This is a guest post by Vincent Roman, friendly web developer & programmer at VincentRoman.com.
If someone told you that you could get great placement in Google, really quickly, with no expenditure, would you beleive them? To hazard a guess, probably not, but then I don’t blame you, however, the reality is yes! “How so?” I hear you ask. Well the answer is simple: Google Local Business Center.
Google Local Business Center is a quick and easy way, with minimum fuss, to provide your business web site decent placement in Google for location specific searches. For a bricks and mortar business this is critical, and whether in a small town or large capital city the results can be just as effective.
So why isn’t everyone using this? Who knows! But from my own experience of building up web sites for first time business with zero web presence the results are stunning. Not only will it ensure you appear in the business listings for relevant searches, but your website will likely appear further up the rankings as well, with a minimum of search engine optimisation.
The real trick with the listing is to make sure that you complete the 6 available category spots, and that 1 of the 6 is a standardised category, whilst the further 5 are keyword phrases you wish to target. By way of example, I did this for a friend’s headshot business here in London. Having setup the initial category as “photographer”, I used the further 5 categories for terms such as “Actor Headshots”, “Spotlight Headhsots”, all of which were researched with the Google External Keywords tool and all of which I knew would be easy enough to dominate with best SEO practices. Note the lack of geographic location in the category names too.
The net results of these basic efforts was that in 3-4 weeks of setting up the single page web site with zero page rank, the business “Jensen Headshots” is now on the front page of Google for various terms, not in one place, but two, with the business listings and natural search turning up the web site address and details.
This is why, in my opinion, you are doing your business a disservice if you don’t get it in the Google Local Business Center and optimize it for your target audience. It’s one of the quickest ways to reach Google’s front page for results.
Vincent Roman (www.vincentroman.com) is a full-time web professional with a track record building everything from experience sites to full blown business web applications. He draws on 5 years freelance experience and another 4 years working for successful startup Last.fm and award winning web production company Stink Digital.