Google Local Business Centre, Google Maps & Local Search

Every business can now display considerable detail about their business on Google Maps for free. All that is required is to complete the basic information requirements by logging into Google Maps with your own Google Account and verifying the information provided. Google can independently place a business listing on its maps if it can find an address on a 3rd party website.

If you haven’t got a Google Account you will be required to open one. This is a painless process.

Once a business is added to Google Maps it becomes eligible to be found by people searching on Google Maps. If a company does not have a listing it will never be found by a searcher using Google Maps to locate a local business.

Internet marketers can create these Google Map listings for clients or clients can do it for themselves.

The image below shows part of the Google Maps page that I’ve created for my own listing for SEOza.com:

SEOza local business centre listing

This image shows a section of my self generated local business listing on Google Maps. This is the information that would be seen by a searcher going to Google Maps and looking for my organisation’s name or finding my listing using a keyword search on Google Maps (eg Search Marketing Bedfordview).

It is also possible that Google under particular circumstances would choose to show this page as part of its normal keyword based search results where local geo-targeting was seen to be important. It is possible to embed a direct link to the map on a web page or in an email to facilitate the finding of the company.

It’s important when creating a listing on Google Maps to make the correct category choice from the options provided. The more specific the primary category choice is the better. It’s possible to select secondary categories.
It’s also important to include in the listing description appropriate keywords that best describe the business of your organization.
Try to include an important keyword in the title of your Map listing as I’ve done above… Seoza Search Marketing.
Once the listing information has been completed you will be required to verify that you own the listing. This is normally accomplished by receiving an automatic telephone call to the number you’ve used in your listing. Once the call has been received you will be provided with a number which you need to enter into the verification page.
The procedure is straightforward.
Only one listing per single location is allowed… so if you operate more than a single business from the same address you need to choose the most relevant entry.
Claiming your spot on Google Maps is one of the most important things you can do at no cost since this geo listing will almost certainly prove to be even more important as Local Search becomes more sophisticated. Having a listing on Google Maps is no guarantee of anything in particular but NOT having a listing may well be mean that it will be extra difficult to receive higher rankings in normal Google search results pages.

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