NC Internet Marketing Expert | 
04 4th, 2008| 
The very first thing you need to do if you own a local offline business is to claim your Google Local Business listing.
If you haven’t already noticed, whenever you do a search on Google for a particular type of business AND a city name, you will often get what is known in the industry as the “Google Maps 10 Pack”.
What’s important to understand here is that these local business listings almost always appear at the top of the page, above the normal listings so they are more likely to get clicked. They are also much easier to get because they don’t rely on the same algorithm that’s used for the organic search results shown above, which are determined primarily by the number and quality of inbound links to your website.
In order to power these new map results, Google has licensed data from lots of 3rd party business data providers such as yellow page companies and other aggregators like Acxiom and Localeze. So if you’ve advertised in the yellow pages or have a local business phone number thru the phone company, chances are you’re already in their database and may even be listed already.
However, sometimes this 3rd party data is inaccurate and it’s almost certainly incomplete. Also, until you “claim” your business listing, Google doesn’t give it the importance it deserves because the data has not actually been verified by the business owner.
Luckily, claiming your Google local business listing is Free and easy to do:
1) Visit the Google Local Business Center.
2) If you already have a Google Account, sign in with your email and password otherwise create a free Google account.
3) Follow the instructions to create a listing.
Please remember these points when creating your Google Local Business Listing:
· Make sure your information is consistent across the Internet. You want to use the same business name, address, and most importantly phone number throughout the Internet.
· The street address you enter will be shown in the Google Maps search results. If you work from home or have a physical street address you don’t want to display, I suggest getting a mail box at a UPS Store (Note: You want a real street address not a PO Box from the post office)
· Once you’ve submitted your business information, you’ll need to verify the listing before it goes live. You can verify using a touch-tone phone, SMS, or a PIN that will be sent via regular mail to your business address. Once the listing is verified, your information will normally appear in the search results in about 48-72 hours.
· Be sure to add as much information about your business as you can and use as many of your keywords from Secret #1 in your business description, products, services and coupons as you can.
· Upload your logo and other images about your business.
You can (and should) create similar local listings on Yahoo! Local and MSN (Windows Live Local) as well.
