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How Google Places; Affect Your Local or National Business

Guest post by: Wolfgang Bloomfield

Article Overview: Please read this article in full, to fully understand the importance of this for your local or National Business. Whether you are Local Business, or a large National Business, you will need to fully understand how this change will affect your local sales, as it depends on what you decide to do about it, for the future of your company.

How Google Places; Affect Your Local or National Business

Please read this article in full, to fully understand the importance of this for your local or National Business.

Whether you are Local Business, or a large National Business, you will need to fully understand how this change will affect your local sales, as it depends on what you decide to do about it, for the future of your company.

Recently Google changed their algorithms in the way that they present search results to the searcher, and it now presents the results on a local basis, presenting local businesses first, even if the searcher does not specify an area, Google can tell where the searcher is based, by the I.P.address of the computer used for the search.

This also works if the search was made on a smart phone, using a system similar to GPS satellite navigation, so if your car breaks down almost any ware in the world, you search on your smart phone for a garage to repair it, and you will get the results for the nearest garages.

The reason that these changes have been made is that Goggle found that 70% of all searches online are looking for a local service, also that people would prefer to buy from local businesses.

But not only that, traditional advertising Yellow Pages, Newspapers, and to some extent T.V. adverts are not working anymore like they used to, as more and more people search on the Internet. It is a fact now that people are spending more time in front of a computer screen than in front of a T.V. set.

These results show up with a balloon on a map showing where the business is based, and also listing the services offered, this only works though if the local business has requested the listing, and it also only works with organic results, not the paid for ads, this is now called Google Places (formally Google Maps).

Luckily for you, many local businesses are slow to do this, mainly because they do not know about it yet, but also because it is a complicated process, and a lot of them are not prepared to pay for an expert to do it for them.

What does this mean for your local or National business? Well if your business has various locations and you have your own website, it is unlikely that your website will show up in the local searches.

I know this as I have checked quite a few National Companies websites in the local searches, and unless the searcher actually puts the website address into the search bar, they definitely don´t show up, but this is not how people search for things.

The way people usually search is by putting a phrase into the search bar such as “UPVC window companies “or “fitted kitchen companies” or they may just put in “UPVC windows” or “Plumbers” and it´s finding out what they put in, as that’s where the money is, you just have to find out by doing some research into it.

If you do nothing about this information, can you imagine what could happen to your local or national business? If only local searches are showing up on the results, and your company is not listed?

This is not going to go away, already 70% of people are looking for services and products online, and it´s getting bigger every day that passes by.

What can be done about it? I believe that this is one of the most exciting changes that Google have made for a long time, giving you the opportunity to take advantage of this new change, by listing all of your local businesses around the country.

Can you imagine the effect that that would have over your competitors? Not only that, but what would it do for your local businesses with the extra sales that you make, and what would it do for your profits?

All that is needed to make these listings is an address that can be written to, a telephone that can be phoned, and a salesperson that can make a visit to the enquirer and this should suffice, so you don´t even need a showroom, if you have someone willing to use their address working for you.

These listings need to be targeted though, what do I mean by that? I would suggest that you have a separate listing for each product category that can be linked to your new local website, which will be part of this strategy.

People like to visit a local website to see what the company has on offer, before they ask for a visit from a salesman, or before they visit the company themselves, not only that with local testimonials and information on it, giving you more credibility, you will also get another bite of the cherry and another listing for it.

So if they are interested in a new Conservatory, and they are taken to that page on your site they can see that you are a specialist in Conservatories, again giving you even more credibility, and likewise for your other categories.

I hope that you can see how powerful this strategy is, and how it could get you more customers, more sales and more profits for your company.

These websites and listings need to be properly optimized though to take full advantage of this opportunity, and to make sure that they show up as one of the first results in the searches.

This is not an easy task as I well know, and unfortunately most website designers know very little about SEO (search engine optimisation) and as a result many websites fair badly in the search results.

This work can be done for you, and there are several companies that have recently been set up to do it, but you will need to know that they know how to do it properly, because there is a lot of work involved and mistakes can easily be made, and they can be costly.

I do hope that this article has been of some value to you, and that you can see that although these changes were made for the benefit of local businesses, that these strategies can also be of benefit for National Companies as well.

To your success,

Wolfgang Bloomfield

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Article Tags: first page, google, local business, local businesses, local sales, national business



Related Forum Posts
Re: How can I promote my site? - I recently added my details to Google Places. Is that the same as a Google Local Business Listing?
Re: How can I promote my site? - [quote="smartcompanysoftware":1buq8jkk]I recently added my details to Google Places. Is that the same as a Google Local Business Listing?[/quote:1buq8jkk] Yes, they're the same. You add your business information so that you can be found on the web. You can engage with customers and much more. You just reminded me to add my business there as well. Thanks!
Re: Significance of Review Sites - I also heard that if your place your site on Google Places you are almost guaranteed to rank on the first page of Google for your keyword. That might be another one people should take into consideration.
Re: Google Local Tutorial - Free Online Advertising - You have done a good job on the tutorial and thanks a million for the information, I have never known about Google Local before. I will implement it immedaitely
Re: Google Local Tutorial - Free Online Advertising - Hi GT, Thanks a lot for the referral. I have started signing up all my clients for Google Local. People are amazed that in two weeks they can have #1 listings for competitive local kewords. Tip: Don't stop by adding just one ad. As long as each page of your website is different and optimized for different keywords you should create multiple ad words for each page. Example: Type in "Minneapolis web development" in Google. You will notice we have two listings. One for our home page & one for our mission page. They are both optimized for "Minneapolis web development" so Google will approve both listings / ads. Jeff


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