Website Promotion is not Voodoo

You need to watch out! I was just reading the Google Lat Long Blog and they’re telling people to edit YOUR Google business listing.

This is really, really, bad. Look at this picture. I didn’t want to steal the image from the Google blog post so I made my own which shows a business listing on Google in grave danger.

Your Google business listing is in danger!

We’ve talked in the past about the importance of claiming your Google. It’s critical. Do it now!

Your Google listing and its Google Place page is a great central depository for all information about your business.  It is the compilation of business owner provided data as well as user-generated reviews. The Place page is an incredibly valuable tool for a small or medium size business owner.  The Places page URL is friendly to users, easy to share, and easy to find …

You will want to search for your company + geo modifier.

For example, “Search Influence, New Orleans, LA” will get me here:

Google’s idea of giving small businesses their own page through their project, Place Pages for Google Maps, has got local search buzzing with the SEO implications of this move for small business websites. Could Place Pages provide competition in the SERPS for the small business website? It’s possible. Will they be bad for business? That’s not so clear.

For one, a business without a high ranking or optimized website would benefit from the obvious boost of having Google display “all the information for that place in one place” on its very own Place Page. On the other hand, the fact that Place Pages also provide user-generated content, in the form of reviews, has just made the task of online reputation management that much harder.

My friend Matt McGee sent an email last night in which he discovered a new feature of Google Maps.

This makes for some very interesting results:

Restaurants New Orleans

New Orleans Restaurants

David Mihm The Lazarus Project psp ’s favorite:

Locksmiths in New York City

• The Mission rip

Notorious psp

Locksmiths New York City

Must be a lot of locks in all those tall buildings to need so many locksmiths.

This is an interesting development which makes me wonder about the statistical likelihood of one moving from the main search engine results to the maps view.

So it looks like Hurricane Gustav is heading this way and it makes me think… What are the 7 searches we should have already done in preparation for Gustav?

Is it too late to find a Hotel near Graceland? I’ve never been to Graceland and it’s on my list. Hurricanes always seem a good excuse.

If Google Trends is any indication this may be a big one:

Desperately Seeking Gustav

Me, I’m thinking the Heartbreak Hotel.

277 Reviewers Can't be Wrong

You see, we just bought our new house and from what I can see we’re right in the path. Talk about heartbreaking…