First, I’ll start off by introducing Google Places. If you have a business with a mailing address, you should be listed in Google Places. Business listing rankings are based on their relevance to the search terms entered into a Google search or a Google Map search, along with geographic distance and other factors. Sometimes you’ll find that a business may be further away but is a more relevant result based on what you’ve searched for, according to Google.
You can get started by going to Google Places and sign in with your Google account. You’ll notice that there are several fields to fill out including the very important description and category section. This helps optimize the listing among other factors. For more tips about improving your listing visit: http://www.google.com/support/places/bin/static.py?page=guide.cs&guide=28247

You may notice in Google Maps that your business is already listed – you’ll need to verify the listing if you’ve not already done so. This allows you or your company to be the sole contributors to the details in the listing and will be essential to the new feature I’ll be speaking more about today.

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OK – now that we have the basics out of the way, I’ll share the new feature Google rolled out on Thursday, June 10th to several (and soon to be all) states throughout the country : Google Tags.
It’s a new advertising feature for local businesses that can enhance their listings that appear in the search results of google.com and Google Maps for $25 per month. A yellow tag emphasizes information like a coupon, video, menu, reservations, photos or a custom message. This feature is also available on mobile web searches as well. A business owner may change the message highlighted with the yellow tags as often as he or she wishes. I must stress that the tag feature will NOT affect rankings, it is more so to make your listing stand out.

To learn more or try it, you can visit the tags help section: www.google.com/help/tags.

If you have a local or national business and you’re looking to increase your website’s visibility, Exclusive Concepts offers search engine optimization as a service. Call us today for a free audit! Thanks for watching today, we’ll see you back here for PPC Tuesday.