If you are looking for more self-qualified local traffic to your website, and have claimed your Google Places page, you should consider using “Tags” to make you local listing stand out. If you have not claimed your Google Places page for your business, scoot on over to Don’t Lose Your Place – Claim Your Google Places Page!

What are tags?

Tags are yellow markers that allow business owners to promote important aspects of their businesses. Potential customers can scroll over tags on Google or click on the sponsored link to view offers, photos, or other select features.

You use tags to highlight information in you Google Places listing. Using tags does not affect your search results ranking, but they do help your listing stand out in the crowd.

What are the benefits?

• Easily highlight your listing on Google from Google Places.
• Potential customers in your local area will see what you think is most important or unique about your business.
• Track the effectiveness of your tag with your Google Places dashboard.
• No additional work or ongoing management is needed.

What does using tags cost?

Google charges a $25 flat monthly fee, with no bids and no keywords required.

What tags can you use?

The tag types available for your listing are based on information you’ve already included in your business listing. For example, if you want to highlight a video about your business with a tag, you’ll first need to add the video to your business listing. Once you’ve added the video, the video tag option will show up in the menu for your enhancement types. Types of info you may tag:

• Coupons for your listing
• Photos of your business
• Videos of your business
• Menu for your restaurant
• Reservations page for your business
• Posts for your business

Example Place page Posts

• Specials: “Free chips and salsa today from 4-6. We’ll even throw in free guacamole.”
  Posted 3 hours prior to the start of Afternoon Special
• Events: “Come to “Anything Goes – Poetry or Prose ” Today from 7:30 pm to 9:45 pm.”
  Posted 4 hours prior to the event, linking to the Facebook event page.
• New products: “Have you checked out our newest pastries? they are yummy!”

You can only pick one tag at a time, but you can change or remove the tag whenever you’d like.

The bottom line:

If you have a business that depends on local traffic, and it is the type of business your prospective customers search for, you should, as we have talked about before, use your free Google Places listing, and many of you should consider using “tags.”

This should be a no-brainer for many of you.

Read Google Help to learn more about using “tags” for Google Places.

Of course, we are always happy to talk about how we can help you with Google Places tags.

It is no great revelation that keywords are essential in getting your website to rank higher in Google search results. That said, too often not enough attention is paid to keyword research. Knowing the queries people actually use, is integral in getting the visitors you want to your website

Now, the folks at Google are going to tell you to just write good copy that your potential visitors find compelling, and your rankings will take care of themselves. While that is true in a perfect world, it isn’t quite that simple.

Of course there are may factors (Google’s Matt Cutts says 200+ “signals”) that dictate where your listing shows up on Google’s search results pages, and the keywords on your web pages are only part of it. The fact is, they play a very big role.

Why is keyword research important? Well, your visitors won’t get to your website so they can read your “compelling copy” unless it contains the keywords your potential visitors use when they do a search on Google, or other search engine. Your web pages may have “compelling copy” as far as you are concerned, but are you thinking about the same keywords as your potential visitors? Keyword research can help you figure that out.

Where to start? Write your compelling copy, and then read it out loud. How does it sound? Did you or your audience hear keywords you believe potential visitors would use to find your products or services?

Make a list of keywords you believe identify your products or services. Ask for input from co-workers, customers, friends, your barber, or hair dresser.

Take a good look at the list. Are all or some of those keywords on your website? Remember, Google sells relevance. Your pages should be product or service-specific, as should your keywords. The wrong keywords may get visitors to your website, but those visitors may not stay, because they were looking for something you don’t offer. Your goal should be to attract self-qualified visitors (leads, prospects) that want or need what you offer.

Okay, let’s see if anyone actually searches for your keywords. Google has a good free tool (Google Keyword Tool) for you to use. It is geared toward those who are using, or may use, Google AdWords. You do not have to have an AdWords account to use the keyword tool. It will show how much competition there is for your keywords, global monthly searches, local monthly searches, and more. You may do a simple search, or they’ll give you more options than you will care to deal with. Keep it simple. You just want to see if people really are searching using your keywords.

If your keywords have a lot of search volume, you should use Google Trends, where you can search for two terms, e.g. lake property, lakefront property, and you’ll see charts showing the relative search volume (more people search for lake property). You can filter the results by date, regions, cities, etc.

There are non-Google tools out there as well. A very good one is the Free Keyword Suggestion Tool From Wordtracker. Another is WordStream’s Free Keyword Tool.

There is a great deal more to say about keywords, and we’ll discuss them again. Hopefully, this will give you an understanding of the importance of choosing the right keywords. One of America’s favorite authors knew something about choosing the right words when he said, “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.” Oh, that author if you are wondering, was Mark Twain.

Go to work and make that keyword list today! Edit that compelling copy to contain your researched keywords, and get results!

If you have claimed your Google Places page, please feel free to skip the rest of this. If you have not claimed your Google Places page. Do it! Better yet, talk with the people you trust most with your web presence about why and how. That may be someone on your staff, your webmaster, or your web marketing people. Oh, by the way, if they haven’t been telling you to use Google Local Business Center (before it morphed into Google Places) for the last few years, you should ask them why not.

Why is claiming your Google Place Page important? On April 20, 2010, while introducing Google Places, they said, “One out of five Google searches is related to location.” Seven months later, the frequency of local searches has surely grown.

Google says, “More people search for businesses online than anywhere else, so it’s important to make sure your business listing can be easily found on Google.com and Google Maps.” They obviously believe it, as demonstrated by their blog post, “Place Search: a faster, easier way to find local information.”

After you claim your page, you may enhance the Place Page for your business by adding photos, videos, tags, hours of operation, coupons, and even real-time updates like weekly specials. One of the “features” is “ Reviews by Google users” which presents a compelling reason to “claim” your business Places page. Business owners that claim their listing may respond to negative (and positive) reviews. Here are some guidelines for managing your listing.

When is your Google Places listing displayed? Your listing will display when someone does a search on Google Web Search, Google Maps, Mobile search, 1-800-GOOG-411 voice directory search, or Google Earth. On any of these services, a search directly for your business name and city, will most likely display your listing. If your listing is well crafted, searches for your business category or services will trigger a display of your listing.

There is a lot more to be said, but I’ll just close, by telling you, this is the most important local business search-related action you can take. Google Places is free, and you can easily claim and enhance the listing yourself. Invest a little time, and do this today!

Learn more about Google Places, and remember, Don’t Lose Your Place!

As always, feel free to post a comment or question, or call John at 1-800-281-9993 or 608-822-3750.