Anyone with a website that offers a service to the local community, whether it’s a store that sells products or a professional service, like gardening or plumbing, something that inherent local, should be aware of how important it is that their business site appears in Google maps when a local search is carried out.

Listed below are the key issues to consider when making your website, as Google is extremely stringent in its rules and regulations.

If your business listing doesn’t meet the criteria for Google Maps it simply won’t show up in the local search which means any potential clients won’t know where to find you.

Get Your Google Account

The first thing you need to do is inform people about your company and to accomplish this a Google account has to be created, and Google Plus set up. Once this is completed you can add your business listing to Google Places; this is linked with Google Maps, and now your business will turn up in a Google local search.

Read The Google Places Quality Guidelines

The thing to remember with Google is that it is actually helping you out here, so don’t misuse it.

They take their job seriously and manually scan business listings, so if you just fill it with keywords and  promotional lingo then they’ll notice straight away and will treat you as they treat all spammer’s, as in they will block you.

This is why it’s so important to read through Google’s guidelines before filling in the details, it isn’t too long-winded so take the time to do it right from the start and the process will be easy and fast.

Get Reviews

Google is particularly vigilant when checking out reviews as they are very aware that people often fabricate them in an attempt to make their business looks good. Assisting clients with the review is fine, so as long as they give an authentic testimonial then there really shouldn’t be any problems.

It’s best to get a couple of genuine reviews, but be cautious as any inaccuracy, no matter how small, could give you a lot of hassle. The more you study the Google review guidelines the more capable you will be of getting everything right.

Get Links

Hypothetically it isn’t difficult to get links from pages that are connected with your location. The two most common types of places to acquire links are:

Local directories

The listings you require are from those directories that also publish the address of a business or categories that include the location, for example Yahoo Local or Yellow Pages.

To start you should have a list of local directories, the better quality ones can only keep up their standards by charging users so take care to have a credit card ready or a PayPal account set up.

Make sure you are ready with all the information necessary at your fingertips, this will involve a concise introduction to the company and descriptions of the products you sell or service provided. Consider using an online system like Roboform, open the directories one at a time, look for where your business belongs in the category tree and then click submit.

Local Content

Websites that have content about the same location as your business, for example the districts local newspaper or local tourist information sites.

There are lots of platforms to get links, including blogs, in which case a comment is adequate, whilst others may require you to make personal contact by starting the dialogue and essentially requesting a link exchange.

Although link exchange has long departed, there is a distinction between searching for anchor text links and those extra sets of links necessary for a particular reason – and that is to identify your position for Google.

Hopefully I am making myself understood and the reasons are clear, it’s necessary you get links from websites located in the same area as your website, make associations and make links.

To recap, first set up a Google account, create your personal profile, add a business listing, put up a few reviews, and then establish links.

Getting links is generally a tiresome and occasionally annoying job, but the good bit is that it doesn’t involve too much hard work. Put aside an hour every day for it and within 2 weeks you should see a positive outcome.

What else is needed will be dependent upon your competition, but showing up in a local search can really be worth the time put in.

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