While there is much more to optimizing your Google Places listing than first meets the eye, these five tips will give you a “leg up” on your competition:

1.       Fill out every field completely.

There are about 20 fields to fill out when completing your Place Page listing. I recommend that you fill out each and every field as skipping even one can negatively affect the ranking of your Places Page.

As a general rule you’ll find the more complete your listing is, the better it will rank for the keyword phrases you are targeting.

2.       Utilize every category available to you.

Google only requires you to use one category for your listing but will allow you to use up to five. You can get your Place Page ranked for more terms if you include the keyword phrases you are targeting in the category names.

Warning: Don’t take this to mean that you can stuff your categories with multiple keyword phrases.

3.       You can add up to ten photos — add all ten!

Google allows you to use up to ten photos and I encourage you to use every one of them. If you really want to enhance the benefit they bring, consider uploading the images to Panoramio or Flickr and geo-tagging the images with your business address.

4.       You’re allotted five videos — don’t forget to use them too.

Yes, it’s a bit harder to create videos than it is photos, but this is actually good news. How, you ask?

Well, you’ll find that many businesses don’t include a video in their listing and those that do rarely add all five. As I said in tip #1, the more complete your listing is, the easier it is to rank well for the terms you’re targeting.

5.       Build as many citations as possible.

A citation is an online reference for your business and services. Google uses them to validate that your business truly exists and that it offers the type of services you list on your Places page.

It’s extremely important that your citations closely match the information found on your Places page.  As you can control the citations you create, it’s best if the information matches your Places Page information EXACTLY!

You can create your own citations at directories like the Yellow Pages, Super Pages, CitySearch, Insider Pages, Yahoo Local, Localize and a number of others.

There are about 4billion mobile phone users globally and a fast growing number are using smart phones like iPhone, Blackberry, and Android devices. The advantage of mobile phones is they are affordable, their owners always have them on hand and they are always switched on. You really can’t say the same for their personal computers.

So how can a local business drive mobile phone users to their websites and businesses?

Text messages

This is the most direct way to contact mobile phone users and update them on promotions, events and other important information.

Email marketing

Most phones today allow users to access their email accounts from mobile phones meaning your customers can still read your emails and participate in sales offers.

Mobile ads

Your business can set up an ad campaign through mobile ad networks which can target mobile users within a certain radius of your business location. Just imagine a tourist or local native seeing your restaurants ad banner on his phone during lunchtime. Wouldn’t that be an extremely targeted and compelling marketing strategy?

Podcasts and Videos

Users can download your business podcasts and videocasts onto their phones. You should mention your business website address or embed it in the videocast.

Social media

Users can also access their social media accounts via mobile phones. All the more reason to open your account and keep in touch with new posts, tweets and RSS feeds.

Optimized mobile sites

Optimizing your webpages for mobile users is a further step to take, so that if someone clicks on your website through Google Search, they are able to read your content. Mobile traffic cannot read regular websites.

There is only one way to get Google to love your local business and that is to give Google what it wants. That makes sense, right?

So what does Google want from you?

1. Relevant Keywords: Google wants you to use keywords that match what people are typing into its homepage all day long. Think of Google as a broker that connects your customers questions to your web content and think of keywords as the medium of currency. If your customers are using “apple” currency and you’re using “mango” currency, Google can’t help you because it matches apples with apples and mangoes with mangoes. So your job is to find out what currency your potential customers are using and use the same currency in your web content. That way Google will hook up the both of you instantly.
2. High Quality Content: Google wants you to use high quality content. It has an image and reputation to maintain and doesn’t want to be seen as a broker who connects users to rubbish. If your content is somewhat useless, article-spun rehash, that’s full of backlinks to websites that have absolutely nothing to do with your business and that gives no valuable information and help to users, Google will find you out and give your more worthwhile competitors better rankings than you. Your poor content will find you out!
3. Google Wants to See Relevant Backlinks: They want to meet your friends. In other words, Google gauges your credibility by who you know. Ever heard of the saying that goes “You can know a person by who they hang out with”? Well the same philosophy holds true on the internet. Remember that the “www” means World Wide Web i.e. a web of relationships between people using computers as a tool. You are not an island so practice some good hospitality and choose the very best friends online. That way you create a community of relationships that Google respects.  Connect to quality forums, social networks and websites that relate to your industry and to your business.

Using these 3 guidelines in your online marketing efforts will reap great rewards from Google for your local business.

Keywords are the key (no pun intended) to just about everything you will ever do to getting your business noticed on the web. Keywords affect your rankings on search engines, the effectiveness of your ad campaigns, the ease with which potential clients can locate your business etc. Therefore getting the best keywords for your local business is absolutely critical and is the number one step to implement before you do anything.

So how do you get the best keywords for your business? This isn’t difficult to do. It’s just a mixture of common sense and getting free help from keyword tools.

1. Let’s start with the common sense part.

• Take a paper and divide it into 2 columns. Name one column “WHERE” and the other column “WHAT”.
• In the “where” column, list all the possible words related to the physical location of your business, what locations your business services its clients and where your clients come from. For example, list your street address, your town, your county and your state. You don’t really need to list your country because remember we are focusing on local search terms. If you have multiple business locations, list the branch names too.
• In the “what” column, list all possible words related to the type of business products and services you sell and offer, including unique aspects of your business niche. For example, if you operate a sushi restaurant that offers karaoke and has an area where sports fans can watch live games, you would list words like sushi restaurant, Japanese restaurant, sports bar, karaoke etc.

2. Getting help from Keyword Tools

Now that you have two keyword lists that describe the where and what of your business, its time to get help from keyword tools that will tell you which keywords are more popular or more likely to be searched for. You want to know the best keywords to use. For example, you would want to know which of two keywords is more important- sushi restaurant or Japanese restaurant. You can find this out by going to Google Adwords.

• You simple type in the entire list of “where” keywords into the search box,
• Tick the box called “ideas containing my search terms”
• Click advanced options and choose your country. Click search. Your results will appear.
• Now on the left hand side of the screen click the phrase box so that your results reflect only the specific phrases you keyed in. Your final results will appear
• If you click on the column titles “local monthly searches,” it will sort out the results from the highest volume to the lowest. Of course the phrases with the highest search volume are the most important keywords for your business.
• Simply repeat this exercise with your “what” words

In our example Japanese restaurant yields more results than the term sushi restaurant (360,000 vs. 201,000) so it is a better keyword to use. Scrolling down the list we pick up very important information about the phrase “Japanese restaurant in” which has 360,000 searches. This shows us that we can append our best “where” keywords to this term too.

Combining the two lists will give you long-tail keywords such as “Japanese restaurant in Boca Raton.”

This 2 step process will complete your keyword research, yielding two lists of powerful and popular keywords for your local business to use in all your web content. Even better is the fact that you can combine these two lists to create a longtail keyword list for even more specific and targeted search results.

How’s it working for you? If your like most business owners one of the following statements will apply to you.  Which one of these statements best describes your business and your website?

• I don’t have a website but need one.

• My business has a website but
  • its embarrassing,
  • its not getting much traffic and nobody seems to know about it,
  • its not making any money

• I like my website and its doing ok but
  • I want to kick things up a notch.
  • I want to get to the top of the search engines and
  • I want to get more traffic to my site.

Whichever statement you identify with, Page 1 Performance Marketing can help.  If you don’t have a website, we can help create one for you.  If you’re not happy with your existing website we can help redesign it, we can help promote your website and get it more traffic, we can even help your website make your business more money.  If your ready to take your website to the next level, we are ready to help.  Click here to request a free analysis on your site.

Imagine your company having a awesome website that ranks high in the search engines.

Imagine that same site bringing new customers to your business.

Imagine your site making your business more money.

Imagine the possibilities.