Print, Design & Websites
Posted: January 30, 2013 • Posted in: Marketing Tips, Website Design
The internet has changed the way that we all do business and having a well-designed website is now an essential marketing tool for every company.
But if you can’t be found in search engines such as Google and Yahoo then you are missing out on major opportunities to grow your business by attracting new customers. People simply won’t know that you exist.
Over the next few months we will be featuring waysin which you can improve your position in Google by yourself. But don’t worry if you haven’t the time to do so, we can happily do this for you at a very reasonable cost.
So this month we start with Google Places – a free service which is vital if you want to sell to customers local to your business.
When you type in a phrase in Google,such as“printers in Bury St Edmunds”, the first seven results are from Google Places, and these appear before the rest of the natural search results.
So you can see why it’s important to be listed.
The first thing to do is claim your listing. Go to www.google.com/places and follow the instructions. You will need a Google account (which is free, you may already have one if you have Gmail etc).
If you don’t have one go to https://accounts.google.com/newaccount and complete the form. Once your account has been verified you need to complete as much of the information as you can on the Google Places form.You can include things like opening times, photographs of your premises or products and most importantly which categories you wish to be found under.
Once your listing has gone live you should then encourage your customers to place reviews on your Google Places page as this also affects the position of your listing in the rankings.
Next time we will look at local directories and how to put together a plan to be listed on them.
