In Internet Marketing Malaysia, we had covered Google has created pages not just for those businesses who already have web sites, but for millions of businesses who don’t. That was Google Places.
Set it up is easy, but to stay on top of the Google Places you need to take several additional steps. Let’s review.

First thing first, you must fill out your business information as completely as possible.

To make it stronger, you will need to collect citations from other sources and get reviews if you are to maintain a top listing. Mostly for most businesses, the initial challenge is to get their listing information to the 100% complete criteria. Since less than 5% of all Google pages have been setting up so far, you can found your business on the first page of Google already.

By just do the basics, business name, business address, city, state and zip, plus your main contact you will get credit for 40% of completion. Adding your website and email address will add another 15%. If you don’t have a web site, you can set up a Facebook page for that purpose.

Writing in any type of description of your business will add 5%. Let your prospective customers know what you can do for them. Remember we are doing this to attract customers to do more business with you.

Next be sure to add hours of operations. And another 5% for selecting any of the payment options.

As you should know, Google loves to see are pictures and videos. They have space for 10 pictures and they want you to use all ten slots to get full credit. So get out your digital camera and take pictures of your logo, your front door, yourself, your staff, your product, yourself at work, your cat or dog or what ever. Clearly the more business and value related these pics are the better they will sell your prospective customers.

Finally, there is a place for additional details. Putting in a one line statement here will add a final 6% to your completion score.

Your first objective is to set it up. The second is to fill out the form completely, third is to go back and improve the quality of the content. Once done, you will have a Google Places Site that will show off you business properly.

Your Google Places listing is the new Yellow Pages, and you want your listing to be accurate and persuasive. In the near term, this may be all you need to benefit from a first page listing in your market niche in your community. In the future you will need to do more to hang on to that spot, but we will talk about that in future posts.

Leave me a comment if you need any help on internet marketing or Google Places.