Legal Marketing & PR

Improve Your Website Rankings: Follow Google Places Guidelines & Have your Campaign 100% Complete

By Alex

Ranking highly in just ?organic? search engine results is extremely important. But the new kid on the block (pun intended) is getting your Local listing placed.

Most searches now pull Local listings on top of organic results, meaning this is what people see first. This makes having a listing on Google Places? Seven Pack crucial. (Google Places? Seven Pack is the ?A through F? listing that is now displayed on the top of an organic search on Google.)

How to Move to the Front of the ?Pack?

The two main points of doing this properly are:

1. Adhering to the Google Places Guidelines
2. Having a 100% Google Places Dashboard

Guidelines

Google has the power to change the rules of the game (especially since we are all using their products), so staying on top of any new updates to their guidelines is very important for your SEO team. There have been various updates from Google on what is allowed, versus what now is not. Following the most current guidelines versus the old guidelines is imperative, as some actions may actually get your listing removed.

Google Places Dashboard

One of the main items that a campaign can do to bolster its affects is to make sure that your Local Business Center Dashboard is 100% complete.  (A Google Places Dashboard is the main landing page after you log into your account and choose to edit it or update it, i.e. http://screencast.com/t/H1dOozDxgR4T).

This means, when filling out your account, make sure you can provide as much information as possible but, at the same time, adhere to the guidelines mentioned above. For example, make sure that you are not using any other information in the Name Field on the form. In the past, you used to be able to place in items like your practice areas within your name or firm name. This is very strictly monitored now.

Lastly, there are some great resources online that will help in staying on top of what Google wants you to complete, and this great chart happens to be one of them.

Make sure you adhere to both of these two main points in your campaign and you should start seeing your Places listing show up in the results right away.

If you need help setting up your Local listing, or evaluating whether it is set up correctly, contact PaperStreet today at 954.523.2181.

Full post as published by PaperStreet Web Design: SpeakOut on March 03, 2011 (boomark / email).