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Google Places: How does this change your online marketing?
Nearly 40% of all online searches in 2010 were geographically targeted — ie, users would enter the city, state or region in addition to what they were looking for (eg, Dallas eye surgeon). Google realized the importance of changing their algorithm to reflect the importance of local search, so they came up with something called Place Search. This led to the creation of Google Places.
This dramatic change in Google's algorithm changed everything with online searching and is probably the most important marketing issue practices will have to face in 2011.
Now when someone searches "Nashville LASIK" (as shown in the sample below), Place pages will show before organic listings and after pay-per-click, or PPC.
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There are four things your practice needs to do for local search:
- Claim your page
- Fill out your page
- Get citations
- Get reviews
In this blog, I'm going to share with you how to do the first two steps, which are claiming your Place page and filling it out. But this time, I'm going to take an interactive approach and share with you two video links I've set up to show you how to do both.
I think you'll find these links easy to follow. Now, you still need to take care of steps 3 and 4, which I will discuss in an upcoming edition of Premier Surgeon.
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