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I recently conducted a Digital Marketing Strategies workshop for a group of business owners and every business represented in the room had incomplete or inaccurate Google Places data. What was also interesting was that no businesses in the group had more than 15 reviews posted on Google Places.

Once I showed the business owners how easy it was to fix their profiles and setup a process to get customers to post reviews, they were very thankful. They were not aware of the importance of Google Places but now they do so and they can inspect their listings.

Knowledge is power.

From this experience, I decided to remind all members of this community to run through this checklist and make sure that you are leveraging the full potential of Google Places. Let me know what you found when you looked at your Places page, and share with me if this checklist helped you.  You can send a note to brian@pcgdigitalmarketing.com.

Google Places is Powerful Free Advertising

Google Places is the best free advertising resource for any business to increase online visibility, referral website traffic, and phone calls. Business listings in major metro market will be displayed tens of thousands of times a month!   Despite this opportunity, many business owners have not completed and optimized their Google Place data.

When you login into your Google Places Dashboard account it will tell you what percentage complete your data is currently. Make sure you edit your profile to achieve a 100% complete status.

Google Places Optimization (GPO) however goes further than having your profile data 100% complete.

You also want to optimize the consumer experience and enhance your brand message when consumers read your page. You also want to increase the opportunity to get MORE clicks to your Places Page than local competitors.

Google Places Optimization Checklist

Use this checklist to ensure that you have your Google Places listing optimized.  These tips apply to all businesses, and I have provided some specific advice for car dealers.

1. Enter your business name, address, and phone number so that it matches the primary information associated with the local phone company. Do not use a tracking number unless all professional registries and all business directories are using this number.  For car dealers, your primary local phone number should also be used on your OEM directory listing.
2. Make sure that you enter your website address and test the link. You would be surprised to see how many listings still have http://maps.google.com or the OEM website.
3. Use all five “business category” tags, which include your franchise brand and all services you offer. For example, if you are a Toyota dealer, make sure you pick “Toyota Dealer” as one of your 5 categories.
4. Complete the “Additional Information” section of the profile to include brands of goods that you sell and related services that include: tires, oil change, brakes, transmission service, and of course used cars.
5. Load 10 photos and stay away from photos of your building or your logo. Photos should show happy customers.  For car dealers this means photos of customers taking delivery of a car, your work in the community, OEM awards, or any brand enhancing images. Photos that will make people smile! Photos of your building will not help to engage your audience.
6. Load 5 videos and we recommend that three videos be actual customer testimonials. The remaining two videos can be a welcome to the dealership message and the final video to invite consumers to service their car at your dealership.
7. Set your “Service Area” beyond the default range of a 20-mile radius around your store location. For most dealers the range can be comfortably increased to 50 miles. Dealers near bodies of water can create a custom shape for their service area. If you need help, you can refer to this article I wrote on custom service areas.
8. Setup a process to get your customers to post reviews directly to Google Places. Your goal should be to get at least 30 reviews a month to be posted directly on Google Places. The Google Places App can help you easily achieve this goal. Between sales and service there are hundreds of customers that are completely satisfied with your dealership so ask them!
9. Once your have a strong number of positive reviews on Google Places, consider spending money to advertise your high marks from consumers using . Let your customers speak for you and drive more traffic to your website.

The good news is that once all of these tips are implemented, you can track the increase in impressions, clicks, and activity using Google Places activity reports. So login to your Google Places account and run through this checklist today.

Regional Training Conferences

I’ll be sharing more ways for business owners to leverage free online advertising tools and search optimization strategies at the PCG Pit Stop Conferences scheduled across the US and Canada.  Check out the nearest conference to your business at:  http://www.pcgpitstop.com

Many of the Google Places listing that I check for car dealers are NOT setup properly for their business. This impacts the number of times a dealership’s Business Listing will appear in search results. For some dealers in metro areas, their Google Places listing will show over 15,000 a month. With this in mind, anything that could increase the visibility of your local business listing should be embraced.

Every Google Places listing DEFAULTS to a 20 mile service radius around the business address. This is one of the most important setting on your Google Places listing because it sets the geographic positioning of the consumers you serve. Car dealers routinely deliver cars to customers that are outside of a 20 mile radius of their business. With this is mind, dealers should inspect your service area settings in Google.

Google Places Handles Non-Radial Geography

Dealers that have physical locations near bodies of water will find that a simple radius setting is not the most accurate map of their service area.  In the screen shot below, Harris Auto Group in Canada is located on Victoria Island.  If they left their Google Maps service area radius set at 20 miles, which is the default, they would not cover Victoria which is a major market for the island.

Fortunately, Google Places will allow you to enter in specific town names to create a polygon that covers the areas that the dealership serves.  In the photo above, you can see that the shaded area was created by inputting the towns in the “List of Areas Served”.

Don’t Abuse This Setting

I encourage dealers not to abuse this setting and show unrealistic service coverage maps.  I have a feeling that Google may penalize anything that would be contrived as scamming the system.  I would say that a 50 mile radius for most dealers is reasonable.   So take a minute and look into your Google Places service area setting and see if it has been set too conservatively.

Also, while you are looking at your Google Places listing, make sure that it has:

• Five great photos of customers taking delivery of cars or your work in the community.  Kill the building photos.
• Five great videos.  Three customer testimonial videos, one welcome video, and one service video.
• Proper categories that describe your business.  There is a category for every OEM brand
• Make sure one category you select is “Used Car Dealer”

If you have any questions on Google Places, just give us a call.

It has been a few months now since Google has integrated Google Places data and “star reviews” to Google Page One organic search results.  The impact of this change can best be seen for broad shopping phrases like “Bradenton Used Cars” or “Baltimore Honda Dealers”.  Since this change occurred, I had never witnessed examples where the “block” of Google Places enhanced listings was interrupted by non Google Places listings.

To date, I had documented cases where you can have normal organic listings before the Google Places “block” or after the “block” but until now, the section of listings was unbroken with traditional organic listings not associated with Google Places.  In the example below, the “red” block of Google Places listings are interrupted by the “green” block of non-Google Places listings.

A More Democratic Page One SERP

Today I saw something new; Page One results were mixed with enhanced listings from Google Places and normal organic listings.  The former “block” of Google Places listings was interrupted by normal organic listings.  In this case, one of those results was an exact matching domain to the search phrase queried, shown in yellow.

The boxed area in RED are listing associated with domain names that are included in Google Places.  The areas in GREEN are organic listings on domains not associated with Google Places.  I am very glad to see this SERP because it reinforces my belief that microsites, non-primary dealer websites, will still be effective and visible is common automotive search phrases.

Google Places Is Not The Only Defense

There was some fear that only domains listed in Google Places would dominate organic search results but this example shows that Google is tweaking their formula still.

In the example above, you can see how a business PRIMARY  website that appears in Google Places can be enhanced with additional microsites and marketing websites, if they can be optimized for popular local search phrases.   Creating a website on www.bradentonusedcars.org is a good application of a dealer microsite for a local city search phrase for used cars.

I’ll keep an eye out for the changes in organic search results but it looks like Google is still refining the SERP model.  Third party advertising platforms, like www.usedcars.com which is shown above, should be happy with this update to the SERP display.