Are you wondering why Google has your business listed behind your competitors on their Places listings? Do you want to move to the top of these listings? If so, make sure you do these three things!

1. Know Your Targeted Keywords

While many people/businesses select default category tags for their Places listings, Google actually allows you to enter custom keywords! Fill out your category tags and match them to your target keywords. We recommend selecting a few default tags and adding a couple of your own. For example, if you are a West Palm Beach based Personal Injury Attorney, select the default tags associated with legal services and also add “West Palm Beach Personal Injury Attorney” as a custom category tag! With the appropriate category tags. you will increase your chancing of ranking in the Places listings.

2. Encourage Positive Reviews

“Google improves search results by aggregating information about your business from all over the web. Make sure information about your business on third-party sites is accurate, and try to contact the respective site directly to correct any inaccurate information. Encourage customers to review your business by clicking Write a review on the Place Page.”

(Source: http://support.google.com/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=148047)

3. Build Out Your Profile

Be sure that you list your official business name, website address, phone number and physical address on you Places listing! Google takes all of this into consideration when it comes to improving your search ranking. Also make sure you include images (especially a profile photo), videos if you have them and hours of operation to your listing.

 

Follow these three steps and let us know how your listing does with the search rankings! For some additional, more advanced, optimization techniques, please check out this post from Rand Fishkin from SEO Moz!

By Ricky Shockley