Hi Marshall and Gary here

As you will know if you have followed our blog, getting a high ranking in Google exercises our mind regularly at Small Business Internet Marketing and we are always on the look out on how to improve a ranking. We generally use our Small Business Internet Marketing blog as a bit of a crash test dummy to road test various strategies.

One internet marketing strategy that we have been using for the past few months that has really worked for us is Google’s Local Business Centre. What this basically does is provides more like a Yellow Pages type of listing on a Google search query result based on a geographic modifier. In simple words, if someone searches for your business and then adds your location, Google picks this up and returns a result based on information you have supplied via the Local Business Centre facility of Google.

Let’s have a look at an example. Here is the search result for “small business internet marketing” on Google.com.au for “web pages” results. We have removed the higher ranking results for presentation purposes but you can see that we rank number 10 on this basis (we bounce between 3 and 12 on this search, I just ran it again and we came in at number 8). OK, now let’s change the search to “small business internet marketing Brisbane” on the same basis. You can see that we have moved to #1 ranking, but now also get a Google map locator plus a more prominent listing. This has been derived from our Local Business Centre information with Google, we are not listed in the Yellow Pages so it has not come from there.  So if you want to use this for your small business website or blog, you will need a Google account (as we always recommend, you should have a Google account regardless). When you sign in, go to “My Account” and then click on “Local Business Center”. Click on “Add a new listing” and then fill out the form and keep following the steps. Once completed, you will see an entry that looks like this:  That is it. Wait a day or so, then test by doing an appropriate keyword Google search plus a geographic modifier for where your business is located.

We cannot guarantee that it will get you to a number 1 ranking, but it certainly helps. It also helps if you put the location name prominently on your site and coding (we use the meta description, meta keywords and page description to put “Brisbane” in).

The Local Business Centre also has some other funky features. You can offer e-coupons to visitors, visitors can write a review (maybe from a friendly source?) and it gives directions on how to get to your physical location. It is also likely to have site statistics available as well sometime soon.

One of our overarching principles is that if you want Google to like you, use as many of the tools that it provides. Logically it provides these tools to be consistent with its mission statement of returning relevant results for search queries, so by using them you are helping Google in its quest and, most likely, improving your results.

Of course, this does not replace the 7 principles of good on-page SEO that we detailed in an earlier post  – it just adds on top of it to help your ranking.

Your business buddies

Marshall and Gary