By Clive, on December 16th, 2009
Today we are doing a one hour webinar on “How To Get Your Business Listed on Google Local / Google Maps”. There has been a fantastic response and people are still signing up. You can get more details here – Google Local Webinar
Some interesting points that came up as I was doing the research for this webinar:
- How Google has lowered the effectiveness of SEO for local businesses by essentially driving them off the first page. Although this is not technically true as they do still appear, for many searches they were “below the fold” meaning I had to scroll down to see them!
- This is only going to get worse with the addition of Google Local Listing ads
- The importance of CONSISTENCY with your business Internet data. Make sure you use the same Business Name, Address, Phone etc.
- How a whole new realm and set of rules has emerged for Local Business Listings
- How quickly these rules are changing – virtaully on a weekly basis.
My Google Local Citation Experiment
As part of the webinar I am going to be doing a bit of an experiment. I will be requesting people to post comments and include their Business Name, Address and Business Telephone to see if they show up as a “Citation” on Google Maps.
Please feel free to join this experiment. If you are not comfortable leaving a phone number that is fine – the Business Name and Address will probably also work. Please report back after a few weeks and report back if this shows up in your “web pages” section of your Google Local Listing.
Thanks.
By Clive, on December 7th, 2009
As a company that deals with Google Adwords on a daily basis we finally decided that it was worth taking the Google Adwords Certification Exam. The primary motivation for this is that you need to become a Google Adwords Certified company in order to get a Google rep that can help with any issues that may arise on our clients Adwords accounts.
As Darren is our resident “guru” we got him to study for the exam and he took it over the weekend. He was a little apprehensive as he had read many reports of people only just passing the exam after spending a week or so studying – he spent a number of hours studying on Saturday and then took the exam on Sunday afternoon.
I can think of better ways to spend a Sunday afternoon but certainly appreciate his efforts.
The Results?
Well let’s put this in perspective before I talk about those. This is a two hour online exam where you have to download a separate browser that locks you into the test – no quick Google searches for answers. The test consists of 120 question so you have a minute per question.
We all know he is crazy smart and really knows his stuff when it come to Adwords. This test confirmed that – he passed with 99%!
If you do the math 99% means that he got ONE out of the 120 questions wrong.
Well done Darren!
PS. I will get Darren to post some advice and tips on how to prepare and take this exam.
By Clive, on November 23rd, 2009
… even if you don’t have a web site!
If you don’t know what a Google Local Business listing is you need to find out! Your Google Local Business listing probably exists if you are unaware of it! Google has scrapped the data for the local listing from many different resources and it is up to you to claim and verify the information.
You can find many reports of hijacked listings and here are some links to articles about some of them:
- A locksmith that hijacked a dumpling restaurant
- Top florist listings that were hijacked
- Microsoft’s listing hijacked and changed to Microsoft Escort Service
Should any business from large corporates through to one man shows need to worry about their business listing being hijacked, especially when they didn’t even know that it could be hijacked on that it even existed? One business reported a 30% drop in business over the period his listing had been hijacked!
What you need to do – here is a link to the Google Local Business Center (LBC) where there is a ton of useful information on how to claim and update your listing.
Watch out for deleting any duplicate entries, that may delete your main listing.
