Why do some Google Local Business Listings Rank and Yours Is Nowhere Near the Top?
Google is a relatively newcomer to the mass media advertising arena. It’s like in the early 60′s when television realized it held the power to make or break a corporation and smaller companies were priced out of the market.
Big Bucks Command Attention
Small to medium size companies just don’t have the advertising budget to get on TV during prime time, let alone the Super Bowl. Even during the dot com bust of 2000 Google’s dominance over search was nothing short of meteoric. From 1998 till 2000 one could get one’s ad (in the form of an entry in the organic or natural search listings) placed in Google for free.
In October 2000 Google introduced it’s form of Pay Per Click (Adwords) which was still amazingly inexpensive. Fast forward to today and for getting top billing in highly competitive markets is going to cost as much (or MORE) than prime time television ad slots.
Fearing that the vast majority of small business owners would simply throw their hands up in despair… Google through them a bone:
Using the existing GoogleMaps infrastructure, Google introduced Local Business Listings, and they offered it for FREE. What a bonus to the little guy.
What I do as a SEM (search engine marketing) consultant is organic search ranking improvement, I get your company website to rank higher in the main search listings than your competitors website ranking. I do that by observing the algorithm that decides which website is “more important” , finding out what it is about the current #1 listed site is that Google seems to like so much and doing them one better.
The algorithm that decides who should be more important is different for the organic (or natural) listings and the Local Business Listings.
So you got your business listed in LBL but it’s buried deep in the bowels of Googlemaps? Want to know how to get yours to improve?
There are many factors involved (and I’m not gonna tell you all my trade secrets) I will tell you that testimonials (aka reviews) are one of the main reasons for one listing to be ranked higher.
Googlemaps Listing for Advertising Agencies Frederick Maryland
The secret to improving your GoogleMaps Listing is… (insert drum roll)
TESTIMONIALS aka reviews
You aren’t going anywhere in gmaps without a review or three or ten.
Think of Google Local Business Listings (aka GoogleMaps) as if it were a newspaper food critic, if the Washington Post food critic said a restaurant was good, bad or excellent… that would have a huge impact on traffic going to that restaurant.
And here’s MY reviews, these are my customers who thought enough of what I did for their business volume/ increase in hot leads that they “jumped through” numerous hoops to “vote for me”.
Don’t even think about cheating or “stuffin the ballot box” with shills in the audience, every way that is humanly possible to cheat Google or scam Google has been already tried and implemented in the last 60 minutes. Think of it this way: Google can make or break you, and almost everybody with a website is painfully aware of this
Marketing businesses using Google Page Rank – Al – May 12, 2009| I have been in the marketing business for nearly 35 years and have seen just about everything but I am very impressed with David’s knowledge of the internet and search engines;knowledge he uses it to get customer top “organic” page rank across a wide variety of business and organizations…and he techniques show actual page rank in a matter of weeks! He has worked with me for 3 weeks and my company is already establishing itself on a page rank basis. I |
| Frederick web promotions has helped my videography skills become noticed by companies such as the Discovery Channel. With out the help of Frederick Web Promotions more than likely this wouldn’t have been possible this soon because the Discovery Channel found me using a google search on Outdoor Videographers a keyword David Bruce and I picked out. He is also a great person to work with because he is so friendly and knowledgeable about web promotions/ promoting. I would definitely recommend him to friends, family, and other businesses. |
Made a profit on the promotion within 2… – joesuph – Jul 21, 2009| I’m VERY pleased with David’d expertise, it was well beyond what we expected. David is very knowledgable, friendly provides excellent customer service. |
Search Engine Domination!!! – Josh – Jun 8, 2009| David has been amazing. He has taken our small business site and kept us at the top in search engines in the areas that most help our business. He’s been so effective that we’ve decided to remove our phone book advertising, saving us a ton of money and increasing our advertising exposure. Great communication and stays on the ball. We couldn’t be happier! |
Director of Operations at Commercial… – Roberto – Aug 5, 2009| David grabbed us the #1 spot in Google for Maryland Commercial Cleaning. David has been more than a search engine optimization expert for us teaching our organization social media marketing skills |
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Google knows if you post your own review
Google knows if the person reviewing created the account 20 minutes before leaving the review and never logged into that account again.
Google knows the IP address of the person reviewing
Google knows this for sure: If the business owner has ever logged into the computer that the review came from… it HAS to be a clean computer.
It’s even better if you, as the business owner is logged in and surfing the web while the reviewer is posting the glowing testimonial from another location, Google knows you can’t be in 2 places at once!
a note about the review/ vote/ fave/ friend process… the more hoops that have to be jumped through the more value a vote / review carries.
Think about it, if it was easy, everybody would get their friends and family or employees to vote for your website. By making it a pain in the ass ON PURPOSE the vote has more value.
The person voting/ reviewing/ giving the testimonial *should* do so FROM a gmail account. From a sales copy point of view your readers, prospects, people reading your reviews because they are just about ready to get out their credit card and purchase… they should be able to contact the reviewer to verify that what the review says, they really did say.
How To Videos From Google itself:
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