• 54% of Americans have substituted the Internet and local search for phone books
• 90% of online commercial searches result in a local offline purchase
• 61% of all local searches will result in a transaction
• Google Local (or Maps) are displayed in 1 out of every 13 searches on average (or roughly 9% of page-one search results)

So how do companies get listed in Google Places results? They can be listed from a number of sources pulled by Google™ places and/or submitted to Google Places manually by you or an SEO consultant. The great part about Google places is you don’t even need to have a website to be listed in the results – but it will certainly help with customer research and conversion if you do. Another point to consider if are currently listed or submit to be listed is HOW you are listed in these results. Google Places allows you to create and/or edit your listing and content - so don’t waste the opportunity to optimize your listing by including your keywords and phrases into your listing results. 

Along with a number of ever changing factors used to determine Google Places (local) results is where your company is listed in relation to the city center (or centroid). The closer your company is listed to the center of the city, the more likelihood you will display prominently in the results. This of course can lead to abuse but it is certainly to your advantage if you have a physical address close to the centroid if you wish to score well on these results.

It is not uncommon to see companies show up prominently in the places results and mistakenly think that because of this; their website is optimized well for the search engines. In most cases, this is simply not the case. As discussed in our section on keyword SEO, just because you might show-up prominently in Google Places for a commonly searched term doesn’t mean you are also showing up in other searches as well. Moreover, around 40% of all searches are unique “long-tail” type searches that are far less in volume but much higher in quality and results. Most long-tail searches are referred to as “money” searches because they tend to be highly focused and come from people who are actually looking for something specific. So don’t be confused by the results provided in Google Places – yes they provide prominence with certain searches but they should not be considered a replacement for a good local search engine optimization strategy.

The Growth of Mobile Browsing

As of 2008, there are around 228 million mobile subscribers in the United States, a 6% growth year over year. What is more startling is the 45% growth over the same period of time in mobile browsing – or people who are searching the web from their mobile phones and PDA’s. A recent study by comScore also shows that 1 in 5 online business searchers with an internet-accessible cell phone have conducted a local search through their phone.  So if you are a local company, you need to ask yourself what the growing use of mobile browsing means for your business.

Many local companies have poor website design SEO and therefore do not show up optimally in mobile web-browsers. If you have a website now, take a moment to look at your website through a cell phone or PDA and see how it looks. Part of an optimal website design process is to understand the desired customer journey through your website. Once this is determined, you can now take that journey yourself through your cell phone or PDA and see how easy or hard this now becomes for your website users. Often times a local search through a PDA may be as simple as people trying to find your phone number, email, and/or physical address through these searches. So when in doubt, a minimal approach is to make sure that these journeys are easily accessible to mobile users and your website is not too choppy and unnavigable in these type of browsers.

Google Places Optimization Strategies

Here are a few ways in which you can improve your local search engine optimization:

• As discussed above in “Understanding Google Places,” it is a good idea to add and/or modify your Google Places listing and make sure that your listing is fully optimized to include your SEO keywords and phrases.
• In order to build more citations for your listings, it is a good idea to claim and optimize ALL of your key directory listings on the web. The best place to start is to go to Get Listed and claim all of your key listings on the web. It is also a good idea to add your listing to Localeze as well.
• Create multiple listings for additional cities and locations where you do business. For example, if you provide services in multiple states and/or cities, it doesn’t hurt to setup mailing addresses (near each city center of course) so your services will be displayed in the maps results for each location.
• Create and/or modify your listing to include your most prominent SEO keywordsin your listing details. You will also need to add an image/s, any videos, promotional items, etc.
• Since customer ratings are one criteria in Google Places results, encourage customers to provide positive reviews for your company in local search results. For example, look at each Google Places results for a business and notice the “More” link to the far-right of their listing. When you click on this link, you will notice a number of tabs below the listing, one of which is the “Reviews” tab. Ask your customers to write a positive review for your business and provide you with the highest rating possible.
• Add a geography section (or geo block) to your web pages that include all of the states, cities, counties and boroughs that you serve. Make sure to also include any additional ways in which people also search for these same areas by name such as DFW (Dallas Fort Worth), NYC (New York City), etc.
• Include your primary geographic area/s of service along with your primary SEO keywords so they come up on a regional basis. For example, you have far less web page competition on the search engines for “Omaha bankruptcy lawyer” than you do by targeting the term “bankruptcy lawyer” alone. Besides, this allows you to geo-target your searches to begin with while trying to avoid traffic from areas you will not serve. It is also important to include these geo keywords into other website design SEO areas of your website as well since many of these sections receive more prominence than others.