INSCMagazine: Get Social!

By Lalit Sharma

Today, most costumers are using mobile devices to search for information on the Internet. They are using these devices to perform local mobile searches.

As such, local searches are more common than any other type, prompting online marketers to adapt and find out how they can incorporate a local search marketing strategy. A study performed by ComScore indicated that a total of 3 billion search entries contain a local reference in them.

As such, if you want your company to have a local presence in your area, it is important that you have maximum visibility in local searches. Not doing this will allow your competition to encroach on your territory. One of the special searching tools provided by Google is Google Maps.

It allows people to find their way. Another one is Google Places.

This one allows them to find specific locations such as stores and offices. Therefore, you should have local optimization on both of the platforms. This can help your potential customers to find your offices or stores in order to promote revenues and beat your competition.

Here are some tips that can help you perform optimization in Google Maps.

Register an account for your business in Google Places

Whenever you perform a search for local business terms in the Google search engine, you are highly likely to notice some Google Places listings positioned at the top. They occur before the regular search engine results. Through this placement, they attract attention and are therefore lucrative.

They can help you get some presence in your local area. The first step to achieve this is to register a Google Places account. This can be done in the Google Local Business Center page by following this link www.google.com/localbusinesscenter.

Once you sign up, you will observe some links that can help you to “Add” a new business or “Upload” a data file containing information about your business. If you only have a single office or store, you can click on “Add”. However, “Upload” gives you a chance to include multiple locations. There are details on how you can create this file.

Once you do this, you will be led through some steps to add information about your business.

After complete registration, you will have access to a dashboard that will show you various types of information about your business’s online activity. Examples of these are the number of searches performed quoting your business name, the number of impressions that you make online and the number of actions performed on your business links.

This is the first step to optimization.

Stay consistent across your entire online marketing strategy

For you to gain full advantage from your Google Places promotion strategy, you need to ensure that all the information about your business is the same across the various online promotion platforms that you are utilizing. You should ensure that all your online business profiles indicate matching information. Examples of these profiles are your Facebook business page, Twitter page and LinkedIn page too.

Google Places is only another platform for you to establish trust between you and your customers. Therefore, audit all your online business profiles and ensure that your business information is consistent. Some other methods to ensure complete consistency is to link these profiles through the descriptions.

This boosts your search ability. Moreover, you can maintain the same imagery across all profiles. This allows online customers to identify your business easily no matter where they see your profile.

Moreover, the branding should be the same throughout too.

Fill out all the business information spaces in the Google Places blank boxes

While creating your Google Places business profile or performing google maps optimization, you should fill out all your business information. It is better to do this than suffer negative consequences because you did not fill some in.

The registration process could have some questions that you might think are irrelevant.

However, they all contribute to you being found easily online. As you create a Google Places profile, you should make sure to fill out the standard information spaces such as:

1. Your company name

2. Your phone number

3. Official address

4. Business email address

5. Website name

Other extra bits of information about your business such as video, photos and descriptions are also chances to optimize your business further. You are able to share more about your business with potential clients through this information.

It is advisable to use the services of a professional SEO company such as Ranking by SEO found at www.rankingbyseo.com. Since they are professionals, they will not make any errors.

Utilize descriptive keywords

You should include as many deliberate keywords in your Google Places profile. In this way, you are able to boost optimization. They help search engine bots to find your Google Places profile whenever Internet users make some local searches.

Moreover, avoid over-stuffing your business description with these keywords. Make sure that you perform enough keyword research before you pick some words and phrases for your Google Places Optimization business profile. In this way, you can know the most appropriate ones to use.

Encourage your potential online customers to interact with you

One of the tools that you can use for Google Place optimization is content that is generated by your users.

You can encourage your readers to review your business in various platforms. The keywords and phrases that they use to describe your business and customer service creates medium through which others can know about your establishment too.

Moreover, their reviews validate your business online. They also serve to prove that your business information is real.

Customer testimonials are a very powerful promotion tool online. Therefore, encourage your customers and any visitors to your business profile to comment or review your business. This can create validity and promote your business online. Other methods to encourage your online customers and visitors to interact with you is to post video testimonials in your Google Place profile page.

Moreover, inform your customers that they can post pictures of themselves with you or your staff in this business page. By encouraging your online customers to interact with your business, you directly perform Google Places promotion.

Conclusion

It is not enough to just have some online presence for your business through a social media page and website. You need to optimize your business in many other ways. One of these is Google Places Optimization. This allows you to be found easily in local searches. The tips above can help you to accomplish this as demonstrated.

By applying them, online customers will be able to find the physical location of your business easily.

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