Submitting to and Optimising for Google Local Business

By Geoff Jackson on 10 March 2010 @ 10:46 PM.

Tags: google places, glb, google local business, local business center.

Submitting to Google's Local Business Center is the way to get your business on Google Maps, with Google currently holding 85.74% of the global search engine market share and placing so much weight on business listings, then this is the place to get listed and the best part is... It's free!

Local Business is notorious for it's intermittent and often unreliable system, especially when it comes to trying to claim duplicate or unverified listings. If you can manage to overcome any issues and have just one listing for your business that you can access, when optimised effectively, can be very rewarding and increase your leads/enquiries significantly.

There is a lot of discussion around and has been for some time about how you can get on the first page for Local Business listings and some businesses not even aware that you can apply various optimisation techniques to climb the rankings.

If you are looking to optimise your local business listing on Google Maps for your target keywords, then I have outlined below a walkthrough guide with various aspects to take into consideration along the way.

Is your business listed on Google Local Business already?

A simple search for your business name on Google Maps should indicate whether your business can be found on there already. If your business is listed and you just need to claim it then stay tuned as I'll make my next post a guide to claiming your local business listing. However, if you do need to add your business then you can get started here.

Creating your business listing

As this example illustrates, when submitting your Google Local Business listing, it is important to detail as much information as you can in the fields available. This business listing adheres to Google's Local Business terms, your business name should only be your business name and your address should be your actual address. Failure to comply with Google's guidelines could see your listing pulled from the system and face being penalised by Google. Use the description field wisely, make use of your target keywords without keyword spamming and another great way of getting ranked for your keywords is to use them in the categories; If you desired category does not appear as a selection when you enter it in the field, then just simply select 'add custom category'.

When you click submit, Google will check it's system to determine whether your business is already listed or if indeed, any other businesses closely match your details. If your business appears at this stage, this is your chance to claim it. If your business is being listed for the first time then just proceed by clicking the 'add listing' button.

The next step allows you to complete additional information about your business, it is important to complete as much information as you can, the more information and visually pleasing you can make your listing, the more appealing and interesting it will be for any visitors and your potential customers. So submit your opening hours and payment options that you accept and then, if you can, try and upload as many photos you can (the maximum is 10 for a listing), ensure the images are clear, informative and give any visitors a feel of what your business is like, what it offers, the work that you do etc. If you have any videos related to your business, this is a great time to get them uploaded to YouTube and insert the link to the video in your Google Local Business listing. When you are happy you have made your listing as informative as you possible can, click the 'submit' button.

Validating your listing

Typically, Google Local Business will offer you three methods to validate your listing; by phone, by sms and by postcard. These are by far from flawless processes and learning by experience, I have tended to ensure I submit my mobile number as an additional phone number on the first step of creating a listing so that this way I can validate my listing by SMS immediately. Validating by phone will not work if you have any form of automated phone system as the automatic validation call from Google can not select options to get through to you. Opting for the validating by postcard normally results in taking weeks and often the business never actually receiving the postcard. By validating by SMS, use a mobile phone that you have on you and you will be sent a validation code by text that you will need to enter into the system, as soon as you have done this, just edit your listing and remove your mobile number if you don't want it to be publically available on your listing.

And that's it! Once you have your business listing submitted, give it a few weeks and try searching on Google Maps for your business listing and/or your targeted keywords and see where you have ranked. You will then be in a position to carry out advanced optimisation for Google Local Business.

About the Author

Geoff is more commonly recognised online by his internet pseudonym 'zigojacko'. He is the Director of Search at Clubnet Search Marketing, founder of The Clubnet Group and has a huge involvement in the music, clubbing and entertainment sector where he also manages operations at Clubnet UK

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