subject: Get Your Business Top Of Google [print this page] In this economic climate it is vital that whatever the nature of your business you have a strong presence online.
The main reason for this is that Search engines and mainly Google have become the No1 resource to find local products and services. Each month more than 600 million people search locally online for products and services. 67% of people that search online actually purchase offline and 22% of people purchase within 24 hours!
Ask yourself. What do you use to find a business or service that you need? I bet its not the Yellow Pages! Search online has now become the dominant force.
So what do you need to focus on to get your business dominating your local market?
Google Places
Yahoo Local
Bing Local
Mobile
SMS
SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Video Marketing
Google AdWords (PPC)
These are the key ingredients that you must get right and you will be in prime position.The foundation of this is Google Places.
It is amazing that less than 10% of business owners have either not claimed or created a listing for their business. With the level of free traffic that this can bring it is really total madness not to do it. However there are no guarantees that your business will show in the top 7 listings on Google for a particular key word or phrase. Set up correctly and well within Google's terms you will get a great listing and no doubt traffic and enquiries to your business.
Yahoo and Bing have similar offerings. Set up differs in certain countries of the world. Some countries you must submit via a third party but in USA you can set up directly. The new Bing Local interface is really good. Bing have come a long way in a short period of time with their Local offering and at present their interface is superior to Google's with the amount of information that you can enter.
In this present day I am sure that you heard people talk about the power of Mobile marketing. Google in particular set up to integrate everything in to Mobile search. Each business in Google Places gets a Mobile optimised web page. The same goes for Yahoo and Bing.
In the USA alone more than 20% of mobile phones have internet capability. That's 45 million phones! A recent AT&T survey stated that 43% of searchers on mobile devices physically showed up at the business location. The crazy thing is that 79% of online advertisers still do not have a mobile optimised website.
Other areas such as Google AdWords are under utilised by business owners. AdWords can be initially a daunting prospect but with expert advice and guidance you can dominate your local area and generate a lot of enquiries and sales.
Take seriously the power of local business search and implement these key strategies to boost your business.
