Hi everyone, I've been coming to digitalpoint forums for years, so thought I'd give back. I work for a local search optimization company in Santa Barbara and have learned tons, so I'll share the first step every business needs to take to rank well in local searches. 1. Claim or create your Google Places page (or Google Plus page as of recently) 2. Make sure your Name, Address, and Phone (NAP) are correct. This step is crucial, if Google sees different names, addresses, or phone numbers, it gets confused and lowers your rank. google knows it can't display the highest accuracy information if there are multiple NAPs, and you are penalized for it. 3. Add a description of your business with relevant keywords. So if you are plumber in Topeka, make sure to include "plumber in Topeka" or "plumbing in Topeka" or some type of variation. 4. Make sure you are in the right category. If you are a plumber, but in the dentist category, Google will get confused again. Don't confuse Google! 5. Add relevant keyword tags. This allows Google to gain an even better understanding of what you really do so they can put you in the right places for local searches. 6. Upload images and a video. A fake, scammy business won't take the time to do any of these, so in Google's eyes, these legitimize your business a little bit. 7. Ask customers to leave reviews. Not only do reviews look great in the eyes of potential customers, but it adds relevant content to the page so Google can even better place your business. In addition, higher reviews have been linked to higher positions in the local search results. So there are some steps you can take to start ranking your business in local searches. I hope it helps!
You can do local listing of your business for local search in following sites: yelp yellow page Google Place Yahoo Business listings Bing listings Add customers reviews to improve the value of your listings.
Seriously. If you offer an incentive for clients to write reviews, there will be noticeable results. Normally unless things were OUTSTANDING, clients won't remember to write a review.
Agreed. Asking them to write a review for you can increase the review count tremendously though. But like you said, I imagine creating an incentive, like a $5 off next visit, would catapult your reviews.
Falling to bad neighborhood, that's a bad factor for any business. So, to be where you are belong is what should business should be fall. Category is where customer go and you should meet them to hit sales you want..
Sign up with the Better Business Bureau. Google gives a nice boost to sites with a BBB accreditation listing. You might also join the local Chamber of Commerce. You will receive a listing from them as well.
Yeah this is a great thing to do as well. The more citations you get, the more Google trusts you and the data.
thnks all for your reply. but i still have doubt, i have done social bookmarking and i tried to directory also, but directory is not accepting the google map url. pls let me know what i do?