20 Jul Google Places for Business
Here’s a shout out today for everyone who runs a local business. Now I know we all have a business and it’s in some kind of local area, but I’m specifically talking to those people who have a business where consumers, your customers are more likely to search for you online using your locality.
For example, if I’m looking for a pizza shop here, in Maroochydore, I’m not just going to go “pizza shop.” I want one that’s in Maroochydore. I don’t want one that’s 20, 30, 50 kilometres up the street. Now, of course, with pizza shops there are the national conglomerates, and they would come up, most likely, I would think first place in the search engine rankings for those generic terms. But if I happen to run a nice little niche pizza shop in the Maroochydore region and I was looking to target my local buyer, I would be using Google’s Places for Business. Absolutely I would be using that, 100% I would be using Places for Business.
Places for Business is the old Google Local. We used to have the local pages thing, which Google was running a while back. It’s now evolved. It’s now part of Google+ and it’s called Places for Business.
It’s very, very simple to sign up for and it’s absolutely free. There are a number of help documents than can assist you in verifying your business, creating your listing, making sure that you’re using and optimising the Google+ features as best as possible.
When it comes to promoting your online business, if you’ve ever done a search online for your business and you see a number of local businesses coming up first in the search engines, most likely these are Google’s Places for Business. You need to be in there. You must be in there. It’s free! I don’t know how else to say it.
This is my quick tip for you today. If you run a business which is 100%, heck, even 95% or 90% based on your local customers coming into your business or calling your business because of where you are based locally, then you must have and be registered with Google’s Places for Business.
Not sure where to find it? No problem. Just go to Google.com and Google “Places for Business.” You’ll find it straightaway.
Talk to you again real soon. Bye-bye.
