Google Places SEO: How to Dominate Your Local Search (Maps)

Google's Local Search is becoming more and more prominent, and smart business owners know that a good SEO strategy includes having good "local" placement.

But Google Places are a mystery for a lot of people. It can be tough to show up there, even if you do everything right. Well, one of my clients cares more about Google Places / Local Search than anything else. As long as he can get in the local, he is very happy.

For this particular client, he wants it because if someone is searching from a mobile phone, the places results can be dialed directly from Google's search page. So if I was in a Phoenix neighborhood and I searched for a Realtor, the first seven results I could dial without ever visiting the web page.

So I think it's important for Realtors.

Mastering Google Places

Google Places seems to have a more complex algorithm than the organic results. It leads to much frustation among business owners and fly-by-night SEO companies. That's because it doesn't respond to traditional so-called "SEO." It's based on the reality of your local business. The biggest thing Google fights in local are "mail drops" and phony addresses. So you need to convince them that you are real. That's what this post is about- convincing Google that your local business is real and legitimate.

Here are five tips to help you rank highly in Google Places:

1. Citations, Citations, Citations: Your business has to have lots of address references around the internet. Google crawls the net and finds your address and when it finds your address in reputable places (i.e. Yellow Pages, Yelp, MerchantCircle), it "validates" the strength of your local listing.

For my clients, and for me, there is only one way to do this: It's called Yext.com

If you get set up with Yext, you get listed in about 40 reputable places and you can manage them all from one place. You just login to Yext and you can change all of your listings-- everywhere from MerchantCircle to MapQuest-- from one dashboard.

Yext.com is the most valuable tool you can use to strengthen your local presence. It's $720 per year, but if you go through me, I can set it up for $600. (I get a special price because I've signed up a bunch of clients.) It's worth so much more than that. In addition, if I set it up, I will optimize your listings for strength.

If you'd rather not pay for a service, then just make sure you have listings with all the sites that Yext helps you with. It will be time consuming, but here is the list of places, if you want to do it manually: http://www.yext.com/packages-complete.html

2. Specifically ask your clients to write reviews. You need to get genuine reviews from genuine clients. Gone are the days when you could pay a stranger to write a "fake review" for you. Many of those reviews have disappeared altogether. Google's algorithm is very, very sensitive to fake reviews-- so don't do it.

A great way to do this is to create a Word document and walk your clients through signing up with Google and leaving you a Google review-- and send that document along with your closing gift.

You are better off with one genuine review from one genuine client then you are with 10 phony reviews. It wasn't always that way, but it is now. 

3. Always Respond to Reviews, especially bad ones: This came directly from a Google employee. If someone leaves you a bad review, and you login as the owner and engage the person, offer to make things right-- or just respond with an apology-- Google will love you. The internet is a living breathing thing. Show Google that you are living and breathing and you will do better. Google wants owners who engage. If someone leaves you a comment, reply to it.

4. When you claim or register your local Google Place, I recommend linking to your contact page. In other words, let's say you wanted to be number one for Phoenix Real Estate agent, because you are in Phoenix, of course.

Most people, when Google asks for the web address, give the main URL of their website, www.example.com

I highly recommend that you use something more like this: www.example.com/contact-us.html

When logged in to your Google Maps and your Google+ page, link directly to a page that has your telephone number and address. If you already have a location in Maps (even if it's not doing well in the search), use the address that Google gave your business, instead of the way you want to write it.

If Google says your address is "777 W Main St, #5, Phoenix, AZ 85003" --

Then don't you dare put "777 West Main Street, Suite 5" on your site! I don't care if it looks prettier. Just match your address to the address that Google has.

To see if Google has an address for you, go here and search for your business name and address: http://maps.google.com/

When you find your location pin, see if it identically matches the address on your website. No? You'd better change your website then. It's a lot easier than the alternative. Change it on ActiveRain too. Change it everywhere.

Take the address that Google gives you and just be happy with it- please trust me on this.

Find your business on maps here: http://maps.google.com/

Edit your business information here: http://www.google.com/places/

5. Check in!

Everytime you visit your physical address, use Facebook to "check in." Even better, if you follow my advice and list your business with the "local" social networks-- check in with FourSquare, check in with Yelp. I love FourSquare for Google places SEO. If you get nothing else from this post, at least go set up your business location, for free, at FourSquare.com.

This tells Google-- "Hey, this place exists! It's a business and there are people here. There is action going on here!"

You need to be physically near a place to check in with FourSquare and Yelp. This is the type of SEO that you can't fake. You can't pay a hundred guys in a foreign country to give you fake check-ins. I can't think of a more pure way to show Google that people "like" your business than for people to check in when they are physically close, based on a GPS signal.

This is where SEO is going: Stuff that can't be faked. No more fake reviews. No fake check-ins.

Good luck out there!