Google Local Business Center

Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009 at 10:28 pm

Here's some results from a recent project with a collision repair facility in Hudson MA.

Although my clients website was listed #1 in the organic listings for the key word phrase 'auto body repair Hudson MA', when this search term with the geographic identifier (Hudson MA) was entered, his listing was nowhere to be found in the Google 7 Pack (the seven listings shown next to the map). As Tom has been a client for several years, I dare hesitate to say that this was certainly an oversight on my part by not having his Google Local Business Center configured correctly.

Here's how we fixed it fast:

First off, here's the map results we were able to attain in less than 24 hours, read how we did it below the image:

Google Local Map Search Results

Getting your business on the Google 7 Pack Map can usually be attained by setting up your Google Local Business Center, or in the cases where Google has pulled results from Superpages.com and already created your local business center, you then need to "claim" it as your own. From there, the next task is to get to the #1 spot in the 7 Pack, and the strategy to accomplish that is to get as many legitimate 5 Star reviews as possible.

At this point you need to understand that if you try to game Google on the reviews, you'll loose, and there is a pretty good chance that you'll also loose your Local Business Center, and probably get your web site removed from the Google index as well. In other words, don't screw around with this, do it the right way.

In Tom's case it was easy. He's been using our automated eMail marketing system for over a year now, and has almost 200 double opt-in subscribers getting his monthly (pre-written) newsletter. Tom crafted an eMail message asking his clients for help in updating his Google Local Business Center. He thanked his clients for being the reason for his success and invited them to go to his Google Local Business Center webpage and place an honest review.

He also asked that if for any reason they felt compelled to give his business a poor review to please call him right away so he could find out how he failed them. He then created a broadcast message in his email program and sent the message out to his 200 subscribers who had been receiving his newsletter and had given him permission to contact them by eMail.

In less than 24 hours, his Google Local Business Center received 5 reviews, 4 of them "5 Star", and 1 "4 Star", and as you can see from the map above, his business (Body & Paint Center) went from not even on the map to the #1 position.

Tagged with: automated email marketing • automated email marketing system • collision repair facility • email marketing system • google index • local business center