Get on top of Google for free today with Google Places May 10th '10

I’ve always been told that there is no such thing as a free lunch, however in this case there is! Google have been running a service called Google Places (used to be called Google Business Centre) which, if done right, can give you exposure at the top of page 1 on Google for your required keywords. Read on to find out how to set this up.

What you need

Before we start you will need the following:

• A Google Account
• Basic business information (name, website, contact details, description)
• Additional information such as images, videos, opening hours, business categories
• A little time!

Now I am going to assume that you have a Google Account, if not, get one, I’ll wait…

Adding your listing

Your first port of call is the Google Places website. If you haven’t created a listing before you will be prompted to add a listing by filling in all of the information on the form.
As you move through the process of adding a new listing you will be prompted to add additional information such as opening times, payment methods accepted, photos, videos and your business location.

What’s next?

Once your listing has been added, (and verified by yourself and Google) the next time you login to Google Places you will be greeted with a pretty graph and statistics which will give you information about how well your listing is performing. Improving your listing is down to you keeping the information current and ensuring that the categories you have added your listing to are still relevant. If applicable you can also add coupons to your listing which will encourage users to investigate further and perhaps get in touch.

After a short while your listing will start to appear in search results for users, as you can see as an example to the left. The listings shown come from the listing you have just added and are randomly ordered based on the location of the user.

Voila! You are near the top, if not the top of Google for free in a relatively short amount of time!

Written by Oliver Culverhouse

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