The companies without websites can really benefit from this free product by accessing a phenomenal 97% of customers searching for local businesses like theirs online. This, in a lot of cases, can make it or break it for some startup companies who are working to get an online presence and don’t have a lot to spend.

Google Places is a great tool to get for a couple of reasons.  First, it is free. Second, 97% of customers search for local businesses online[i]. Third, Place pages provides very useful information about who is visiting the Place page, what part of town they are searching from, and other information that can be used to make smart strategic business decisions. Fourth, it gives the searcher a quick snapshot of a business including the company’s physical address, reviews, specific products and services provided, hours, photos of the business, and other unique things a customer might want to know about a business[ii]. The Place page also gives the advertiser the capability of providing a coupon or promotion to attract more customers to their business.

Multi-location or large companies like Walmart, Little Caesars or Taco Bell benefit from Google Place pages by showing a potential customer the closest physical location of their store or place of business, store hours, and promotional deals they are having.

Success stories

• Pet groomer increased business by 30%, with just a Place page
• S.T.A.R.S Horsemanship increased business by tenfold in six months
• Storage company increased its site traffic from 400 visitors a month to an average of 2,500 per month

[ii] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpZan96KHOM

However, I did want to share my experience with one of my locally based business websites and one of my “national” business website and their respective rankings for local keywords.

Local Business Website: Higher Local Rankings

Before the change to Google’s algorithm about six weeks ago, my Utah wedding photography business, OneTakePhotography.com, was on the second (and third) SERPs for many local keywords, such as “family photographer Orem.” I wasn’t really focusing on these local keywords, as I was more interested in going for Utah-based keywords.

Likewise, the One Take Photography Google Places listing was on the fourth page and beyond for all of the local keywords I was tracking (i.e., keywords related wedding photography, bridals, engagements, family portraits, etc.).

However, shortly after the algorithm change, One Take’s listing in Google places jumped to the first page for many local keywords. Here are a few examples below.

Another interesting, semi-related item that I discovered is that the keyword ranking for “Utah family photography” jumped from the third SERP to the first SERP (#9). Also, the home page used to be the one ranking organically, but now it is the ‘family photography tag’ URL (the page that yields results from the website blog for family photo sessions).

National Business Website: Lower Local Rankings

As I’ve mentioned before on this blog, I own an editing and ghostwriter service at Wordszilla.com. I only target national, broad-search keywords for this website as a whole, but I did (for fun) semi-optimize some elements on the contact page with city and state, since I do base the business in Utah.

Again, I know any Utah-based writing/editing keywords don’t have search volume nor did I expect any traffic, but that contact page did rank #2 on Google for those Utah and Orem keywords.

However, after the local search algorithm change, do you know where that page ranks now? Yup, you’re right: it doesn’t. Fell out of the top 10 SERPs.

A Few Highlights and Conclusions

From my not-too-in-depth-yet-semi-interesting analysis, it seems that my findings are pretty much in line with what other SEOs have experienced or supposed about local search:

• Having a business (wedding photographer) in the actual location (Salt Lake City) will help to boost your website ranking/Google Places listing for a local keyword (e.g., Salt Lake City wedding photographer), instead of having a business just near a targeted city (i.e., having a business address in Orem and trying to rank for keywords in Salt Lake City will be more difficult).
• If you have both a website and Google Places listing with matching contact information, it will help their respective rankings in Google. Likewise, at least for my Wordszilla website, it seems that there is some correlation between not trying to have a webpage rank for a local keyword and not having a Google Places listing (i.e., your webpage might drop in rankings).

I’m sure there are others that have noticed changes in their rankings, traffic, and other analytics. What have you found? Please share your experiences in the comments section.

But seriously, Hotpot? Here are 5 better names for Google’s latest project, Hotpot.

Hotspot

Wow, it sounds just like Hotpot except it makes a lot more sense and is easier to hear. “Check out Google Hotspot, it tells you the hotspot to get food!” No matter what I do I routinely think it’s Google Hotspot

Hopscotch

Get it? First there was foursquare, now there’s Hopscotch? Awesome! It makes the whole thing sound like a game where you go around to different businesses giving them ratings!

Places

Sorry, that was below the belt. Google has several location based services Places, Latitude, Maps and Buzz. They’re all involved with businesses, they all involve reviews. Hotpot is just a new place to put those reviews. They need to get some unity over there!

HotSoup

I think hotpot is supposed to have something to do with a pot full of a melody of delicious fixins just a wait’in for you to come in from the cold. It’s a nice metaphor for what they’re doing but HotSoup or even HotStew is more memorable and easier to say.

Happening

Ooo, did you feel that? Those are shivers in your spine telling you how awesome that name would be. Google Happening should be the name of the service that brings Buzz, Hotpot and the rest of their location based services into a single unified service. Google Happening would be about those reviews but also where your friends are at, a la latitude.

Alas, here’s to Google, may they get their ducks in a row.

Introducing CitrusBlast

To help small businesses get ahead, we’re offering a complete package to take care of all the hard stuff. We start off by creating a local optimized microsite, which acts as a sort of internet billboard for the local business owner. It’s designed specifically for every business to drive customers. We then mix in our experience with maps optimization and organic search optimization to help businesses show up in local searches.

CitrusBlast even includes a mobile version of the custom microsite to take advantage of all those beautiful mobile searchers out there. With 50% of connections to the internet coming from mobile devices, it’s more important than ever for every local business to cater to those customers. CitrusBlast makes it easy.

It means more customers

Everyone always wants to talk about “presence” and “impressions,” but we want to talk about customers. CitrusBlast is the easiest way for local businesses to get online and get those customers. Have a website? Great! Don’t have a website? That’s okay, too. We’ll handle it.

So you can SEO Google Maps? There are many factors that go into how Google ranks the local listings. Things like your profile completion, categories you choose, and how much people talk about you all play into the formula. Do everything right, and show up at the top, and you’ll see an increase in calls and visits to your business. More people are utilizing this feature, and it’s not going away. Are you still ignoring it?

Why Not Just SEO?

OK, so it’s no secret I’m a huge fan of SEO; however, I’m the first to admit that there are situations where it just doesn’t make a lot of sense. For instance, if you are looking for a restaurant in your local area, and you type ‘Dominos Springfield’, you will likely call the number, or look at the address in the maps listing. If you were to optimize your local Dominos Pizza website for the keyword ‘Springfield Pizza’, you might be able to capture some visitors looking for a new pizza place, but the searcher will likely look at the maps result, anyway.

Maps + SEO = Owning the Organic Listings

The fact is, in most cases SEO is awesome, and maps are getting used more and more. As we head into the mobile age, maps are going to play an even larger role. SEO is getting more and more well known, and it’s getting harder to rank for competitive keywords. Maps optimization is still young and, if you get in early, you have a much better position to hold and stay on top of your competition.

So what should you do for your local business? Actively pursue the best positioning for your maps listing and take advantage of both kinds of searchers!

These questions constantly plague business owners. The fact is, it’s much easier to motivate negative reviews than to motivate positive. But just because it can be hard doesn’t mean that it’s not worth the effort! You can encourage your happy clients to be more vocal and leave reviews.

Who Leaves Reviews?

Customers who receive the “Wow” experience are somewhat likely to submit a positive review.  On the other hand, if you provide an even slightly unpleasant experience in the eyes of a customer, they are likely to want to drag your name through the mud. You can see how the scales are unfairly weighted.

Asking For Reviews

Opinions vary widely on the issue of asking for reviews. The truth is, requesting reviews or testimonials has been going on much longer than the Internet has been around. It can be very difficult to get customers to take the time, but use your relationships and timing well.

Ethicality

The real ethics issues come into play when you pay or bribe someone to leave a good review, or fake a review internally. Make sure to avoid these practices because a little bit of investigation is all it takes for someone to connect the dots, and really start a smear campaign you won’t be able to control. To keep yourself in the clear, if you plan to offer a reward in exchange for leaving a review, make it clear that you’re looking for an unbiased review. Never fake a review from a customer internally as these are easy to spot, and a whistleblower can easily ruin your party.

Strategy

Since Google maps is an aggregator of reviews, it will pull from many different reviews sites. Some of them are:

• Local.com
• Citysearch.com
• Superpages.com
• Yelp.com
• Yellowbot.com
• Insiderpages.com

If you are embarrassed of your current Google maps profile, refer your clients to one of the above listed directories. As you get reviews on these secondary directories, sooner or later Google maps will pick them up, and you will essentially get double credit for them. If you are embarrassed of your citysearch profile, refer customers to Superpages, etc.

The Key

As an employee of your company, you’re going to want to ignore bad reviews. You see the poo-pooing and complaining as sour grapes from an off-base customer. Usually, one bad review is indicative of 10 or more dissatisfied customers who decided not to waste their time writing a review. Use these as a cue that there may be an aspect of your business or customer service that you can work on. Make an awesome product, and there will be more customers receiving the “Wow” experience. More wows = more positive reviews!

Conclusion

If you are totally transparent about your practices, you won’t have the major PR problems as many have had in the past. If problems or challenges do arise, you will have proof from email trails that they were real clients. More reviews on your google maps profile will also help its ranking for your desired maps keywords, so don’t hesitate in running your campaign!

But there’s more. You can also include links, and that is where the SEO power is! Below the main area is a place to put as many links as you want. Your Delicious page, your Facebook profile, your blog, your LinkedIn profile, your Twitter feed….and on and on.

Profiles are public and include your actual name and/or a nickname. You can set it so your real name is displayed just to your contacts. You can list your occupation, where you are located (your profile will be used for Google Maps), a list of links, your photo and a short introduction.

As far as links: you can put whatever text you want to become a link back to your web site (or any other site). So, if your site sells “sunglasses” and one of your keywords is “fashion sunglasses” then use those words for the link. You can even link to sections of your site (like a brand name of specific fashion sunglasses) and then link to that category page.

Go here to create your own profile. Your profile will come in handy in the future as Big G integrates it’s profile system with other social networks, etc.