If a significant amount of your monthly revenue is derived by doing business with customers from your local area, then it’s critical that you take the necessary measures to make sure you Get Found Locally.

Google Places Listing

The first thing EVERY small business owner should do it create and optimize a FREE Google Places Listing. Local Search Marketing is the new key to the success for Main Street businesses. It’s not a question of IF business owners use this information, but when. The longer they put off getting listed, the harder it will be to rank at the top of Google’s 10 Spot. When I first created my local business listing on Google they called it, Google Local Business Center. This was about 6-7 months ago. Lately, Local Search Marketing has become so popular and so competitive, it’s become a “must-have” marketing tool for every small business owner.

Google Places Marketing Tip #1 Use “Longtails”

Two of my niche markets are Local Search Marketing and Local Search SEO in the Los Angeles metro  area. Using a few learned marketing tricks and techniques, my site gets listed at the top of the Google 10 Spot in both of these niche market.

Local Search Marketing has 98,743 results and Local SEO Search has 2,744 results

Local Search Marketing on Google

Why it Makes Sense to Target Longtail Keywords First

Whether you’re launching a brand new site or building momentum for an existing site, to be competitive in the marketplace you have a lot of network effects working against you. More often than not, your competition has years of conversion data, an older trusted site, tons of content, and thousands of organic inbound links. Trying to beat them for the most potent high-value “single word” keywords is a long shot at best and you will likely fail. Longtail keywords are usually a lot easier to rank for. If you can pick off mid-tier phrases and rank at the top of the search results then you can build a revenue stream from them, which can be reinvested to further buy market share and distribution.

Local Search SEO on Google

According to Recent Studies

• 97% of Consumers use online media to research products and services in their local area. (Kelsey Group)
• 83% of Local Searchers will follow up with a phone call or visit to the listing that stands out best. (ComScore)
• 90% of searchers won’t look past page one of the results page. (Google)

What’s more, Google knows exactly where a customer is searching from and serves up the most relevant results nearby. Businesses need to be on top of that list, because when you are, your free organic traffic will increase exponentially.

Google Places Marketing Tip #2 Use Coupons

Adding a Coupon to your Google Places listing will help improve your “action taken” click count and your bottom-line (profit) as well. When a potential customer sees that your business listing includes a coupon, it tends to up your listing position and CTR.

Google Places Marketing Tip #3 Create Citations

Citations are defined as “mentions” of your business name and address on other web pages, even if there is no link to your website. Think of citations in the same way you do backlinks: they are like getting VOTES for your website. An example of a citation might be an online yellow pages directory where your business is listed, but not linked to. It can also be a local chamber of commerce, or a local business association where your business information can be found, even if they are not linking at all to your website.

Top Tier Citation Sites

• Bing
• Yelp
• Kudzu
• City Search
• Yahoo! Local
• Merchant Circle

Google Places Marketing Tip #4 Trust but Verify

There are a lot moving parts involved in creating a successful Google Places listing. The metric for measuring a successful listing is whether your listing consistently ranks at the top of the Google 10 Spot.

Knowing how to properly design, build and publish an optimized Google Places listing, how to perform the necessary results driving keyword research, how to the nuances of a high ranking 10 Spot listing and having the  right tools to do this front end work, takes time and acquired skills.

SEO Local Search on Bing

Before you entrust a Consultant with this important Internet Marketing task, a quick test you can perform is to simply verify whether or not the Consultant’s own site ranks at the top of the major business listing sites. Google Places commands nearly 80% of the local search activity, so doing this due diligence can be done in a matter of minutes and well worth your time and effort.

• Google Places
• Bing
• Yahoo! Local

Contact Me if you would like to discuss in more detail, how to optimize your Google Places listing so that your business listing will rank at the top of the Google 10 Spot.