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Is Your Business Using Google Places to Increase Sales?

Guest post by: Kristin Fitch

Article Overview: The web continues to grow in importance for businesses as a vehicle to increase sales, customer loyalty, and increase the net of potential businesses. Besides your website, businesses are increasing revenues through the using of social media, online promotions, and through Google search and places. Many businesses are not yet using their Google Places to its fullest. Learn why you should enhance your Google Places listing and update it regularly.

Is Your Business Using Google Places to Increase Sales?

When you do a google search the on a local business, the top result is a Google Map with a link to the Google Places Page for that business. Google Places has a page for each local business, attraction, landmark and restaurant that is listed. The basic Google Places page includes the information Google has about the business, such as the address and phone number.

But business owners can claim their Google Places Page and add photos, coupons, video clips, hours, and get customers to post reviews of the business.

By enhancing your Google Places or Map listing you can increase customer loyalty, encourage prospective customers to try out your business or products and encourage repeat business.

It may take your business a little time to add photos, videos, customer comments, and more to your Google Places listing, but the pay off will be great over the course of the year.

When someone does a Google search the top results are sponsored links and then the Google Places/Map listings. So even if you are ranked in the top search results for a certain industry or keyword, the Google Places Listing will appear above those standard search results. Why wouldn’t you want to take advantage of that free placement and enhancements?

You may notice that some businesses you search or even your competitor may have a larger red icon above the business. Those are favorite places which are determined by businesses that generate the most Google searches.

Once you have enhanced your Google Places information and you are updating it or adding to it regularly, you can standout even more by encouraging your customers to check your Google Places listing and to add a customer comment or feedback. More popular businesses will be shown with a larger red icon so get that traffic moving to Google Places to help you drive more searches, sales and business your way.

Businesses can pay $25 a month to get tagged in the Google search and Maps listings to further stand out with a yellow tag.

You can learn more about the features of the Google Places page such as being able to update the page with current information about sales or product offerings, as well as bar codes enabled for mobile devices (called OR codes) by going to google.com/local/add or going to google and searching google places

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Article Tags: enhance your web efforts, google listing, google maps, google places, increase repeat business, increase revenue, increase sales, list your business on google map, sales tips to success



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.
New Small Business Topic - Hello everyone, I'm on the lookout for new topics to add to my site. We just launched a Franchising section and are planning Human Resources section. Do you have any thoughts for a new section? Here's a list of what we currently have: Angel Investors Branding Bank Loans Business Coaching Business Plan Franchises (New) Insurance Legal Marketing Public Relations Sales Small Biz Loans Venture Capital
Online Sales and Marketing vs Traditional - Hi Evan, I am noticing that many of the posts in the Sales/Marketing section deal with online marketing, SEM and and SEO and Affiliates. I was wondering if it might be a good idea to separate that section into two; 1) Online Sales and Marketing; 2) Traditional Sales and Marketing


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