Discover How You Can Use Google Places To Grow Your Business

Are you the owner of a relatively small business, and are looking to grow your business? If that's the case, then you're no doubt already taking advantage of your online efforts; search engine optimising your website and keeping it up to date with relevant, informative content.

Whilst an excellent online presence is crucial for any business, if you run a small, local business then your efforts ought to be more concentrated on local search marketing (see - UK local search). It's local search marketing that will put your services and products immediately before your local market.

Google Places can be vital for this.

What is Google Places?

Google Places allows you list your business and its location with the search engine. This means that when someone looks for your services or products in the search engines, your business will be shown on Google Maps.

This will make your business easier for people to find, plus, it provides you with the perfect opportunity to share some of your company's information with targeted traffic.

There are many obvious benefits to using Google Places for your business. For instance, it is able to put your business directly in front of targeted search users. Furthermore, having a place on a reputable listing like Google Places helps your business to appear more trustworthy - particularly when you're listed among some of the biggest competitors in the area. A good presence on the social networking sites, such as Facebook (see - Facebook and marketing), will also help you to achieve this.

Why Do You Need Google Places?

If you're not on Google Places, then you're putting yourself at a serious disadvantage. This is because a vast number of companies - possibly you competitors - already are listed with the search engine. This means that any search users looking in the local area for your services or products, will bypass you and go straight to the first business they see on Google Places.

As a small business you'll no doubt rely on local custom to bring in profit. So, if you'd like to dominate the local market for your niche, you'll need customers to be able to find you easily. Google Places gives an exact geographic location.

What Are You Waiting For?

Google Places is a totally free service - so what's stopping you? A free, online tool like this could do wonders to help grow your local business - so what are you waiting for?

For more information and help with local search marketing for your business, see - Google places listing.