I’ve just gone through the process of adding my business to the google local business center, and as an update, the only option I was given for verifying my listing was by post, which they say takes 2-3 weeks. I guess they now want to be sure that businesses do not lie about their address.

We started off charging a one-off fee for the service on the basis that we generally should have been able to set up the listing once and just leave it. However, we’ve discovered that we often do need to tweak listings as we find better strategies to optimize them.

I’m not really sure what your issue is here. If you feel you could offer this service at a lower cost why don’t you do it? As far as we are aware, we are the only company offering a money-back guarantee for Page 1 of Google locally.

Dominating every technique that SEO technicians use is the basic objective of Google to ensure that the most relevant terms to the keyword search appear at the top. We set up businesses that are 100% relevant to the search term and then optimise them. One of Google’s metrics for relevance is how often the listing is clicked. This means that businesses that get up there today have a good chance of staying up there once they are relevant to the search term.

We charge for getting them on Page 1 initially and for staying up to date with Local Optimisation Strategies so that if their listing drops off Page 1 we can get them back again. And, as I said before, we offer a 30 day money-back guarantee.

You charge per annum? For what exactly?

We only charge 250 p.a. and we offer a Money Back Guarantee. I think it’s a pretty nominal charge for the service being offered.

Mark

I’m in 2 minds about your service. Yes, it does offer non-tech folk an easy route to traffic, but at the same time you mention that site owners really shouldn’t be paying for this: “Any Web Designer is doing their customer a dis-service if they don’t know both how to set up their local listing and optimise it for Page 1″.

I hope your service goes well, but if you go down the direct marketing route I feel you’ll end up just another “bad” search agency…

Rgds
Richard

I noticed your post from last year and find it excellent. Not sure how much you’ve done since on it but we’re reasonably confident we’ve cracked how to do this and are guaranteeing Page 1 rankings for local businesses within 30 days. We have a strike rate of around 95% and we simply refund the 5%. We charge for the optimization at €250 p.a. + VAT.

I think this is going to be huge over the next 3-5 years and will put Yellow/Golden Pages and all local directories out of business. Since last year, Google now have more Local searches than Yellow or Golden Pages and this trend will continue.

Any Web Designer is doing their customer a dis-service if they don’t know both how to set up their local listing and optimise it for Page 1.

Sorry for not responding sooner. It does seem that Auth OneBox is heavily connected to ranking for the related keyword in regular search. Don’t see too many of these however, and it’s difficult to gauge.

Thanks for dropping by
Richard

I think you are very right. It seems that organic seo matters really come in for determining a onebox. For instance…Location+Keyword external links pointing to your site associated with the LBC. I think that is about the only way google and really brand you for a location based keyword.

What I am trying to figure out is how to knock a onebox down after it is established…

Thanks for your comment, and good to know. I’ve heard that there is a threshold for number of reviews before they show the stars, but not much about negative/positive reviews (as you mention). I know they are doing a lot of work on sentiment analysis, but that’s a long way off.

Authoritative one-box seems to be more related to brands (or the signals Google relies on to determine “brands”). From what I’ve seen you have to be authoritative for the keyword searched, or at least authoritative relevant to any geographic modifiers (as in the case I gave above).

Thanks for dropping by and giving your time to comment.
Rgds
Richard

Have you found more info on the authoritative one-box?

I believe that reviews can come into the rankings, but it’s a bit of a black-box sadly, so no one really knows how reviews affect rankings. Good luck with your quest.

Thanks for dropping by
Richard

Glad this helped you.

Hi Chris

You’ll get results from this far quicker than you would organic search. Although competition in your niche will determine how easy or not it is to rank for your desired keywords.

Hope this helps
Richard

Thanks a million for this it has being a difficult process to follow and these tips are making it a lot easier much appreciated from myself and TravelHQR.
Cheers!

I’m not sure if the results will be as you desire when you use the same main number for each location (due to anti-spam measures). But I’m not 100% sure about this. I’d advise you head over to the Google Maps Support Group and see if you can find out more there.

The only other thing you could try is to update one or two of the main numbers to see if this has the desired effect. Sorry I cant help more with this.

Rgds
Richard

Each listing has a different mobile number but due our business being 1300TempFence we want our main 1300 number to be displayed.

Yes, some of our listings show the main number, some show the mobile number but they all have the 1300 number as the main.

It’s quite strange.

I’m not sure, but they may require a different phone number for each location. How did you verify these listings? I presume by SMS?

When you say “it sometimes only shows the mobile/cell number and not our main 1300 number” do you mean that some locations show mobile, some main number, or that this varies across searches for the same location?

Rgds
Richard

I have uploaded 9 of our branches (different locations across australia) to the local business search. I put our 1300 Number as the main number and then entered a mobile/cell number also.

When viewing these in the local business search, it sometimes only shows the mobile/cell number and not our main 1300 number.

Do you have any idea about how to fix this?

Alyce

Glad you found the answer to your question. I’ve found that the correlation between ranking well for a term in regular SERPs and local results is a little tenuous. For some search terms it seems that anchor text plays a big role, while for others it does not.

Glad you’re getting some use from local business listings!

Rgds, and thanks for dropping by,
Richard

But overall nice gain for a relatively small effort. I have done if for one customer as well and they are jumping in the air with happiness at the result.

Just finished following these steps for my own site. I will deffo keep handy for future sites I design.

One thing I do not understand, what actually drives the local listing to appear. I think it appears sometimes and other times it doesn’t for the same search times – Am I right?. I guess to add to my question if you were already ranking for your keywords on first page of Google (which I am today (could all change tomorrow of course) would setting up the local directory option push me up to top of the page?

Kieran

Thanks for dropping by again. Check out [locksmith london] or [escort london] for some nice spam also

I think that they do respond to the map spam reports quickly enough.

Rgds
Richard

Your signature pushed my boundaries a bit so I updated. Hey, you still get the link. There’s a lot of spam for sure on local maps, but if you report spam I think they will remove it. I doubt payment options are considered with ranking, and as you say location seems to be a big factor.

Thanks for dropping by
Richard

I put a lot of effort into getting reviews, including writing to many of my clients but the nature of the maps listing seems to be very heavily weighted towards geographic centre, which makes it tricky if your postcode is not city centre. So now I see that all I have to do is move premises

I had previously got the impression that payment options might affect ranking, as they are considered a sign of professionalism or trust. I could be wrong.

I have noticed that some companies will place 2 maps listings, thus forcing off 1 or more competitor from the box. I wonder if Google will clamp down on this?

Keep up the good work. It’s a bit foggy out there in Google Maps land.

The only reason why I doubt they penalise for not using your business name is that they have no way to know what the correct business name is. And algorithmically it would be very difficult to detect. Also have a look at [escorts london] and you’ll see that none of those sites seem to be suffering

I did get called out by Google for the business name I originally used. I changed it back to my limited company name and this didn’t seem to hurt much.

Thanks for dropping by, rgds
Richard

I recently wrote a little blurb about Google local search as well. I’ve noticed one thing… I could be completely wrong on this but it seems the local search docks you points for not using your company name. I’m currently testing: company name – keywords to see how that works out.

Thanks!

@Mark – Ta. So I presume all locations are verified

So I dusted off the analytics for the site and found it sitting comfy at the top for a hugely competitive keyword. Im sure this is a step backwards in terms of Google returning the best search results possible for searchers.

Rgds
Richard

keith