How to put your business on the map through Google Local

Here's how to get maximum exposure locally if someone is looking for your services through Google.

July 23rd, 2007 at 4:00am — Comments: (0) — By: Jonathan Danylko — Tags: Google

If your business has a web site (which it most definitely should), one of your goals should be to optimize your site for search engines. Of course, there are so many optimization techniques available, but today I will only focus on one: Google Local.

Google Local is a service that takes you through an online wizard to add your business to the Google Local directory of businesses. One long-time client asked for assistance on how to become visible in the search engines if someone types in "Yoga in Powell, OH." I referred her to Google Local.

Here's how it works. Go to Google Local and click on the "Learn More" link beside the "Add or Edit your Business:" label. This will take you to the intro page.

The next step is to click on the "Add new listing" link. Once you click this link, you start your Google Local Wizard. The more information you provide to the wizard, the easier it will be for users to locate you through Google.

Follow the steps through the wizard filling in the blanks until you come to the "custom" step. At this point, you'll have a lot of fill-in-the-blank edit boxes available that you can optionally skip over. I, however, would recommend that you enter in your search engine keywords at the "speciality" edit box.

If I just spoke Greek to you, you may want a little more of an explanation regarding search engine keywords. Think of it this way. If you are a consumer and you are looking for ice cream, you would type in "Ice Cream in Powell, OH" and hit enter. In the "speciality" edit box, you would enter in the keywords that would trigger your local business to appear. So in this example, you would type in your keyword list separated by commas. Use keywords like "Ice cream, Powell, OH, great location, best ice cream, Columbus" and any other keyword to help your customers find you.

Yes, it is a word game, but a fun word game. You win when people come to visit your site. I consider it a win-win scenario because they are looking for your services or products and you're there to offer them.

When you are finished, you'll be asked to verify your address. Google will ask you to do one of two things: Wait for a post card to come in the mail or type in a phone number where they can immediately call you and verify your business immediately. I always suggest the latter to everyone. It's quick, friendly, and automated.

So what does this get you? I would wait at least an hour before continuing on. Is the hour up? Good. Let's do a trial run.

Go to Google.com. In this example, we'll type in "Yoga Powell, OH" and hit Enter. Here's what will always come up:

If you have other keywords, try using other keyword combinations. You can go back to Google.com/local and edit your business listing any time you want. Make sure you monitor your web site through any type of metric software so you know how people are getting to your site.

If anyone has any questions or need any services in optimizing your web site, please contact me at my "other" web site and I'll be glad to help you out.