Website Promotion is not Voodoo

Google Maps… the Local Business Center… Google Places… so many faces, so many problems. While it brings me great happiness once an issue is resolved, when trying to work them out, it seems like it’s never going to end. In the past, I’ve used a puzzle as an analogy for local search. I never really did like puzzles, and if Google Maps was a puzzle it would be a 2,000 piece box full of 1 inch pieces, 50 of which have been eaten by your kitten and thrown about the house by your children.

So today while working with a particularly problematic listing within a particularly jacked up (for lack of a better word) market and cluster of listings, I noticed a new option Google is showing in the “Report a Problem” section.

We worked for months to straighten out a client’s listing and were finally feeling a bit of relief when everything seemed to be working… the address was showing up correctly, as was the URL, pictures, and details. Thank goodness, we thought!

Putting Together the Pieces of the Local Search Puzzle

Search Influence is honored to have once again been invited by David Mihm to take part in his annual study on Local Search Ranking Factors. The best part of this collaboration is that the questions have remained fairly constant from year to year in order to study the change from year to year that SEOs have observed in Google’s local algorithm.

1. Why Local Businesses Can No Longer Ignore Foursquare

For some reason businesses are hesitant to jump on the social media bandwagon. It’ll never make sense to me because even if you don’t believe in its power, your customers do!  By simply adding a little prize for the mayor or a special for just checking in, you are almost guaranteed loyal repeat customers looking to catch a deal. It’s a game for these people! Make your business the board!

2. The Rise of SMB Reputation Management

I can’t fight this feeling any longer. I need to profess my love of Google Maps. Our relationship was a tumultuous one, but she won me over in the end. Living in New Orleans, where some street signs are still missing from their respective corners, Google maps was a saving grace. They also recently started to include bike routes, which guides bikers through the least traffic-laden areas. Though this feature still needs some work, I think it’ll be a great asset to this ever-expanding program.

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.

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…