One People Biz Solutions is your #1 source for information on how to find, build and maintain an effective marketing solution for your business whether your already online or looking to integrate your existing offline business.
So we all know that Google is the number one search engine in the world, what most business owners don’t realize is that there are 50 other key online locations that are important to their success online. These are locations that you must be using to help your business get ranked higher in Google so that your target audience can find you.
We call these key locations “Influence Engines” and they include:
Local Search Engines like Google Places, Yahoo! Local, and Merchant Circle
Social Networking Sites like Facebook, Yelp! and Twitter
Internet Business Directories like Superpages.com and Kudzu
Online Business Directories specific to your region or metro area
Online Directory Assistance sites like 411.com and
Many category-specific directories relating to your industry
These Influence Engines are important to your online business success because they can have an enormous impact on how easily people find you online. Getting all of your business information listed and encouraging your customers to post comments and reviews is one of the first things you should do to get leads and customers from the internet.
As more users search for businesses on online mapping tools, Google wants to help you ensure that your customers can find you.
They’re now introducing a new capability to Google Maps to help you do just that. Now you can update your business listing directly in Google Maps, to make sure that your location is accurate. Just sign in with your Google account, find your listing, and edit it. If you’d like to establish yourself as the sole expert on your business’s listing, you can claim your listing in Google Places.
Once Google confirms that you are the business owner, you will be the only user able to modify the listing. With these new channels to update your information, you can keep your customers informed and up to date.
Over 100,000 businesses across the U.S. are being recognized as a “Favorite Place on Google” based on Google users’ interactions with local business listings. Check out how it works, & try scanning a QR code.
One of the biggest and most long-held complaints with Google’s Local Business Center (now Google Places) was that it forced home-based business owners to make their home addresses public if they wanted to be included in Google Maps. Naturally, this made some people uncomfortable. Thankfully, Google recently addressed this problem with a new feature that allows businesses to define what service locations and areas they cater to in lieu of an address. That means your home address is now safe and no longer a requirement to appearing in Google Maps. Awesome.
When logged into Google Places users will see a new tab called “Service Areas and Location Settings”. This tab will allow business owners to tell Google if (a) customers come to their business location or (b) if they serve customers at their locations (eg plumbers, electricians, etc). By selecting the later, small business owners will see the addition of a new Service Areas and Location Settings box.
Here, Google provides a box to allow small business owners to opt out of having their business address appear in Google Maps. Business owners will also have the ability to specify whether they want their business to be listed by distance from one location or by the locations they serve. Both additions are sure to win friends with SMB owners. You may remember that there was a bit of backlash last year when Google stopped allowing home-based businesses to use a PO Box as their listed address. Google assured us they were working on a new solution to calm the fears of the many SMBs obviously not wanting to make their homes public. It’s nice to see Google reacting well and giving business owners a new way to go about things.
According to Matt, the new feature is running in a limited test but “many” business owners should see this in their account soon. Hopefully with the new feature, any home-based businesses which were afraid of making their address public have now lost their excuse for not registering their business with Google. We really can’t stress enough the importance of claiming and filling out all of your local listings.
Worth noting is that while there were some early reports that taking your address off your listing caused ranking drops, that seems to have been an unrelated bug that Google is working on. So, small business owners can switch over without fear.
Here you will find tips on Facebook, Linkedin, Google, Blogs, Autoresponders, Video Marketing, and more including our overall Business Development Solutions 101.
