Business Startups advice: Use Google Business,get top of search for free.

Business StartUps free advice. 

When opening a new business, make sure to get your Google+ Business page set up for your opening!

How?

The best way is to initiate the process of getting listed with the Google+ business Local Page 2-3 weeks before the your launch, work to get the page as complete and as quickly as possible. That way the timing of the approval process and listing happens to coincide with the doors of the shop opening to customers or your websites launch.

Some  statistics:

• 43% of all Google searches are local or location based
• Over 50% of mobile searches are local or location based

local or location based searches are searches whereby either you entered the location directly into the search parameters (search for "pilates in Coventry") or you were in a location and Google returned search results based on your GPS coordinates (you were in the City of Coventry, Midlands and ran a search for "pilates").

When does your location matter?

Any time a person is trying to find a product or service close to where they are or based on its proximity to a location. For example, an Italian restaurant in a certain town, a hair salon in their neighbourhood, the nearest locksmith, a plumber that services their area...

For location-relevant businesses these types of searches are the most important queries that you can hope to win. These queries aren't you trying to beat out your nationwide or global position for search engine rankings, but are instead highly local-based and often immediate in their conversion from a query to a phone call or physical customer at your location. 

In some industries (such as restaurants) this conversion percentage has been found (for smartphone users) to equal 30% immediate conversions and 60% conversions within an hour, and 80% go on to eventually make a conversion.

30% conversions immediately and 60% conversions within an hour.

These aren't window shoppers, these are people that are immediately converting to become customers of yours.

And guess what they're using to conduct these local searches? Google Map on iOS (Apple) or Google via their Android phone.

And guess where the top results are being pulled from? Your Google+ Local Page information.

The Key Factors to work on are:

Increase the number of people that have you in their circles.

Increase the number of re-shares and +1’s of your Google+ content (content you share).

Increase the number of mentions of your Profile/Page in Google+.

Increase external activity, measured through the amount of +1’s of your site’s content

Link up your profiles to take advantage of Author Rank

Create lots of quality content

Google Places is now Google+ Local

This part may be confusing, but Google used to have a service which is still operational called Google Places. You might have created your business listing in this service, it still exists, you can still edit your existing listings, and in fact you can create new listings. 

But it looks like this is being phased out and merged with Google+ functionality in the form of Google+ Business.

This is not Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

This is not search engine optimisation. This is not part of your website, nor does it comprise of making the content in your website more accessible or optimised for search engines to spider. This is entirely about giving Google the best information possible about your business in their "yellow pages" directory, keeping the profile updated and active, and enabling Google to match queries with the best results. And when the query is a local or location-based search, Google will use this information before using standard search engine results (which is where your SEO might be a factor).

www.search-find.co.uk

Anthony Johnson

David Kutcher