Understanding Google My Business & Local Search
Get Listed U, Denver
Today, I am presenting at the fourth GetListed.org Local University in the Denver to a full house. If you are coming PLEASE take a moment to introduce yourself as I would love to meet you.
For those of you that attended the presentation these links will provide background information and details for a pathway to dig deeper into the world of managing your listing on Google Maps. For those of you that are not in attendance, the slides provide a good overview of critical base line ideas and tactics that every local campaign should embrace.
Slide 2 – March 2010 Search Engine Market Share
Slide 8/9 – The Importance of Page One Visibility
Slides 11/12 – How the Google Cluster Works
Slide 15- Choosing the Right Category – A Tool
Slide 15 – Writing a Great Business Description
Slide 16 – Creating a GeoSitemap – A tool
Slide 17 – Google Places Policies: Quality guidelines
Slide 22/23 Local Search Ranking Factors – the many variables
Slide 22/23 A brief list of 10 Ranking Factors – somewhat old but still valid and a quick read
Slide 22/23 Thinking about your Business Name in the Internet Era
Slide 23 – Custom Maps – A Goldmine
Slide 23- The Importance of Citations
Slide 23 – 20 Citation Sources in the US
Slide 23 – User Generated Content – Geo Tagged Photos
Slide 23 – How To Gather Reviews
Slide 23- Where to Gather Reviews
Slide 24- A Listing management tool
© Copyright 2024 - MIKE BLUMENTHAL, ALL RIGHT RESERVED.
Comments
15 Comments
Mike, this is a fantastic list. Thanks for putting it together. Wish I could be in Denver. How about a San Francisco stop?
This is INCREDIBLE information worth millions of dollars to many businesses. The citations info is a gold mine. Anyone who doesn’t listen to Mike and wants to be a success in Places, must be crazy!
Have a marvelous Local U, Mike and all you guys!
I find places infinitely more frustrating than organic rankings. The information here is invaluable.
@Kevin Pate: Plus organic got pushed to the bottom of the page, so it is basically there to impress other old school webmasters I guess. Studies show that first result is most likely to get the conversion/call. That means Maps/Places, or trying to get a high quality score in Adwords. My experience with adwords, is that I get bombarded with hits and calls from SEO companies trying to “help” my improve my “quality score”. Then automatically, Indian and Vietnamese ip addresses start bombarding my ads too. Then I read online that competitors hire people overseas to exhaust your adwords daily bids.
In other words, these jokers are clicking my 15 dollar per click ad, to try and “help” me. Maps/Places is your only hope of saving your online business if you were a king in organic (“The Happy Times”). With the advent of Maps, at least for Google, organic for commercial sites, has gone the way of the Dodo Bird, unless Places is down or something on a given day or search, or save for, in limited circumstances, such as a keyword not listed in the “categories” section in Local.
Our business suffered greatly as a result of organic for local search keywords being pushed down to bottom of page. For some reason, generic keywords with no local identifier, still display at the top. But why do I want to deal with someone from Alabama calling me, when I am only licensed to practice law in California? Organic gave certainty to struggling businesses who published articles, and engaged in social media.
Places, with its ever evolving and sometimes vague and ambiguous rules, extreme punishments for failing to abide thereby, or lack thereof, brings uncertainty and fear to those who always relied upon the reliable organic algo.
Places currently also represents a windfall to those who never ranked in Google. (from the perspective of an old school organic guy) Places has also spurred creation of a nest of fake businesses, with fake business names, that SEO companies sell to unsuspecting businesses for thousands of dollars per month in many cases.
But get on board, or go bankrupt guys and girls. Gawd I miss the days of organic too! There is no Matt Cutts for Maps/Places! Blumenthal basically became the Local Search Matt Cutts overnight. So if you want to survive, you had better read EVERY single thread and post, and referring link on this site and forget hiring an SEO expert. My 2 cents.
Hello Mike,
I can’t thank you enough for coming to Denver yesterday. Your presentation was off the charts fantastic!
You provided so much great content that it will take me many trips through my notes and your slides to get a handle on all of the material. In particular, I was impressed with your demonstration of local search using voice activation on your smart phone. It was another example of why a business must have a properly configured local listing if the want to reach the largest audience of potential customers.
Mike, I must admit that while I’ve always enjoyed and benefited from ready your blog, I had this image of you in my mind that I now know is incorrect (at least somewhat incorrect).
That image was of you as a nutty, nerdy professor type. What a wonderful surprise to see your great sense of humor during your presentation yesterday. Another thing I appreciated was the empathy you shared with us regarding the many frustrations we’ve had when dealing with listing errors and other problems on the big G.
Thanks for all of your help!
Randy
Congrats: Mike and to the LocalU team. From the comments on twitter it looks like it was an enthusiastic and appreciative group.
It actually strikes me as weird that Google dropped out of the presentations. Per the comments I saw, there were people at the session that hadn’t claimed their listings.
You would think they would welcome these sessions as ways to get more businesses to claim their local records.
@Randy, wait, you were there yesterday and didn’t think Mike was nerdy and nutty? 😀 Are you sure you were at the right hotel? Seriously, though…Mike does have a great sense of humor. Glad that you enjoyed the day as much as we did yesterday.
@Ted – We’ve had interest from a couple of different groups in Northern California so far, but nothing has come to fruition. We continue to entertain ideas for additional venues where Chambers, newspapers, etc. can help us get the word out “on the ground.”
@David Mihm. Why not come to Los Angeles? My guess is that every PI lawyer, including me, would be there. Heck, I’ll set it up for you.
This is a great list. It fills in some of the blanks that I have.
Great seminar in Denver. Looking forward to the next one.
Mike,
It was great meeting you at the Get Listed U event on Thursday. Your knowledge sharing was greatly appreciated and we will definitely be relooking our strategies based on what we learned. I also can’t wait to dive into Google Boost. Thanks for being on top of new products.
Thanks again.
Anne
Denver Local U was an awesome event! Thanks so much for your presentation!
@Mike re Anne’s comment above:
What is Google Boost?
@Anne & Jeffrey Thank you
@Ted
See today’s 3 articles
Dang…I missed out as that was literally in my backyard! Mike-In your future workshops are you going to be covering the new ‘instant’ Places search implications for small businesses?
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