A little-known SEO secret

It’s no secret that Google is starting to look at an ever-increasing number of off-page factors, most of which are hard to control from an SEO perspective, in order to rank pages. So when there are off-page elements that are completely within our control, they should be the among the first tasks in getting a site ready for page one prime-time.

Google Local Business Center is one of those factors, and is the driver behind Google Maps – if you have a organization where the physical location is important to your customers (gyms, jewelry stores, retail, etc.), you should take full advantage of  your Local Business Center listing.

• Google Maps searches are a major source of traffic for sites – 10-30% is normal. Ensuring a thorough listing gives you the best opportunity of funneling visitors to your site.
• Rich information can be embedded, including business description, opening hours, coupons, business photos and so on.
• Keyword analysis shows how visitors found your listing, and quite often will reveal key phrases that you may have overlooked on your website and landing pages.

Yahoo and Bing have similar features – all of these are free and used as a driver to fuel site traffic.

The future is mobile

Aside from the excellent free traffic boost, and the factor that most of your competitors will have missed the opportunity, giving you primary placement advantage on most map services, appearing here is a great way to reach mobile users.

While mobile traffic is still a tiny overall percentage, the growth in smart devices means that they will become much more significant in the next year or two. This is especially true for navigational applications and anything location-specific, as customer use their phones to find businesses in a way that didn’t happen before.

Having a relevant a complete local business entry on all the major search engines should be the goal of every business that wants to improve their SEO.