Tuesday, June 5, 2012


Local search is huge on the Internet! Up to of 75% of all searches are said to be local in character - searches for Pizza, Roofing Company, Personal Injury Attorney, Bail Bond... - the list goes on and on. For many local businesses, Google Places (Google+ Local) is not only a new advertising and promotion opportunity but also a new way to share and discover local information. The first benefit is a more prominent ranking on a search engine results page. The first items that Google lists on the page are Google Places (Google+ Local) profiles. If you don't have a Google Places (Google+ Local) profile, you are missing out on getting important information about your business on the first page of a search result. 

Google Places pages have been entirely replaced by new Google+ Local pages. It’s a dramatic change (for the better) though it will undoubtedly disorient some users and business owners and Digital SEO Strategies will help adapt to the migration from Google Places business pages to the new Google+ Local pages. With one listing, your business can now be found across Google search, maps, mobile and Google+, and your customers can easily recommend your business to their friends, or tell the world about it with a review. Google+ Local is the new face of Google Places and seeks to capitalize on the incredible amount of local search traffic.

Google+ Local removes the basic limitations of Google Places with the provision of interactive content-based pages that serve to imitate the functionality of the likes of Facebook and Twitter. Specifically it will allow business owners to build up a base of followers that they can communicate with in relation to their products and services, increasing the level of social interaction between the two.

With this newest update from Google we at Digital SEO Strategies encourage more and more business owners to create their business pages in Google+. But,again for those entrepreneurs who are not familiar how Google+ works, a little help from Digital SEO Strategy experts can lessen the hassle and can save them the time in figuring out how the social platform can be used to create more visibility and exposure for their business.

A correctly optimized Google Places (Google+ Local) listing will also help generate mobile traffic to your site. More and more people are searching using a smart phone, tablet, or other mobile device every day. Again, a large percentage of these searches are for local information. A website that has a Google Places (Google+ Local) listing and is mobile friendly will help generate traffic from the mobile users that want information quickly and are likely to click on a Places listing before scrolling through lots of pages.