With the fast paced changes in the field of SEO, Google came up with Google Local Listings to help the businesses bring their story alive on Google Maps. It is an effective way of displaying business listings on the first page results.Since 600 million searches per day are for local information; it becomes important to get included in Google's local search results. It drives huge amount of local traffic to the website which helps in maximizing its exposure.
To add a local listing, all you need is a Google account. Create one or use an existing one to logon to Google Places. Submit information about all your business locations. If you have more than 50, you can consider uploading them using a bulk upload file.
Once done with the verification of the listings,one can make the rank higher by adding pictures, videos, coupons etc. Spend some time in getting used to the analytics displayed inside the Google places account. You can see the various keywords for which your listings are showing up and the search volume of all such listings.
Using the right keywords in the business name, citation quantity, data consistency and the user reviews highly affect the local listings. At Envigo, we work with ITC Hotels, a leading chain of Luxury hotels, to increase their online visibility and to rank higher in the Google local listings. We analyze the keywords on regular intervals, on the basis of which the strategies are created to get a high number of impressions and a reduced CTR.
Keeping in mind, the guidelines and restrictions that Google imposes, we movedthe domain from 'itcwelcomgroup.in' to 'itchotels.in' as the domain specific to business results in attracting more users to the site.
We also kept a close watch on the reviews as authenticity of these affect the overall ranking of the search results.