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Top Ten Tips and Tools for Google Places, Yelp, and Bing for Small Business

Got Yelp? Got Google Places? This Top 10 Guide is your quick, hands-on to do list for getting to the top of local search.

By Jason McDonald Senior SEO Instructor - JM Internet Group. Posted: November 22, 2010 Share this Top 10 with friends! Copy, paste, email this link: http://bit.ly/b9gItC

The Big Picture

1.	Claim Your Listing The first tip to succeeding on Google Places, Yelp and/or Bing for local search is simple: claim your listing. Getlisted.org is a great tool for finding your listing. After that, claim your listing on each service - Google Places - Claim business listing Yelp - Claim business listing Bing Local Listing Center - Claim business listing.
2.	Keywords, Keywords, Keywords Customers search by keywords. Need a hair cut? Google Hair Stylist Los Angeles. Need a great sushi restaurant? Search Yelp for Boston Sushi. Stressed out? Go to Bing Local and search for Dallas Hypnotherapist. Tip #2 - write your business listing with a heavy emphasis on your keywords. Don't be spammy; but don't be too modest, either!
3.	Set Your Service Area in Google Places Many businesses - like plumbers, roofers, yard care services and the like - service people in their own homes. Others might be physically located in one community, such as a small suburb next to a big city. For example, a wedding florist might be located in Yonkers, NY, but service New York City. For Google Places be sure to set your service area correctly. Under service area select, Yes, this business serves customers at their locations This allows you to expand your service area to meet more customers. Be realistic! Don't set a broader service area than you really do service!
4.	Encourage Reviews, Carefully! Beyond keywords in your company name, description, and categories, reviews drive success at Google Places, Yelp, and Bing Local. Soliciting reviews - crudely encouraging your mom, your best friend, your employees to post reviews that are not honest - is not OK. But encouraging reviews is OK. How? Examples - have a sign up that says, Check us out on Yelp!, or Like us? Review us on Google Places. Email your best customers and encourage a review. Within reason - encourage your customers to post reviews to each service.
5.	Use Google Places and Bing to Identify Review Targets Google Places and Bing scour the entire web to identify reviews about your business. Input a competitor name or your target keywords, and reverse engineer review targets for your business. For example, try this search for pizza fremont ca. Click on the reviews keyword to the far right of vendors listed. For Mission Pizza, for example, Google lists reviews for yelp.com, insiderpages.com, and citysearch.com. Presto! Now you know who reviews Pizza in Fremont, and where to begin your quest to encourage reviews.
6.	Ask for Help! Check out Yelp's Yelp for Business Owners which has helpful videos. Check out Google Places Help Forum, and for Bing, click on the little help link at the top right of Bing Local, or just click here. Don't expect a live person, but do peruse online help. Someone, somewhere has the answer!
7.	Monitor the Conversation Know your keywords. Know your competitors names. Know your own name. Set up saved searches on Google, Yelp, and Bing so that in one click you can search recent reviews for your company. Use services like Google Alerts to send email alerts whenever a comment or review is posted about your company or products. Be prepared for negative reviews. They happen. Reach out to unhappy customers and try to make them happy (within reason). Learn from negative reviews - it's a new form a feedback!
8.	Follow Youtube Channels All the major local search services use Youtube to communicate policies, tips, and tools. Do you know where they are? You do now - Google Places on Youtube Yelp on Youtube Bing on Youtube
9.	Consider Advertising We, at the JM Internet Group, get everything we can for free. But sometimes there are good values in advertising. All of the major local search platforms offer advertising; Google - in particular - has some great values. Check them out - Google Tags and Google Boost Advertise on Yelp Advertise on Bing
10.	Never Stop Learning Be a Google, Yelp, and/or Bing detective! Pay attention to your listings, the listings of competitors, and your keywords. Experiment with how to get listed, what searches are working for you, and what ones are not. Monitor Amazon.com for new books on local search. Take free webinars such as those offered by the JM Internet Group, or even consider paid online education. Local search is big business. Never stop learning!