Free Google advertising for your business

Yes! Celebrate the 89cent petrol price drop with some free advertising from Google – the granddaddy of online search.

It’s true. You can get your business on the top of Google without investing a lot of time, energy and effort into SEO. (SEO is just a geek term for ‘search engine optimization’). The answer? Google Places.

[Side note – Google received 10.2 billion search queries last month (yes, that’s billion with a B)]

Have you ever searched Google and see that little map jump up? Like so:

The map on the top right hand side shows a local search is performed. And your business could be in top few listings just like mine (leanmarketing.co.za). However, this is not for everyone. Let me explain:

People search commercially when certain events are triggered in their lives. Like when you get crazy and decide to get married you search on Google for a venue. When your geyser goes kaboom you search online for a plumber, right? When you need to stay overnight in another city you look on Google for a B&B or a hotel. Makes sense?

See specific events trigger these online searches (like the leaky plumbing which creates the situation where you start searching for a plumber). And naturally, the place to start a search is Google.co.za – even the stats from Google Trends confirm this:

But I am getting ahead of myself. Just, remember this:

Events & “stuff” happen in the customer’s life > this creates a need > customer performs a Google search > customer chooses a service provider (I’ll get to this matter in a moment).

That is why, one of my clients (a kitchen company) is rocking local search. People move into a new house or they decide to revamp their place and go online and search. Simple as that. So if your business is similar to the types of businesses I described above, where people actually go and look for you – go claim your listing!

No, wait, stop. Not before you read this. There are only a few spots in the top places you can rank for locally. And Google obviously have a set criteria in deciding which businesses to put at the top. As far as I can tell, Google puts emphasis on:

·         The distance between your business and the centroid (actual distance between your business and the city)

·         Amount of reviews you have in your listing

·         The quality of reviews you have in your listing

·         How specific your selected categories matches up with the search query

·         Completeness of  your Google Places listing

And of course 70+ other factors Google takes into account. However, don’t let that discourage you in getting, keeping and maintaining your listing. It is much, much easier than optimizing a business to display naturally on the top of a normal google search.

If you would like me to either:

·         Set up a listing for you

·         Revamp your existing listing

·         Boost your local ranking

Phone me on +27 016-366-7032 and I’ll take a look at your listing.

Peace.

P.S. Almost forgot. Here is how people (mostly) decide on where to click after they searched in Google. By following a hierarchy of search click through rate:

·         First Google position: 36.4%

·         Second Google position: 12.5%

·         Third Google position: 9.5%

·         10th Google position: 2.2%

·         Top three positions in Google earned 58.4% of all clicks

·         The top 10 positions in Google earned 81.1% of all clicks

·         The second page of Google earned 14.4% of all clicks

Thanks to Optify for those stats.