Google My Business for Places

Bobbie Grennier
Bobbie Grennier does Google Search Marketing, My Business/Places Optimization, Google+ Local SEO. Google Local Pro offers Advanced My Business Consulting and Santa Cruz Web Designer, Local SEO, Internet Marketing.
Google Science Fair

Google Science Fair (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Common questions about Google My Business.

Cost? Totally free service that Google provides for business owners to help integrate their services and products onto Google’s search engine results.

What’s the difference between Google My Business, Google Places for Business, and Google+ Pages Dashboard?

If you previously used Google Places for Business or Google+ Pages Dashboard to manage your business information, your account has been automatically upgraded to Google My Business. Google My Business makes it easier than ever to update business information across Google Search, Maps and Google+. Google My Business complements your existing website by giving your business a public identity and presence on Google. The information you provide about your business can appear on Google Search, Maps and Google+.

How do I manage multiple business locations?

If your business has ten or more locations, you can add them all at once using the bulk upload tool. Go to Google My Business Locations to upload and edit your locations. Learn More Google offered up this Google Hangout for you to gather more information about Google My Business: Watch the replay of the Google Hangout for My Business.

Or watch the video below:

If you find you are still having issues with Google’s switch from Places to the new My Business structure, please feel free to contact me. Overall I’m finding that I really like the new structure because it brings many services into one location. It is however still not integrated all the way with other essential services like Adwords, although you can access Adwords Express from the new dashboard.

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Google+ Local Pro
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Search Engine Optimization

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Bobbie Grennier
Bobbie Grennier does Google Search Marketing, My Business/Places Optimization, Google+ Local SEO. Google Local Pro offers Advanced My Business Consulting and Santa Cruz Web Designer, Local SEO, Internet Marketing.

Search Engine Ranking – Optimization Strategy

Think of the Internet as the biggest library-like source of information in human history, with one major difference from a actual library. The Internet is not organized, nor is all the information out there credible. This is where search engines come into play and why SEO services, SEO ranking and SEO optimization strategies are so important to real businesses who provide real information, services and products.

Why You Need Good Search Engine Ranking and Optimization Strategy

How to Search Engine Optimization

How to Search Engine Optimization – SEO

We call it being in the Top 10 of a search engine. It means your web site is listed on the front page, in the first 10 results, of any given search engine listing for your keywords … and that’s referred to as a Natural Listing or Natural Results.

In reality, your web site coming up in the top 10 of any search engine is anything but natural. Appearing in the top 10 for your business’s keywords will bring in potential customers to your web site just as effectively as the businesses that pay for the Google Ads and Yahoo Ads, but it’s more cost effective to you because you didn’t have to pay $3-$20 per click like they did … and remember, clicks don’t mean sales, it just means someone clicked onto their web site. Also, I’m not inflating those prices … if you want to compete with the big boys at the top of the keyword list on Google, that’s what it’s going to cost you. Suddenly optimizing your web site has much more importance to you doesn’t it?!

Search engine ranking and optimization is a highly specialized field of Internet study combined with the ability to write decently. Search engine users are what we call a targeted audience because they come looking for your business and usually want to buy what you sell. You don’t need to do anything, but provide them a clean web site that nicely displays your products, and close the sale (but that’s another article).

Internet Users and Search Engine Search Listings

Every web business needs a web site marketing plan with a solid search engine ranking and optimization strategy. The Georgia Institute of Technology says more than 85% of all Internet users find new web sites through search engine search listings. Data shows that search engine listings are the number one way to generate traffic to a web site.

Search Engine Ranking and Optimization Services

Think about it … when you got your very first computer, hooked it up and wanted to go out onto the world wide web … didn’t you ask yourself, How do I find web sites? Then you discovered what a search engine was and from there, you relied on the search engines to give you keyword results and that’s where you played on the Internet.

That’s what millions of users do everyday. These are people who are not tech savvy like you and me. They use search engines as a way of sifting through the myriad of web sites out there, narrowing their search and focusing them on the top 10 results. The goal of any SEO company is to get your web site to rank in the top 10 for your set of keywords, bringing you the people who are searching for the goods and services you provide.

Good Search Engine Ranking and Optimization Strategy

SEO services involve knowledge of SEO optimization, web site planning, SEO experience and having the right SEO tools, but most of all it requires patience because getting your web site into one of those top positions on the search engine results pages (SERP) takes an average of 1-3 months. Any SEO company will need to tweak your web site and it’s content, and then wait for the search engines to make their changes. The goal is to achieve and maintain true search engine optimization and placement for your web site.

By hiring an SEO company like us, to handle your search engine optimization you will see results. A good SEO company will bring you good search engine placement, and any business that can get the targeted traffic should also get the conversion necessary to drive profits up if the web site is able to close the sale.

Your web site content should both drive SEO optimized traffic to your web site and help close the sale. A good SEO Copywriter can help with both!

Search Engine Ranking and Optimization for Good ROI

ROI is the return on investment. You need to compare your ROI for the costs of placing pay per click ads (PPC) with Google and Yahoo vs. the cost of optimizing your web site to get a natural ranking.

How competitive is your market? If it’s highly competitive, like the Finance market is, then you’re most likely going to need to do both to make it in that business online. This is where where our SEO experience can be invaluable to you and the success of your online business.

Forrester Research reported that Over 80 percent of all Internet users reach sites through search engines. Translated, that means if your web site isn’t attracting 80 percent of its visitors from search engines, you’re losing out on a lot of free traffic.

A study from the NPD Group found that search engine listings are far more effective than standard banner or button advertisements when it comes to brand recall, favorable opinion rating, and conversion of traffic to sales.

In unaided recall, search listings outperformed banners and buttons by three to one. More than twice as many people gave a more favorable opinion of companies in the top three search positions than those featured in ads.
The study also found that 55 percent of online purchases were made on sites found through search listings, while a mere 9 percent were on sites found through banner ads. You do the math! Search Engine Optimization is clearly linked to a better ROI for your business.

Based on our own internal calculations, the current cost of getting customers through a good SEO optimization strategy is less than half of the cost of pay-per-click services such as Yahoo’s Overture or Google’s AdWords.

We also know that organic or natural traffic, that comes to your web site from natural search engine ranking, converts better than traffic delivered via pay-per-click search… because the traffic is better targeted! Not all, but most people don’t want to click on the Ads and prefer to click on the organic links instead.

Search Engine Ranking and Optimization

Search engine ranking and SEO optimization is cost effective and should be a high priority. While the search engine ranking and SEO optimization process is complex and time consuming, it is very do-able if you know what you’re doing. That’s why you may want to hire an SEO writer.

SEO optimization is not only about working your web pages to match the ever changing search engine algorithms of all the major search engines, but it’s also about trying to out-rank your competitors.

If you are new to SEO optimization and want to learn more, Google Local Pro has a lot of tutorials and articles regarding SEO.

Google Local Places SEO in New York City , New York

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Dual Listing Suspension

Bobbie Grennier
Bobbie Grennier does Google Search Marketing, My Business/Places Optimization, Google+ Local SEO. Google Local Pro offers Advanced My Business Consulting and Santa Cruz Web Designer, Local SEO, Internet Marketing.

Google Local Specialist, Linda Buquet has posted a great article outlining the problems with she refers to a “hidden merged dups” on some Google Places accounts.

I call it a hidden merged dupe, but another term for it could be dual claimed listing. Warning this issue can be EASY to miss and it’s a listing killer! It’s also a serious guideline violation.

Google’s guidelines are pretty clear on the topics… “Do not create more than one listing for each business location, either in a single account or multiple accounts.” But, what frequently happens is that business owners, their webmasters and the crappy SEO companies that they hire all cheat the system trying to get more than one listing. I see a lot of duplicate (dups) Local listings and believe me, as Google Mapmaker, I report them. Google is very fast at getting rid of the dups, and cheaters.

Hidden Merged Dups

Google places, google favorite place

Google Places

Dealing with a client who has multiple listings is a nightmare. That’s why all the Google Local Specialists charge a lot for this service. It’s tedious and time consuming, and it takes months and months to try and resolve it. Worse case scenario, it might not get resolved because Google is under no obligation to work with us. We are at their mercy, unless you hire Google Local Pro who knows how to work with Google and knows exactly what it is that Google wants. Hire someone who doesn’t know this stuff and you run the risk of loosing your Google everything forever. It’s that extreme!

According to Linda, Google allows you to reclaim a listing. BUT realize that if you claim a listing that’s already in another account, NOT ONLY IS IT A VIOLATION but the other problem is - that listing is ALSO IN PARTIAL CONTROL! So if there are violations in the other listing or NAP is different, it can keep changing your listing or cause a penalty.

Often when you account is having some issues, like you profile photo not showing with regard to your Authorship settings, it’s an indication that you’ve got something like a “merged dup” going on. The problem you can’t see them because they don’t show live, yet they exist to muck up your account. So, what to do when you’ve got a “dual claimed listing”?

There used to be one visible sign of a potential problem. Back when Google showed all the cats (categories), if a listing had 7 – 10 cats that was almost a sure sign. But now even in “edit details” she usually only shows 5. The other obvious symptom to look for that is still visible and pretty reliable is if the “respond to reviews” link is missing in the old Places dashboard.

Dual Listing Suspension

If it’s me working for you, I personally get involved with Google and try to work out these issues for you. It takes a lot of patience. Google’s response time is very slow, and they don’t work for you or me. So, it takes a lot of finesse and skill in negotiating a resolve to your account’s problems. In the end, its well worth the investment because to get great rank on Google means a huge amount of potential clients and customers will find your business, and that’s a great return on investment.

Google Local Places SEO in New York City , New York

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