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local seo

Advertising On Google Maps

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Plant Your Local Business on Google Maps Today!

If you’ve ever driven through a busy business district, you have probably noticed a lot of creative signs that are meant to catch attention. In a very similar way, local businesses can catch a customer’s eyes by planting their virtual signposts on digital maps. In fact, logos and pins on these online maps can even connect map users to current promotions and other kinds of relevant ads found on Google Maps and local search.

One of the largest and most popular providers of these types of map advertisements is Google. Since local searches have become an important way for companies to market, it’s worth knowing about this innovative source of local search advertising.

Why Google Map Ads Drive Local Businesses Success

local seoAccording to the company, ads on maps could appear on mobile and laptop versions of Google Maps. At the same time, the company has made it clear that they unveiled this kind of advertising with mobile users in mind. When their spokesman introduced this new part of the search network, he mentioned that local and location-based searches had grown more than any other kind of searches. As a result, local, location-based Google searches account for about 30 percent of total searches.

The company included Google Maps as another platform in their search network in order to take advantage of the popularity of their mapping system. In addition, Google released the news recently that the number of mobile searches had finally overtaken the number of searches performed on desktop and laptop computers. Thus, these ads provide a good way to target nearby customers who are searching for local businesses.

How Advertising on Google Maps Can Help Local Businesses

When a user searches for a certain kind of business in a specific location, companies that participate in the program can have both a company logo and pin that highlight the location on the map. When these pins and logos get clicked, the system will bring up more information about a business.

This additional information can even include search ads with current specials and other related advertising. These features help focus attention on these businesses and increase the chances that a customer will call or walk in the door. Of course, the additional information also includes basic details like a phone number, operating hours, and driving directions. In this way, AdWords integrates with Google My Business listings.

How Grassroots SEO Can Use Google Map Ads

To qualify for Google Maps advertising, follow these steps:

  • Enable the location-extensions feature within Google AdWords.
  • Ensure that the business listing within Google My Business has been filled out accurately.
  • Target locations for the advertisements.
  • Set bids for locations, and notice that these bids can even increase when searchers move closer to your location.
  • Create keywords that are likely to attract customers to your business.

Google offers pay-per-click ads on maps. Pricing includes charges for various kinds of actions that searchers might take. For example, a click charge could apply to a user who clicks to get directions to your store. As with other kinds of AdWords ads, it’s fairly simple to monitor the campaign’s performance within the system.

Will Ads on Google Maps Benefit Your Local Business?

Many businesses rely upon local search marketing in their grassroots SEO efforts to bring in new customers. If a potential customer searches for the products and services that you offer with Google Maps, these advertisements should get their attention. If you offer relevant deals or other attractive marketing within your advertisement, you’re likely to draw customers in. Google has made it easy for both small and large local businesses to get started with this innovative kind of local marketing. While different kinds of companies might have different success rates with these ads, they seem worth testing as a way to take advantage of local and location-based searches.

local seo

Why Local Search Is Important

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What Is Local Search And Why Is It Important?

There is no question that having an easy to find website with accurate information is of the utmost importance. In the quest for greater online visibility, an increasingly big player is local search.

What Is Local Search?

Simply put, it is searches done by a variety of search engines that provide results within the searcher’s area. These search engines are not unknown small engines. Some examples include Google Maps and Bing Places. The bare minimum information for your business is usually already on these engines. Users do not have to go out of their way to perform these kinds of searches: Try entering ‘food’ into Google and see what happens. In addition to the standard list of search results you will get localized search results. Every time someone is looking for something, modern search engines are usually smart enough to show the local results.

Why Is It Important?

With millions of people on smartphones, local search is quite literally at people’s fingertips. When someone is actually walking or driving around your town looking for a business, one like yours, they are frequently going to reach into their pocket and rely on something like Google Maps to find what they need. Ensuring that the information on these apps and websites is accurate and detailed is of the utmost importance. If prospective customers try and fail to call the disconnected phone line listed online, chances are they are just going to call someone else.

What Are Local Citations?

A local citation is when your business or website is mentioned on another local site. This can include pages with listings or pages for local government institutions. These citations of your business and website are taken into account by Google when attempting to assess your webpage. For that reason, it is important to get yourself on local listings and find opportunities to get more citations where you can.

If you have been doing what you can to optimize your site for search engines, local citations and search may be what you are missing. Pay mind to this component of your business and it can only help.

Local Citations Improve Search Results

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How Citations Influence Search Results

When it comes to ranking your business website, it is important to be mentioned on other authority sites. Most business owners spend a huge chunk of their time looking for hyperlinks from other websites. What they don’t realize is that they can get benefits from simply being mentioned on authority sites; this is true even if the site doesn’t use a hyperlink to directly link back to their website.

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local seo

Local SEO

It is important to get local citations for your business. Sites like the Yellowpages can help boost your search engine rankings; they do this without ever linking back to your site. Local business associations and your local Chamber of Commerce websites are also places where you can get a local citation.

When the search engines notice your business name mentioned on an authority site, they know that you aren’t some fly by night company. The search engines take this information and use it to give your business more authority; this authority means better search engine rankings.

Local citations are used by major search engines as an additional ranking factor; if your website has many citations, then it is likely to rank higher than a website without them. Businesses often spend thousands of dollars on SEO only to be outranked by sites that have very few backlinks. They don’t realize that their competition is ranking because of citations on authority sites.

Why Local Citations Are Important

Citations help the search engines verify your business address and contact information; when the search engines are sure that your information is current and correct, they are likely to display your website over others. Citations help search engines categorize your business; search engines work hard to give people information that is relative to their search queries. If the search engines can’t decipher what type of business you run, then they aren’t very likely to show your business in their local search results.

Using local citations is very important in less-competitive niches; they help to give you an advantage over your competition. Local sites tend to be put together sloppily; they often don’t use strategies that larger companies use. Without much information about these sites, the search engines use whatever they can find to help their algorithm rank sites correctly.

A local citation allows search engines to validate your business; your business is more likely to show up in local search results when the search engines know you are part of the community. It is hard for businesses to fake being listed in the Yellowpages or in their Chamber of Commerce. Search engines know this; they use this to give your business a boost in the rankings.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]

Universal Search and your website

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With universal search, search engines are attempting to break down the walls that traditionally separated various vertical search properties and integrate the vast amounts of information available into one simple set of search results.

Google made the move to “universal search” in an effort to improve user experience. This is an integration of vertical search engines into the search results fusing a broad scope of information that’s relevant to the user’s initial query. Regular search — when you go to Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask or any general-purpose search engine — is “horizontal” in that you are searching across an extended variety of material. Information from sports sites, news sites, medical sites, shopping sites — the entire horizontal spectrum of topics is represented.

Universal search queries many vertical search services and then blends the results with the regular “horizontal results”, but only if the relevancy of the results is a better match for the users’ original query. Simply put this means that you may see videos, blogs, or books along with websites when you search. Additionally, based on your search history and user data, two people can be searching for the same thing, yet both see different results. Universal search is quickly moving to make the overall search experience much more personal, and therefore more relevant to the end user.

How does this impact your website?

Very simply, the best answer is still the best answer. This means that your web content must be concise and relevant to the user query to perform well in universal search results. It’s becoming more important than ever to have engagement objects and “take-aways” included as website content. If you consider the list of vertical categories used in universal search, the areas for improvement becomes clearer:

1. Blog Search
2. Book Search
3. Catalogs
4. Code Search
5. Directory
6. Finance
7. Images
8. Local/Maps
9. News
10. Patent Search
11. Product Search
12. Scholar
13. Video
14. Web Search

After reviewing this list, find out if your website includes optimized blogs, MP3’s, PDFs, videos, images, or any other type of take away objects. Universal search also means that engagement metrics have become even more important when you are monitoring your website’s performance. Seme of these key metrics include time on site, pages per visitor, and the bounce rate.

The Benefits of Local Search Engine Optimization

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Google introduced a “geographic box” at the top of its search results and found that its users value this component. The engine now displays ten local search results at the top of the listings for relevant queries, provided they have a geographic modifier attached. For example, if you type “Chicago accounting” in Google, you will see ten results bordering a map that shows the location of ten accounting firms in Chicago.

Take note; you will not see local search results for all queries that contain a local modifier. Google somehow “knows” when a geographic modifier truly means that you only offer services in a specific area. Yeah, those guys are pretty good.

Some benefits of using local keyword phrases to improve search engine ranking are as follows:

1. Higher search-engine rankings: Competition will be weaker for the local keyword phrase you have identified.
2. Higher conversion rates: Since you are using the actual local keyword phrase your visitors are looking for, the website traffic you get is highly targeted.
3. Make more money: Your earnings potential is higher when you pull in local search engine traffic because people who come to you are more serious about your product, service or information. Many customers prefer to deal with people that are local, even if the business is national, or even global.

It’s a red-hot consideration for your online marketing strategy right now to include your regional presence, so contemplate the impact of local search engine optimization for your business.