Google Places for Local Businesses
Google Places
I recently attended an SMBA meeting with representatives from the local Google office. The topic of the day was Google Places and why your business should register with Google Places. Google designed its Place Pages to help people connect to local businesses more easily and getting set up couldn’t be more convenient with representatives from Google coming to your business to walk you through the procedure at no charge.
Why do you want to be listed in Google Places? One out of five searches on Google are related to location and by properly tagging your business to your location you can reach that audience who is searching for your company. But Google Places doesn’t stop there; you can take advantage of their many features and the personalized dashboard to make it as interactive as you want.
Imagine being able to post in real time an update that may affect your customers, maybe you’ve got a Packer player in signing autographs, why not post this to your Google Places listing and now everyone who is searching for your type of business will see that their favorite Packer is there now and will most likely rush to your door, ignoring your competition.
Google Places also features reviews and comments from customers which searchers find very useful. The one real benefit to being on Google Places is that you have the option of communicating directly with these reviewers. If you get a bad review you can’t erase it, but you can apologize and explain the circumstances and maybe soften the blow of the review. You can also thank customers for their great reviews and their loyalty to your business.
The personalized dashboard is chock full of useful tools and some that are just fun to play with. As QR codes are gaining steam and becoming more popular, the Google Places dashboard offers a place for you to get your very own QR code. You can do SEO research and find out what words people are using to find your website and then either optimize your site to those words or work to increase the popularity of other keywords. The dashboard basically offers you a free report card on your website with tools to help you improve.
If you’re interested in registering with Google Places then visit http://www.google.com/city/madison/ to get started.
Are you a fan of Tingalls Graphic Design and the services we provide? Post a review for us on Google Places.
Related Posts
