Google Maps Update To Work Better For Home Based Businesses And Services

Google maps has been testing out adding the capability for home based businesses to no longer have to list their home as their address and to let service based businesses show up for a service area rather than only showing up for the location of their business office. When these changes go live it will be great news for service businesses and home based businesses.

Specifically, what does this mean for your business? Currently, if your business address is your home address, you have no choice but to enter that as your location, which means your home address shows up when anyone searches for your business. Clearly, this is less than ideal. If this update goes live, then you will have the choice to not show the business address and, instead, list areas served or the number of miles from your location that you serve.

This will also be helpful for service businesses who go to a customers’ location, instead of having customers come to them. For example, if you are a plumber, then you will now be able to say that you serve Tomball, Cypress, Spring and The Woodlands, instead of just showing up for your location in Tomball. This is an issue that comes up regularly when signing up clients for local search.

You can learn more about the potential changes, including viewing screenshots of what the new interface will look like, by clicking here.

We are really excited about what this could mean for our clients, and we will be sure to let you know when Google goes live with the feature.

Think Facebook Doesn’t Matter?

A lot of business owners like to think that Facebook isn’t really important to their business. Isn’t that just a place to play Farmville and Mafia Wars? Does any serious business really take place there? Is it really necessary to my business?

This piece of news may change the way you look at Facebook. Last week Facebook surpassed Google as the most visited website on the internet. So, if you think you can ignore Facebook, does that mean you think you can ignore Google? Visitors to Google are still growing– up 9%. But visitors to Facebook were up… wait for it… 185%!

So, what does that mean for your business? There are a few things you should absolutely be doing.

Make sure your business has a fan page

Even if you have a personal page (which is better than nothing), you should really still have a fan page. It’s not that hard. Once you’ve set up the page, invite all your friends, colleagues and customers to become fans. Don’t have time or inclination to do that? Check out our services page for our social networking package.

Use Events

You can use Events to run specials, not just to run events. Having a March Madness sale? Create an event. It will automatically promote on your Facebook page. And when your fans RSVP, this information goes on their wall, going out to all of their friends, serving as an instantaneous promotion tool.

Post Regularly

It doesn’t have to be profound. Integrate Facebook with your company blog. Or your Twitter account. Send public thank yous to clients or employees. Give your clients hints for how to better utilize your services. Give them hints to make their lives easier. Post inspirational quotes sometimes. You don’t have to post every single day, but you should aim for at least once a week. Set aside 15 minutes a week (at least) to work on your social networking.

Obviously there’s a lot more you could do with Facebook. This is just the bare minimum. But it’s something every business can and should do to take advantage of the rising number of Facebook visitors.

Why Search Engine Rankings Matter

You may have noticed we haven’t written a blog post in a few weeks. Once every two years we write an Olympics blog– one for the Winter Olympics and one for the Summer Olympics (this one hasn’t yet undergone a facelift– look for that soon). For a couple of weeks every two years, every spare moment is spent watching and writing about the Olympics. What does that have to do with your Search Engine Results Page (SERP)? Keep reading, and I’ll let you know.

In the current age of Pay Per Click, it can become easy to ask– does it matter where I rank? After all with the right PPC manager, I can appear on the front page any day I want. That may be true and, certainly, given enough money you can buy a spot in the Sponsored Ads.

However, PPC cannot buy you authority. People who know those are sponsored ads know that you paid to be placed there and that it has nothing to do with the quality of your site. Sometimes that may not matter. It depends whose attention you’re trying to attract.

Ranking for Olympic related terms is, as you can imagine, challenging. When we wrote our first Olympics blog– 2006TurinOlympics.com, it ranked in the top three for the phrase 2006 Turin Olympics. Not only did this lead to a huge amount of traffic, over 200,000 page impressions for the month of February in 2006, but it also lead to being quoted in the Washington Post.

Of course, then we had the domain working for us. But after the Turin Olympics, we decided to create the ongoing winter and summer Olympics blogs. That meant we would no longer be attempting to rank for a specific Olympics, but for the more general (and, therefore, more difficult) terms winter Olympics and summer Olympics. During the 2008 Beijing Olympics, we ran into a problem with our ranking. While we ranked well early on, our site completely disappeared the day of the Opening Ceremony and didn’t reappear for over half of the Olympics.

We were concerned we were going to have the same result with this winter’s Olympic blog. Sure enough, when we started out, our rankings were pretty low and so was our traffic. Once we started adding content, though, we were able to rise to 12th in the rankings for “winter Olympics” and to maintain a number 1 ranking for “winter Olympics news”– not bad considering five of the top ten positions were held by the official IOC site, the official Vancouver site, and NBC’s Olympics site. As our rankings rose, so did our traffic. And, apparently, so did our profile and authority in the eyes of others.

During the second week of the Olympics, we were contacted by a representative of the public relations firm running Proctor and Gamble’s Olympics campaign. Would we be interested in interviewing a couple of the women from the U.S. women’s hockey team? Um, sure. That resulted in this post about Jenny Potter.

When Sherry (my co-writer for the blog) emailed our contact to say thanks, she offered to set up another interview. That resulted in this interview with Kristy Yamaguchi. Not bad for a couple of “amateurs” writing an Olympics blog.

So, what’s my point? I know that the pr firm rep found us through the search engines. She didn’t pick a random company who was paying for sponsored links. She picked a website that ranked well for the terms she was searching. Our ranking gave us automatic authority in the eyes of others. In turn, that gave us the opportunity to conduct a couple of interviews that allowed us to create some unique content that will allow us to gain even more traffic. I hope you can see how this could be a good thing for your business.

Even if you’re not trying to conduct interviews or writing a blog on your website (although if you’re not, we really must talk), a top ranking for your keywords WILL promote you as an expert. If you’re searching for Houston widgets, which company are you going to do business with? The one ranked number one or even number four? Or the one ranked twentieth? Whether you, personally, think your ranking should make a difference in your potential customers’ eyes, it does.

Am I saying Pay Per Click is bad and that no one should go that route? Certainly not! More traffic is more traffic and a well-designed PPC campaign can be especially helpful as you’re building your organic search ranking or if you’re in a really competitive niche. But PPC will not help demonstrate that you’re an expert. Natural search results just might.