Here’s the agenda: this is what we’re going to go over in this webinar. A brief Google Places basics. What not to do reviews using the review triage system, the best use of coupons, QR codes, building your business and then, if we have time we’ll, do some question and answer so.
The first thing I want to show you is exactly what a what Google Places is and what it is not so in this in this screenshot here, what you see is at the top. What you see is the paid listings so paid results. This is google pay-per-click. If you look at this third listing here, you can see that autumn journey hospice is actually using their google places listing or their their actual address, as an extension to their google adwords, and so that way their phone number and their actual citation shows up in their Google adwords campaign and that’s also called google boost, so there’s a couple of ways you can do that, but that gives them the blue a on the map and then, if you go down here a little bit further you’ll see that now we’re into Google Places – and You can see that these are the top seven listings.
This is what we call the seven pack abcdefg. This is a seven pack, and this is where you want to be so all of our local businesses want to be in the seven pack for their local area, and that’s where you show up at the very top of the Google search page – and this is all Natural, these are not paid results. If we look over here on the right hand, side you can see that there are some paid results underneath the map on the right hand, side as well, really the focus for this webinar is this right here.
This is the seven pack, and this is where we want to be so now. If we actually look at what a Google Places page looks like we can see here that whoops, we can see here that eminent home Healthcare has a very good Google Places, page they’ve maxed it out with pictures. They have a article. They have lots and lots of reviews coming from everywhere from citysearch from superpages from all kinds of different things, so they have reviews, they have maxed out their listing, they have citations and all kinds of good stuff.
So this is an example of an excellent and very well done. Google Places page – and this is what everyone should strive to have – is something that’s maxed out completely put together correctly. Just like this. This is the bottom of their Google Places page and what you can see here is it’s a little cut off, but these are the actually the M, the additional citations for that Google Places page. This is what else Google finds about this business across the internet extremely important, and we’ll talk about that.
So, let’s look at keyword and market research. This is the very first step in deciding and what you want to do with your Google Places page, and this is extremely important for two kinds of people that are on this webinar. I should preface this our back up a little bit and say that the two people listening two kinds of people listening to this webinar number one, our local business owners who want to do this themselves and want to do it correctly and save a little money.
By doing it themselves and the other set of folks that are reading this webinar, our internet, marketers and consultants, marketing consultants who help small businesses get to that top seven pack for Google Places. So this is geared for both of you kind of in the beginning phases, and this gives you the step-by-step on and the basics on how to achieve these results. Now we also have an entire suite of articles like 19 articles that actually walk you through can’t hold.
You the whole way and show you exactly what to do to get in that. Seven pack and those articles are very important, but this webinar just kind of goes over everything all at once. It gives you a real big overview, so you can understand why Google Places is more complicated than it may seem. So, let’s look at keyword, research. The first thing you’re going to want to do is some very targeted keyword, research, you’re, going to want to find out what people are typing in.
To look for your business is your location, and once you know the answer to that, then you are. It can be very laser focused on how to get your business to the seven pack. So this what you see on the screen here is actually a google adwords keyword, research tool, so you can use this for free, there’s no cost to it, and what I did here is you can see right here. This says seafood restaurant in san, diego right here I actually pretended like.
I had a client who is a seafood restaurant in san diego, and so what I can see based on these results that you can see they’re pretty small. But what you can see here is that they actually have about a thousand global monthly searches, but I what I really want to see are the exact searches. So if I change over here on the left-hand side to exact match types, then I can see that on a monthly basis about a hundred and forty people are typing in exact searches for the keyword phrase seafood restaurant in San Diego and that’s what I want to Know so those are a hundred and forty opportunities from my client to get a someone inside their restaurant because people are looking for that.
So that’s what I want to focus on and that’s how I do this is not the entire way. You do keyword research, but this is a good beginning to keyword, research, understanding what people are typing in, so that you know where you should be showing up on Google Places and for what keyword terms. The next thing you want to do is assess your clients are Institute current location or current situation. So is your client or are you on the in the top seven already, and what do you need to do to maintain that if you’re not in the top seven, if you’re not even near the top seven, what can you do to change that so assess your Current situation and then assess the competition status.
This is where it gets fun. You can learn a lot from what your competition is doing. So let’s say that the fish market in San, Diego is my competition, and I want to learn as much as I can about what they’re doing so that I can do it too, and I can beat them at their own game. So the first thing I’m going to do is I’m going to appear at the very top I’m going to check out their website. I actually want to see what kind of keywords are using on their website and then I want to look at the categories that they’ve chosen for the Google Places page and the first one.
They chose a seafood restaurant. They also chose some custom categories that they typed in, and I want to find out what those are too and if they apply to me, then I want to look at the tons of reviews they have and from multiple places. So Google is aggregating and grabbing from the internet all these different reviews on the fish market, restaurant, and so I want to know where those reviews are coming from and what I want to do is make sure that my business is listed on all those review sites.
So that I can get reviews there too, and I can beat the fish market at its own game, and I guarantee you if you look really closely at this page. This wasn’t done just by the people that own the fish market they actually hired. Someone to take care of this for them very, very smart indeed, especially in a competitive market like San Diego seafood restaurant. Then, if I look down, of course, they’ve got all our photos are maxed out and they’ve got article.
Then, if I look at the menu right here, they actually have sorry they have a live link to their menu, and this is great because you can put a live link to just about anything within the details section of Google Places and you want to make sure You’re doing that, that’s a page rank 10 back link to your website and that’s something you definitely want to go for and then down here. You can see more reviews from the web and I definitely want to take advantage of that look into those reviews and find out as much as I can about.
What’s going on with the fish market, restaurant and then Google Places basics. You want to write up your plan once you have established your keyword, research, you understand what your competition is doing. You know where you’re located right up your plan, so the the plan will involve these things, and this is where you get out a pen and paper and you write it down. I will optimize the following: five high-volume keyword phrases, so you want to take five keyword, phrases that you’ve researched and you want to make sure you’re optimizing that only your website what your Google Places page for those five high-volume keyword phrases.
You want to take a look at your categories, decide what they need to be going to look at some secondary keywords that you might be interested in also optimizing for. You want to look at your citation and most people don’t understand what a citation is. So I’m going to tell you right now: what a citation is your citation is the exact name of your company without any keywords added to it. That would be called keyword stuffing the exact street address and the you know, city, state, zip code and the exact local.
Not toll-free but local telephone number, so your citation is your exact business name, your exact business address and location and your exact business local phone number. That is your citation write it down exactly the way you want to appear on Google Places and exactly the way you wanted to appear everywhere else, including your website other directory listing sites. It should be the same across everything and then your website SEO take a look at what your keyword phrases are that you’ve done your research on and look at your website.
Does it have the same keyword phrases you need to match everything up and make sure it’s all very consistent, very relevant and all together make sense your description. You have a 200 character limit description for Google Places. That’s also a good rule of thumb for your website. Behind the scenes, you’re allowed to put a description of each page of your website, so you want to make sure you find out what description you want to use and you want to use it consistently across your website and your Google Places pages in your directory listings.
Hugh ponds and offers people aren’t making the most out of coupons and offers, so I would encourage you to do the best you can to get all kinds of coupons and offers out there on the table, make sure that people are aware of them and really use This to your advantage, because most people – don’t it’s important – that you do, then I want you to go to express, update, USA com and enter you or your clients, exact citation their address, their name, their phone number.
All of that into this program. This is extremely important. Express update, USA is a division of info USA com where you can buy mailing lists Express update. Usa com is an aggregator of data. So when you go there and put your information in your information is shared with lots of other places across the internet. It’s sort of like a validation service, so you want to make sure that your client citation is exactly correct in Express update, USA, what not to do! First of all and when you’re filling out your Google Places page, you do not want to engage in keyword stuffing.
So if you look at the top of the page there, you see American care partners at home. It does not say American care partners at home in fairfax in Falls Church in Arlington in Virginia. It just says American care partners at home. That’s the name of the company, that’s the end of the story. We don’t add anything to that and then, if you look down a little bit next you’ll see local number. Only. Please only use a local number here.
If you use a toll-free number, your listing simply will not show up the question becomes. Can you use a VoIP number? Can you use a cell phone number and the answer is this: if you intend on being consistent across all websites all directory listings and your Google Places page, you can use any local number that you want, but if you start mixing them up and adding different things Here and different things there then you’re going to confuse the Google monster and you’re not going to show up at all so use the same phone number everywhere across the board for your listings, email address.
I see a lot of listings missing an email address, even if it’s one that’s just for a general mailbox or maybe it’s one that you set up this just for junk mail. Please always enter an email address for contact information and then the website don’t ever click. I don’t have a website, you do, have a website do something, but you must have a website and never choose the option to not show your full address.
You always need to choose your full show your full address, or you will simply not have a listing on Google Places so make sure that the information on your website matches the description in your Google Places page and then, if we keep going down, we go down To categories when you fill in your categories, the first category needs to be one. That’s found on Google and they’ll, give you their list and then, after that, the other four can be ones that you customized yourself.
So just use your keywords, use them wisely and click and make sure that they’re not stuffed with location information. So Google Places advice, no keyword stuffing, no peel boxes. No, you cannot use peel boxes, you cannot use UPS stores and you cannot use mail boxes etc. You can look at Google’s Terms of Service to see this. You cannot use any of those services. Virtual offices like, for instance, sold by Regis re G, us calm, Regis calm.
They have virtual offices worldwide. You can rent one for around 100 bucks a month. That’s a much better option than having no listing at all. In most cases do not use toll-free numbers, you can use them as a secondary number, but not as a primary number. No duplicate listings. You cannot have multiple listings under different names and titles that will get you delisted completely, no fakery or ridiculous insanity that covers everything else that you might think that you might try when it comes to Google Places.
Don’t do it be consistent, be real and be relevant. Don’t piss off the Google monster because if you play you will pay and you if you get delisted, orb and then you’re simply out of the picture for Google Places. Don’t do that to your client? Don’t do that to yourself set up the Google Places page now. I’r not going to go into great detail on this, because you can look at all the Google Terms of Service and support for setting up a Google Places page.
So we won’t go into that here, plus we have 19 articles that walk you step-by-step through the process of setting up Google Places and give you all the tips tricks and hints, as you go as to what to do to make sure you’re getting the most bang For your buck and then you want to track the results. Google Places provides its own set of analytics. You can see here that this listing had 1299 impressions in the last 30 days and of those impressions.
363 people took action so 23, clicked on more info. For the maps 308 clicked for driving directions and 32 clicked on to the website, that’s excellent results. You can also see the top search queries and where people requested driving directions from so top search. Queries shows that when American care partners has typed in they got 60 impressions from that they got 55 from home care. They got 43 from the word living, caregivers, assisted living and on and on it doesn’t give us the detail that we would like to see under other, which is 930 other search, queries that we show for but at least we have some basic knowledge of where we’re Getting our impressions and then driving directions now this is really important for florists, chiropractors, dentist, retail spaces and even other service providers.
I want to know where people are requesting driving in directions in direction. Information from because I may be very surprised at where people are coming from to find my shop or my store, so I’m in this case this is a service provider who goes out to the home. So most of these folks don’t need to drive to this office, but you can see that alexandria has the most requests: advanced, page techniques, the power of citations, the what who and the how.
So if we go back to our example of the seafood restaurant in san diego, we can see that the AXI food restaurant has lots of Google Places citations examples here and if you look at the very bottom left hand corner, you can see that there actually a Hundred and forty more so if I were trying to beat them at this game, what I would do is I would look at every place that they’re listed and I would go in and try to get my client or my business if it were.
If, if I’m doing this myself listed on all the places that they’re listed on, because obviously Google likes to aggregate data from those websites, so that’s the first thing I would do Google Places advanced. The advanced techniques mean that you want to look at the competition citations. You want to copy them and you want to one-up them. It’s that simple. It does take a lot of time, a lot of effort and a lot of energy and sometimes an entire team of people to make this happen, but you can do it local SEO.
Your website metadata and I’ve said this before – should match your Google Places. Data should match all other directory listings data. So when you’re filling out your Google Places information make sure that everything else you do matches what Google Places says and you’ll have much more success off-site. Linking now should you be creating backlinks to your Google Places page. This means and people ask this question, because what backlinks are are links to typically to your website and the more backlinks.
Your website has the more authority it has and the it shows up. So the question becomes: if your Google Places page has a lot of links to it, will it show up better in the Google Places rankings, and I don’t think I think the jury’s still out on this? It does not hurt to get backlinks to your Google Places. Page each Google Places page has its own unique URL, so it never hurts to get backlinks to it.
Although you have to realize this, the continuous addition of citations and information about your clients, local business referencing, their nad, which is their name, address telephone number website, etc. In other words, their citations – this is one of the most effective ways to increase listing rank so that in reviews those the two first things you should be focusing on not necessarily backlinking to the Google Places page.
So when it’s all said and done and you’ve tried everything else and you’ve done anything else, then go for the backlinking. That might be something that you outsource article and Google Places. Ok, so just a little information. This is kind of our secret sauce. If you go to any of the articles that we upload for our clients, we put their exact citation in there YouTube in the description of the article we put their exact citation from google places in that section for the description of their article.
We always do that. It gives them extra citations and it works very, very well – the review triage system, what who and how? Ok. So let’s talk about reviews for a minute if you’re a restaurant – and you have a thousand reviews, the review triage system is not one that you necessarily need to use, but for everybody else, who’s not in the restaurant, entertainment industry or the travel industry. If you’re a plumber, if you’re a painter, if you’re a lawyer, a home care agency, a roofer or whatever, you might not have as many reviews as a restaurant with a thousand reviews, everybody knows that when lots and lots of reviews build up, there’s always bound to Be a few negative ones in there.
That’s completely normal and completely human nature, and we wouldn’t have it any other way so of a thousand review. Several of them may be a little on the negative side, but they kind of get buried by all the good stuff. So that’s okay, but if you’re somebody that doesn’t have any reviews or not many reviews or your industry doesn’t typically get a lot of reviews, then the most important thing you could do is use what’s called a review triage system.
This is a program that we develop. So that you only get the most positive reviews, but they are real reviews and they are from your customers. So what we do is we set up a website? That’s just for the review system. So we have it. Our client who’s. The business owner asked their customers to please go to a dedicated website, that’s just for them and leave some reviews. There are several questions that they’re asked it’s just basically, yes, no rating on the scale of one to five and then a little place where they can add some text and lots of clients are happy to do that.
They don’t have to. They don’t have to create accounts, they don’t have to do anything. They just go and leave their a review and they’re done once the review is done. That review is automatically emailed to us and to our client. So we can each take a look at it and decide if that review needs to move on to step 2. If it’s a really good review, it moves to step 2. If it’s not a good review, then the client are, but the business owner goes back to the customer to try to resolve the issues and that review never sees the light of day.
If it’s a great review, then we summarize it we send it back to the customer and say we would love for you to share this wonderful review with the rest of our community. Would you please put it on Google Places, yelping, yahoo or whatever, and we give them the link to do so. So this we have all of the scripts written out all of the emails written out. We have for anybody, that’s not so much in the elder care industry.
That’s the one you’re looking at here, but for anybody who’s, not the elder care industry. Like a plumber, a painter auto repair shop, whatever it is, you can actually incentivize clients by maybe giving them a free oil change or ten dollar gift card to starbucks or whatever. So you might want to think about the ways you can incentivize somebody to go through the kind of hassle factor of leaving a review on a review site and there’s a lot more to this, and we will have a product together just for the review triage system.
If you need help with the review triage system, let us know and we’ll put together one just for you and your clients top 10 review sites in Google Places search. This is just for for your reference. Only you want to look at what your competition is doing. First, this data and research comes from local SEO guy. This is andrew, scotland’s blog a local search, optimization small business marketing and search engine, optimization strategy.
So for 2011, the top ten review sites are Yelp, citysearch, insider pages, yahoo, local dealer, rater duties, book, tripadvisor, edmonds, agates an open table, and you can see a couple of them really do cater to the restaurant industry, but definitely look at what your competition is doing And then also, this list is extremely helpful. The best use of coupons that I went online to look for some really good examples and was hard to find any actually in google places, but I did run across this one, not too bad.
Free estimates are no new water heater through Hoffman brothers. There’s a local company to me: maintenance, programs and water heaters and all kinds of stuff like that, so they have three pretty good coupons. Actually they have four and when, if you are looking at them on your mobile phone, this is what you would see. You would see that they have some good information now. Only one of these coupons actually has a phone number in it.
This one over here on the right. All of them should have a phone number in them, and the reason is that, if you’re on your mobile phone, a phone number like this is one that you can just click on and automatically dial huffman brothers. So that’s something that they should include in every coupon plus there’s opportunity to put a picture in here, and so they should have a picture in each one of these here’s an example.
This is my listing. I just put this up as a quick example. If you know that most of the customers that are coming to your store or your website or two are looking for, you are using a PC or a laptop, you might consider putting a QR code with a dis special discount in your in your in your coupons And the reason I say that is that you can actually once somebody uses their smartphone to capture or to scan that QR code.
You can actually then capture their name, their phone number, their email address whatever it is, you want, so you can get more data from them if they they scan it. Now. The problem with this is, if you’re, a restaurant or you’re doing this for a restaurant or an entertainment, venue or travel industry. You don’t want to use QR codes in your coupons because they will show up on the actual cell phone and then they’re not scalable by the cell phone.
So this only is a good strategy when it’s done for businesses that you know, people are searching from their pc or laptop, but just sort of an example of what can be done. The next. The one of the important things to know is that Google Offers is in its beta phase right now and it’s a really only active in portland oregon and it’s just getting started, but it will be a competitor of Groupon and several other things.
If you have your Google Places act together, you will then have your google offers act together. So, if they’re, for no other reason, you want to make sure that you have google offers together and our google places together so that when google offers comes to your town, you can make the most of it. Google Maps and Google Places. Many people know what my maps is and if you don’t that’s, okay, it still exists, but it used to be that they would show up on Google Places pages and they don’t anymore because everybody spam them.
So what we do is we create a dynamic google map of our clients, location and we place it on their website. So if you look at any of our websites, you’ll see that each of them in several places, has a google map actually on the website. Now this is not a screenshot, it’s actually a dynamic map. So if you were to put your pointer on it and move around or click on it, it actually does stuff it moves around with you it you can actually click on the directions or show service area or more or rate it.
You can click on these things and you can actually make them work, so this is not a screenshot. This is an actual dynamic map and the embed code is on the Google Places page QR codes. This is a part I love. So if you want to know more about QR codes, you should first of all take the time to pull out your smartphone and scan this one and then you’ll see what I’m talking about so actually I just did this one in a mysterious way.
It’s a picture. So if you know me at all, you’ll know why I picked this picture, but anyway you can use QR codes for lots of things and they are going to fast become one of the most interesting ways to market your business, especially local businesses, so be sure to Pay attention to this vast company’s top 13 lists. Qr codes on business cards for scavenger hunts for labeling, for storefront displays, promotions, discounts and giveaways laptop stickers.
T-Shirts get funky with your QR code design by making it pink blue multi colored use. Qr codes to get like some follows on your facebook supplement, your retail space, increase your ecommerce sales, build your email subscriber list and get the phone ringing. In fact, you could. You know, instead of for a good time, call Jane. You can just create a QR code with James phone number on it. Stick it up all over the place and then lots of people will call Jane and I’m kind of just kidding.
Don’t do that. But anyway, it’s very funny: ok and then let’s talk about building your business. If you are the internet, marketer or the consultant, let’s talk about you for just a minute. First of all, you have lots of tools to your advantage. If you’re a traffic geyser person, you have influenced engines, local search, results, screen shots and other online tools of show placement. You should use all of them for pricing.
I always charge a setup fee at a monthly legacy fee to and to help your client. Your client understand more about why you need a monthly fee beats the simple rule of you cannot set it and forget it in this case. This is not a Ron Popeil product and you just can’t set it and forget it. You have to list everything so that the customer has a clear understanding of the amount of work involved on a monthly basis and folks, let me tell you there is a lot of work involved.
You need to you, have a choice. You can charge a high setup fee or a low setup fee and a higher monthly recurring fee, which makes the most sense in this economic environment. For you, my guess is that maybe a lower setup fee and a higher monthly recurring fee makes more sense because it becomes more digestible, easy to buy it off and chew. For the small business owner, I will say that for look for google places we do.
Custom quotes for anybody who wants us to do a Google Places program exclusively, and the reason is that, if you’re in New York City in your restaurant – and you want to be on the seven pack and you’re located in manhattan – guess what it’s going to cost you A lot more money for me to get you spend the time to get you on the top seven than it is for me to do that for you, if you’re a restaurant in West winnemucca North Dakota, where there is very little competition, so we always custom quote: Not because we think somebody else can afford more or less it’s because location, demographics, geography all play a role and how difficult or how easy it might be to get somebody in the top.
Seven so always make sure you check around a new little research before you throw out quotes for Google Places. Results, show results screen shots from before to after never miss an opportunity to show your client results and show prospects results. All you need is that first client and you’ll be able to get more to come to you over time. So what’s next, you can do this yourself if you’re a small business owner.
You can do this. If you’re, an internet marketing consultant go to ww LOL, place, profits, com, that’s local place, profits, com, there’s a 40 page PDF and of course I spelled and wrong and 19 articles that walk you step-by-step through everything from set up to advanced techniques. All 19 are there and they’re they’re excellent and they do walk you through step-by-step. The list price on the website is five hundred forty nine dollars and through midnight tonight now you’re reading this article or this webinar after we did our first webinar so and in the first webinar the price was 199 and you can do a to pay at 9950 E 30 days apart, so you can get some special pricing and special deals, but my request to you – because I don’t know when you’ll be reading this article is that you actually check with us.
First, these prices are not set in stone and we do not have to honor the 199 just because you’re reading this six months later, so you need to check with us and find out what the pricing is. What the deals are. There may be some really good out there, don’t ever hesitate to ask what you want to do. Is you want to send your questions about pricing about product if it’s not on the website, go to valerie at LTC, EP calm, just email me and i’ll be able to tell you what the current pricing is and where you can find the right length so Valerie At LTC EP calm, if you want to call us as 888 404 1513 you’re going to get a much faster response, though through email valerie at LTC EP calm.
Thank you so much. This has been valerie van move and I hope you enjoyed the webinar and good luck with your Google Places.
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