More than a year ago we wrote a post titled Local Search Marketing: The “10-pac” which touched on Google’s announcement that it had become more local. By matching a user’s IP address to a geographic area, Google was now able to generate local results based on a search query. For example, if an internet user in Portland search for the keyword “Chinese food”, then a list of Chinese restaurants in Portland would display. Each listing would contain the name of the business, address and a phone number. Fast forward to the presence and local listings have turned out to be a valuable tool for many businesses in driving not only additional web traffic, but also by bringing new customers to the door.

Google has continued to further build out its local search by introducing Google Place Search. The idea behind this new type of search is to make it faster and easier for users to find local information. Compared to Google’s previous local search efforts, the new Place listings come fully equipped with descriptions, pictures, and even links to other third party sites, such as citysearch.com and yelp.com. Instead of having this information scattered across the page in the organic search listings, all of this information is now readily available in one visible location. This makes it even easier for businesses to promote themselves. Think of a Google Place listing as an extension of your existing website and business. By leveraging a listing with engaging content, photographs, and descriptions, it now has the potential to drive visitors and customers to a website and business.

At Fish Marketing we’ve successfully utilized a variety of search engine optimization (SEO) tactics to help move our clients to the top of the local listings. Many of our clients have reaped the rewards of local listings by seeing an improvement in not only in website traffic numbers, but also a higher overall presence and site visiblity in the search engines.