You’ve built a fantastic business and your existing customers love you, but attracting new clients isn’t always easy.
When potential clients are looking for a business like yours, they often turn to an internet search engine to help them find what they’re looking for. Most people will use Google. Google is by far the most popular search engine, with 66% search share in December accounting for 12 billion searches, and if they are looking for a local service, chances are their search will trigger Google to include results from Google Local Listings.
The Google Local Listings are commonly referred to as the “7-pack” — Google lists seven (and occasionally 3 or 10) top businesses for a particular location and query. The 7-pack takes up most of the first page of search results and is the best way for small business to get search traffic.
If you appear in Google’s 7-pack for search keywords that relate to your local business, you will get new clients every month. If you’re interested knowing exactly what the 7-pack is worth to you in dollars, check out this blog post.
Appearing in the 7-pack is a matter of (1) getting listed in Google Places (2) including the right keywords for your business (3) validating your business with Google, and (4) increasing your rank (more on that later)
Acquiring Google reviews for your business will increase the likelihood that you will be on the first page.
In the rest of this article, I will show you how to quantify the value of a high Google local search ranking, as well as how to get listed, validated, and reviewed.
Take Google local search for a spin
Let’s take a look at a few example businesses. Enter “massage“, “accountants“, “hair salon“, or “personal trainer” into Google. Each of these keywords represents someone searching for more information about a service. Google will guess that you are looking for a local business, and will trigger Local Listings. You should see a list of seven local businesses very prominently featured.
I live in Seattle, and for “massage“, I see something that looks like this:
Get listed
Before you can appear in Google’s local search results, you need to be listed in Google Places. You can do that here: http://www.google.com/placesforbusiness
You’ll need to log in using your google account (if you don’t have one, you can sign up by clicking the red ‘Sign Up’ button in the upper right-hand corner of the page).
Once you’ve logged in to Google Places, you’ll be asked to enter the phone number for your business. You’ll then be given the opportunity to edit the information that will appear on your businesses Google Places page.
Include the right keywords
Enter a clear description about your business and the services you offer. This will help potential customers know more about your business and will give Google additional signals about what your business does. Make sure to include any keywords that might the used when people search for the services that you offer.
For help in choosing keywords take a look at How to choose keywords.
Although it’s important to include keywords in your description, it should be written in a way that’s readable and helpful for potential customers. Do not resort to ‘keyword stuffing’ where your description is just a jumble of keywords. Stuffing your description with extraneous keywords is against Google’s Places Policy, and can result in your listing being demoted or even removed.
Your description should be useful to potential customers, over anything else.
Include the right categories
Google recommends that you choose the most specific categories that apply to your business.
http://googlesmb.blogspot.com/2011/01/tips-for-creating-free-business-listing.html
For example, if you’re a massage therapist who specializes in sports massage, ‘Sports Massage Therapist’ is a better category than ‘Massage Therapist’.
Your goal when choosing categories should be to include all categories which accurately describe your business. It’s okay to include overlapping categories(e.g. ‘Massage Therapist’ and ‘Sports Massage Therapist’), but if you find yourself hitting the 5 category limit, you should favor specific categories over broad ones.
Verify your business with Google
The entry you added to Google places is now complete, but it is not published until Google is able to verify your business (this is to prevent malicious users from editing of businesses they don’t actually own).
Google will either call you or send you a post card to verify ownership.
It is important to complete this step. Verified businesses are more trusted and will rank higher in search results.
You can return to http://www.google.com/placesforbusiness anytime to update your listing.
Climbing the review mountain
Now that your business is listed in Google places, it’s time to start accumulating reviews. You probably don’t need that many. You should start by aiming for five quality reviews. Five is the minimum number of reviews before Google will show starred ratings next to your business.
- Ask your favorite customers for reviews. If you send the request via email be sure to include a link to your business page so it’s easy for your customers to add a review. (see below)
- Ask your friends and family to review you. This is easy because friends and family probably already think you’re great and will take the time to write a review for your business.
If you want a direct link to leave a review, you can create one by adding “&dtab=2&action=openratings&ct=write-review” to the end of your google places page url.
Example: if your google Places page url is: http://maps.google.com/maps/place?cid=9142002257950332391
The link to add a review would be:
http://maps.google.com/maps/place?cid=9142002257950332391&dtab=2&action=openratings&ct=write-review
Including the review link is helpful because it sends people directly to the section on your places page where they would add a review.
Review quality
Google’s goal is to make it easy for people to find what they’re looking for (in this case, great businesses). This also means Google will do their best to combat fake or misleading reviews. How they go about this is secret and changes constantly. Rather than trying to outsmart Google, focus your energy on getting genuine, quality, reviews. The rest will take care of itself.
In some places, faking reviews can cost you more than just a poor ranking on Google. In 2009, the state of New York sued Lifestyle Lift, a cosmetic surgery company to the tune of $300,000 for posting fake reviews on the web. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/15/technology/internet/15lift.html
Get citations
Another key factor Google uses for places rankings are ‘citations’. A citations is any web page on the internet that lists the name, address and phone number of your business. Google considers businesses which have many citations to be more relevant, and elevates them in the results.
The easiest way to get citations is by adding your business to online listings. At the minimum, you should be sure your business is accurately listed in the following free directories:
In order for citations to work properly, it’s important that your business name, address, and phone number match across multiple listings. Be sure your information is correct and consistent.
Avoid scams
There are a lot of paid services and directories which claim that they’ll bring you more traffic or business in exchange for money. Although these can be legitimate, they’re just as often scams.
Google will never ask you for money in exchange for listing your business or improving your rank.
Be wary when any service asks you to pay in exchange for a premium listing.
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