Optimizing Google Places

Thursday, July 7th, 2011 at 3:44 pm

Let’s just say I am a consumer who’s using Google search, and I’m looking for insurance in Jacksonville, Florida. So, I type in the words “insurance Jacksonville Florida” into the Google search box and what Google brings up for me? Right at the top of the page, is what they call their ‘Local Listing Results’. These are companies that meet the criteria of the search term within a specific geographical area.

Let’s look at a listing which is not really well optimized. Here is what I find on a listing that

Is not well optimized:

Their local listing which shows the name of the business, the address, the city, the state, the phone number.
There is a link on the map where you can get directions from wherever you are to wherever you want to go.
Tabs for specific areas where searchers can find other information.
You have a listing of all the web pages that lists the business.
A picture of the outside of the business.

That’s it for this listing. That’s pretty good because it gives a little bit of information about the business, but it’s really not all that Google would give to somebody who is looking for some service.

Now let’s see what a well optimized listing contains:

We will click on the first Google Places listing and…………….

Now notice how much more information is on this listing in comparison to the other listing. We got the same thing on top here; we got the name of the business, the address, the city, the state, the phone number. But we also got a link to their website.

Google doesn’t know if you have a website or not, so they can’t put your website up there unless you tell them, and in particular, where to put it.

There is a lot more on here than what there was for the previous listing. Look at this:

Reviews that people have written. reviews from companies, pages like ‘Insider Pages’ or ‘City Search’.
There is all kinds of information about payments, what type of payments Tillmans takes, Visa, American, Master Card and all the credit cards, cash.
The guarantee. They’ve been in business since 1981.
Description of the business. They tell a little bit about the business, what they are, what they do, what type of things do they specialize in.
The email. You want to send them an email, just click on that and it takes you right to the email.
It has photos of products and services and people. You can add so many things. You can add up to 10 photographs per listing.
And it also has all the hours of operation. So there is no more guessing about when they are open or when they are closed. Everything is there for people to find.
And then is also all the webpages that Google’s found

That is a much better, much more concise, and much more comprehensive listing which gives everybody the type of information they need to find and to choose your business. Google is great for doing it right.

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