Listing your website in Google Local is an important step toward gaining greater visibility. However, it is one that is often overlooked by many business owners. It should be accepted knowledge that doing some internet marketing to get your website listed will gain greater visibility while also increasing traffic and, hopefully, the profitability of your business. In order to do this, try following these steps.

Step 1: Conduct Quite a Few Searches

Conduct quite a few searches relating your type of business to the geographic area in which you operate. For example, if you have a business that provides Botox service in Hermosa Beach, CA, you could perform searches in Google by typing in:

• Hermosa Beach Botox
• Hermosa Beach Botox treatment

The concept here is to conduct as many searches as possible that will bring back results that are geographically specific for your business. Going through the results and analyzing some key points will help you with your local search engine optimization initiatives.

Step 2: Select Several Businesses that Consistently Get Top Rankings

From the results page, select several businesses – possibly a dozen or so – that have consistently received top rankings. Create a formal spreadsheet that will allow you to properly track your information and also expand the document, if needed, later on in this process.

Step 3: Visit the Reviews

Go to the local profile of each of these businesses returned on the results page and click on any links available for reviews. This will bring you to a page that will contain a lot of different information and data that Google has discovered while searching that business website.

Step 4: Read the “More About This Place”

Check out the link “More about This Place” to discover a number of different brief pieces concerning the business such as the many different URLs and titles that Google has discovered that are relevant to this particular type of business.

Step 5: Add to Listing Sources

Information about different listing sources will be discovered where you can either add yours or update your business information if it’s already contained therein. You want to make sure that the information is consistently the same. For example, your address may be listed as 900 E. Main St., or 900 East Main Street, or 900 E Main St Suite 100, or 900 East Main Street #100 – all different, which is not good. Make sure each and every listing of your business is exactly alike.

Many of these listing sources offer the potential to earn links! This can be good way to acquire some good quality, trusted sites linking to yours.

Step 6: Repeat Step 4 & 5 for the ”Reviews” and “User Content” Sections

If you are interested in finding additional sources, you can check the listings of your competitors. Make sure to also check out the Google Maps/Local page in those business listings. You can take a glance at both the “user content” and the “reviews” sections to find extra spots.

You can always use one of the automated services to help you out, but these are not always guaranteed because they don’t always offer listing consistency. As we discussed earlier, consistency is VERY important. Automated systems often submit information to the wrong area, cutting off portions of the telephone number or putting your suite number where it doesn’t belong. It’s worth it to spend the time to submit those listings yourself. You’ll be much happier with your Google local ranking that way.

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