How To Use Google Places in Business Listings

Category: Google Places

Google Places may as well be among today’s prime marketing tool available online for business owners. When first released, it was called Google Local Business Centre. Now, Google Places has turned out to be an essential tool to increase a business’ popularity on the web by attracting local customers to avail of the business’ products and services.

Google continues to offer the tool to business owners for free. This despite the fact that millions of users have looked for local businesses through Google Local Marketing, more popularly called Google Maps Marketing. The following tips can help you in understanding Google Places more and guide you in maximizing your use of its features.

First, maximize local listings in Google Places through extra details. Provide the extra details which Google Places ask you, such as your opening hours, payment methods accepted, coverage areas, and available facilities. Your customers will surely appreciate these extra data, and Google Places will also love the complete details in the listing.

Second, invest time in completing the Services Section. You can enumerate the services towards the end of the Google Places listing. Including 6-10 services will do fine for your business. Moreover, you can insert more keywords using the service listing portion, although you should avoid including location among the keywords. A bad example would go: “Heating Services: Yes.” In comparison, a good example will be more detailed: “Heating Services: registered gas-safe, radiator repair, hot water problems, central heating repair, boiler installation.”

Third, create a distinct Special Offer Coupon. Like any other customer, your prospective clients will surely love receiving special offers. Aware of this phenomenon, Google pushes up listings with unique special offers atop the search engine results. Freebies and discount coupons should be made solely for use in Google Maps Marketing. With these special offers and freebies being calls to action, these should transform your website browsers into real purchasers of your business’ products and services.

Fourth, generate citations. Citations could either be articles or words mentioning your business products and services on other websites. Google SEO uses said citations to determine whether your establishment is worthy enough to take the time and money of people. You should, therefore be aware of the potential positive impact of these citations.

Fifth, generate customer reviews from your clients. Google Places gathers online customer reviews located from different online directories such as Qype, Yelp.com, TripAdvisor, and Insider Pages. These reviews are used by Google to determine how worthy your business is. Thus, you should encourage your loyal customers to write reviews on your business and post them on these directories available online, or even on your page in Google Places. However, take note that reviews posted on online directories will be more effective since you will be reaching their users and Google searches, too.

Google local marketing has become an important component in the success of business. The huge number of users of Google Maps presents huge potential for attracting new customers and expanding a business, as long as the tool is properly used. Presently, not many local businesses have been using the tools that help their products and services be known in the Google Local Marketing. You should act now and claim your listing. Be ahead of your competitors and get your Google Places page now.