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If your business has any physical presence at all (meaning not just a PO Box somewhere), even if you don’t take walk-ins, you need to do this:

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This is a Google Local Business registration. You put your business name and address in, and claim your local business on the map. Tag it with the industries that you want to be searched for, put in your business hours and other contact information, and let it rip. The lift is almost immediate. For every business I’ve done this for (and I’ve done it a couple of dozen times), local search traffic has doubled or tripled immediately.

Here’s an example, this is the Marketing Over Coffee podcast. I put the listing in at the local doughnut shop because that’s where I convene with my friend and co-host John Wall. We do have business hours and a physical location, and I put us in as a marketing agency because you could in theory hire us (at exorbitant rates) to come fix up your marketing shop. Look at the effect a local registration had:

Google Places - Analytics

We also see corresponding increases in our broad SEO as well.

Take the time to do this for your business. It costs you nothing at all except the two minutes to fill out the forms and verify your business, and the rewards are worth it.


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