Google Places Preparation

How To Use Google Places

• Company name, Address and phone number
• Email address (not required)
• Website: (not required)
• Description of services:  (you have 200 characters to describe the services they offer)
• Category (one is required and needs to fit one of the ones that Google has set up).  You can add other categories)
• Services Areas and Local Settings:
  1. You have two options:  All customers come to the business location or “This business serves customers at their locations”.  If you select the second option you can specify the number of miles the location provides services.  You can enter it in miles or specify zip codes, cities, metro areas or states.
• Hours of operation (you can specify it or leave it blank).
• Payment options
• Photos and videos.  This is an area that you can earn some additional revenue.  You can take photos and create a great slide presentation using Animoto.  You will need 20-30 pictures, copy for the slide presentation and they type of music they would like.  You should have 2-5 major points that you want to make in the presentation.
  1. Name of Company
  2. Service number one that they provide (1-5 words).
  3. Pictures of that service
  4. Repeat with next service.
• We are charging $145 for the service.  You can also offer to do videos.  Videos generally run $300 and up.
• Additional services:  This is where you can put in the list of other services that your client provides.

Their updated Google listing should appear within the next 30 days.  Usually it is showing up within a week but Google says it may take up to 60 days to show up.  Most of the ones I have done show up within 7 working days.

There are other options that you want to mention to them.

• Expanded listing.  You have helped them get listed on Google Places for free.  Google has from 63% to 72% of the search traffic, depending on who you listen to.  Getting listed on the other search sites and local directories is important for two reasons:

Google looks to those sites to validate what you have told them about your service.  If you enter information in Places but have different information showing up on other sites it is very possible that Google will not list what you have put in because of the other sites.  If all the information is consistent across the sites Google puts more weight on the findings and ranks you higher

Google does not drive all the traffic.  There are at least 100 other search engines and local directories where you can put your information.  On the web the more places you show up the more likely people are to use you.  The cost for listing in all the other sites:

$295 with no support – We will list them but not go back and tweek the listing to improve the search results.

$396 includes a quarterly update.  You will go back every quarter and look at their listing and discuss ways to improve their listing.

$595 includes a monthly update.  You will review the listing results with the client every month and make changes to improve their Local Places listing as well as the listing in other directories.

Google places tracks how the listing is working, how many visitors, actions taken etc.

Once the listing is complete you can go back and add coupons, which we highly recommend.

Finally we offer a paid listing service through Local Ad Link.  (Brochure is available describing what it is and how it works).  Basically Local Ad link actively pushes an ad out for your  client through Google, Yahoo, Social media sites and through their own sites.

They create a mini website that is very similar to Google Places.  The information you got for Places can be used on the Local Ad Link site.

Why should they advertise if they are getting a free listing?  Studies have shown that the more places people show up the better the chance the potential customer will take some action.  One study showed that the click rate went from 60 to 90% when your listing was showing up in both places.  (this study is available in our resource section).

The other reason is that you are not going to get a top organic rating for every keyword.  There will be some that are to competitive or that you just cannot get to show up.  Local Ad Link can help fill that gap by making them show up for specific keywords.

Things to think about.  When you are gathering up this information you will want to do some research using the Google keyword suggestion tool.  You want to include services that they provide that have the highest search volume.