Following on from my post last week about getting traffic from Google Base, I wanted to continue talking about non-SEO ways to get traffic. This week I’d like to talk about Google Local search.
To give you a bit of a background, businesses are able to register their details with Google which gives them the opportunity to appear on search results which Google believe are related to a users location. Classic example being if someone searches for “hotels in Birmingham”, then you get results like the screenshot below. Registering your business with Google gives you much more chance of showing up for these type of searches as well as allowing you to customize your business details.
As you can see, the maps section takes up the majority of the visible page of search results, even the number 1 organic listing is pushed right down the page. For this reason, its very important to try and appear on the maps if possible.
Getting more Traffic with Google Local Search
Below I’m going to cover the steps for registering with Google Local Business and cover some steps to make sure your listing stands as much chance as possible of showing up in search results.
How to use it
Firstly you need to make sure that there are no existing listings for your business. We often see multiple listings for the same company, this can be due to a number of reasons. Either way, you want to make sure there is only one for consistency and efficiency.
To do this you can run a regular search on Google for your company name, then click on “Maps” at the top of the page. You can see an example of what you may see from the screenshot –
If you find an existing listing, then you need to see whether or not it has been claimed or not. You can do this by clicking on the more info link in the screenshot above, this should take you through to the full listing –
As you can see highlighted in yellow, the Pin Digital listing says “owner verified listing”, one that hasn’t been verified will say “Business owner?” which you can click on and go through the verification process.
Assuming that you do not have an existing listing, the next step is to head over to the Google Local Business Centre and register your business details. You will then need to verify your account either by post or by phone.
Bear in mind that you should be using a consistent business address, so when you register with Google, make sure you put down the business address as it is commonly used and make everyone in the company aware that they need to use the correct address.
Once you have setup and verified your listing, there are a few things you can do to try and optimise your listing and help it to appear more often.
Google Local Search Ranking Factors
There are a huge number of factors that go into Google Local Search, you can see a huge list here by David Mihm. There was also a great presentation by Tom Critchlow at Think Visibility which you can see on the Distilled blog.
Here is a quick overview of the main factors and some which can help you get quick wins.
Verified Listing
We covered this above, it is very important to verify your listing and make sure all of the details are correct – including your exact address in a consistent format.
Citations
Think of this in terms of links for a usual SEO campaign. However it has been generally accepted and shown that Google can extract citations from a webpage and count this despite there not being an actual link in place. For example the following doesn’t link to Pin Digital but could be seen by Google as a citation –
Pin Digital Ltd,
Midland House,
105 Long Street,
Atherstone,
Warwickshire
CV9 1AB
Google can recognise this as an endorsement of the address that we have provided to them as being correct and legitimate.
Categories
When editing your listing, Google give you the option of putting your company into relevant categories, this can help a lot if you can keep the categories very relevant. Keyword searches for these categories can sometimes bring back local results.
Reviews
The number of reviews you have for your business can often influence your ranking, at the moment it appears to be the number of reviews as opposed to whether those reviews are good or bad. I’d expect this to change over time as the Google algorithm for local rankings improves, but for now – as many as possible seems to be the way forward.
You can encourage your customers or visitors to leave reviews for you, just give them a link at the end of order confirmations or blog posts which link to your listing.
Listing Age
There isn’t a great deal you can do about this one but its worth bearing in mind, I think the same principle as the age of a Google Base feed applies here. The longer you’re listed and the more useful you are to visitors then the more likely Google are to consistently show your listing.