates about special offers and displays them across the search result pages.
Consumers nowadays use Google to search for products and services and local businesses with their tablets, laptops and Smartphones. With Google Places, all relevant business information can be offered to them. In addition, it also helps Google present an accurate search result to consumers who are looking for specific categories of products and their location.
You can set up Google Places in minutes. Three simple steps will make your job much easier:
1) Login to Google Places
With your existing Google account, login to Google Places. Make sure that you use the Google account that you want to associate with your business.
If you are using the service for the first time, you will be directed to look up your business through phone number or you should see a page with a business associated with your account.
2) Add Your Business
Click the “add new business” link. The link will open the phone number lookup page. Enter your business phone number and country and Google will start searching for information about your business.
If Google does not find any information about your business, you will get an option to “add new listing.” Now you can enter all the basic information about your business such as the location and how to find it online.
3) Verify Your Listing
Google Places will verify whether you are an authorized person to add or update business information. You will receive a verification code via a text message or automated phone call or in the form of a postcard sent to the business address.
Once verified, your account is now ready.
Optimizing Your Google Places Listing
Follow Google Places Guidelines
You can find business guidelines in the help section of Google Places.
Ensure That the Listing has a 100 Percent Score
There are a maximum of 20 fields to be filled out before you submit the form. If you successfully fill in all the fields, your business will occupy a top slot in the listing.
Choose Business Categories Correctly
Google Places listings are categorized to help visitors sort the type of business they are looking for. Usually Google will show your business’s first three categories to help you decide which listings to examine. Then it will display the local search results.
As there are strong indications that Google uses the category information you provide, make sure that the business categories you select accurately describe your business.
Write Expressive Descriptions and Include Keywords
When users see your business description, you definitely want the description to be persuasive and drive clicks. So start thinking about that and convey your core value proposition.
Also keyword descriptions should include your product, nearby suburbs and locality to target your market. Research indicates that approximately 73% of consumer search on Google is for local content. Therefore, you are actually increasing your chances of prospective clients in your local area.
Encourage Customers to Write Reviews and Feedback
Motivate your customers to provide business feedback. In addition, you can include a link to your Google Places listing on your website and ask people to leave reviews on your site and in your newsletters.
Integrate with Google+
Google is encouraging business with a Google Places listing to assimilate with Google + for the following advantages:
- Respond to reviews
- Set a cover photo
- Share a post
Have you found Google Places to be good for inbound traffic?
Image: Google
Aira Bongco
Google Places is a good website to promote your local business. And it is not only because they give you a page where you can promote your business with a map. It is also because this allows your business to appear on Google Maps as well as slightly higher on the search engines.
Hello Aira , you are absolutely correct. The usage of google place is many as you have rightly pointed out
Personally, I think its a great tool for generating local interest in your business. People can give feedback on your services and it goes a long way in understanding what your target audience wants from you.
Aira Bongco
Yes. It really is a great tool for not only showcasing what your business can do and what it is all about. You can also use it to eventually win new customers.
Hello Kelsey .Thanks a lot for your reply. The review option is indeed a great use to the business houses. It helps the business to focus on the requirement of the customers.
Belen @ online businesses
Hello William I am totally agree with you and this is the best way to promote business through online in this days and Google always consider of those sites which have listing in Google place in ranking purpose. But I don’t know about their listing verification process because I heard they stooped phone verification, is it true ?
Hello Belen for the verification process , Google either opts for phone verification or mail verification.As of the ranking is considered indeed listing in Google helps a lot
William,
Thanks for a nice guide to Google Places. I do need some advice. Is there a solution for an online business to get listed on Google Place?
Hi Ivan,
Thanks for reply. For guide to listing your business on Google place you can check the below mentioned URl
https://support.google.com/places/answer/142906?hl=en
It seem like Google places listings are now also being shown as Google+ type sites. Not sure if this is just a new way of displaying them or if it is an attempt to boost the take up or integration of Google+.
Has anyone else noticed this with any of their sites? It has happened with 2 of mine.
Jane
William,
Thanks so much for your share.
I will try,,,,,, Google Places
Hi Jane
Thanks a lot for your reply. Yes give a try with Google places
Thanks for the tips. Keeping up with the never ending array of similar sounding Google products and overlapping business tools, is a full time job. I would love to see someone together a comprehensive list of Google properties for small business and how we can maximise our exposure through each one of them.
Hi Elaine
Thanks for your reply and sharing your requirement… Will keep those in mind and will definitely try to help you out..:)
Elaine
My e-commerce website is very new and in fact I’m a very new online business website owner. Though I need to learn lot but whatever I learned through this blog post regarding how to win online business following Google places is really educative lessons for me. To improve traffic for my website I’m looking forward to followup above suggested ways. Thanks for a useful contribution.
Mark
Very good guide to Google Places / Maps. Almost 80% of my new clients don’t know about this. It’s an absolute must for small business to list with Google Places, and you are 100% correct that they should take time to fill in all the fields correctly. Great post!
The merging of Google Plus and Google places, while keeping them as separate products is causing much confusion for many users. You can’t really merge to 2 into one functional page, but as they look very similar and are even branded almost identically, it is hard to know exactly which way to go.
As an example, in my case I have a Google plus page but the page that shows up under a Google search for my company, is the Google Plus Local (Google Places) page, even though it shows it as a link to my Google Plus page.
From the various comments around the web, this is a big problem for many businesses and Google doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to come up with a workable solution.