Advanced Google Places Optimization Strategy for Contractors & Home Services Businesses

On today’s post I want to talk about Advanced Google Places strategies and techniques for your home services business (plumbing, hvac, ac repair, landscaping, roofing, pest controle, etc). There’s a lot of information online now about how to get your company listed on the Google map and what you need to do, and certain things you can do to improve your probability of showing up when someone searches “your city + your service”. If you’re reading this post than you’ve probably already done the fundamentals. If not, please read our existing post on Google Places Optimization Fundamentals. You’ve probably heard the fundamentals twenty times.

Claim Your Google Places Listing

Claim your Google Places listing at google.com/places

Make sure you follow the process, upload some photos, and make sure that you get your keywords on your Google Places page.

That’s about all the information you usually get. Some go a little bit deeper than that, some don’t, but today I want to share some more advanced techniques. Things that you can do beyond just claiming your map listing, to improve the probability of actually showing up on the map.

I’m going to assume that you already have the fundamentals in place. You’ve got a website, your website has the properly optimized title tags and pages for your services, you’ve claimed your map listing, and now you’re just trying to figure out, “what next? Where do I go from here?”

Establish Consistent Name / Address / Phone Number Profile

The first thing you need to do is make sure that you’ve got a consistent N.A.P. (name, address, phone number) profile across the web. That just means, when Google looks up your company name in your city, whatever that happens to be, it’s finding you in a variety of places outside of Google Places. It’s finding you on the Yellow Pages, it’s finding you on CitySearch, it’s finding you on Angie’s List, it’s finding you on InfoUSA, it’s finding you on Axiom.com, etc, etc.

These are all data providers and places that Google says that it spiders to find whether or not a company is really legit, and they exist at a specific address. One of the first things you want to do, in order to establish that name, address, phone number profile and really make sure that that’s consistent across the board is to create an account with each of those online directories.

Go to InfoUSA.com, Yahoo.com, CitySearch.com, Angieslist.com, and all of them give you the ability to either add or claim your existing listing on those sites. By going to those sites and making sure that you exist (first of all) and if you do exist, claiming yourself, and then building out your profile. By doing this you can really make sure that you’ve got a consistent name, address, and phone number, which is a key component of Advanced Google Places Optimization strategy.

When I say making sure that it’s consistent, you want to make sure your name is the legitimate name for your business. If you’re “Bob’s Plumbing Company”, you want to make sure you’re listed as “Bob’s Plumbing Company”, versus just Bob’s Plumbing. Or, for instance, if you’re “Bob’s Plumbing and Drain Cleaning”, and that’s your legal name, make sure you list it as “Bob’s Plumbing and Drain Cleaning”.

The other thing I want you to be aware of is that there is a lot of miss information about how to list your company name on Google Places. You may read information online suggesting that you keyword stuff your name. For example, If your name is “Bob’s Plumbing”, somebody might tell you, “Oh, it would be really smart if you just added to the title of your company “Bob’s Plumbing   Dallas Plumber” for instance.

While that may have worked back in the day, it’s no longer an effective strategy. It’s actually a violation of Google Places’ policies and procedures. Make sure you list your exact company name and use it the same way across the board on all your directory sources that I’ve just referred to, and do it the same way every single time. Make sure you use the same phone number in all those places. I’m a big advocate for having tracking phone numbers and tracking what’s happening with your marketing, but when it comes to your online directory listings, when it comes to Google Places optimization, you want to use your primary business phone number. The one you’ve been using from the beginning.

Don’t try to create some unique number for each one of your directories, because what that does is it really confuses your name/address profile. It’ll hurt you, it’ll actually significantly hurt you. So use your primary phone number in all of those places, use your exact company name, and use your same principal address, written the same way.

If you’re at “1367 South West 87th Street, Suite Number 105”, make sure you list it just like that every single time. Don’t leave the suite off in one place and put it on in another, don’t spell out “South West” in one place and put “SW” in the other. What we’re driving for is a consistent name/address profile across the web, on all of the different online directory sources.

If you want to get a list of the places I’d suggest that you add yourself to, go to http://www.contractorseo.net/free. I have a guide and all of those directories are listed in my guide and that’s something you can access completely free at http://www.contractorseo.net/free.

Get Online Reviews

The second really important criteria for placement in the Google Places listings is quality and quantity of reviews. In our experience, working with home services contractors in very competitive markets we’re finding that it really does make a difference, especially when you’ve got a large quantity of legitimate reviews, not just on Google Places but on other sources as well, like the Yellow Pages, Angie’s List & others. A lot of our clients have a large quantity of reviews on Angie’s List and we find that that’s very helpful.

Even though your Google Places page might only show five reviews, Google is searching the web. It’s looking at Yelp.com, it’s looking at City Search, it’s looking at Insider Pages, it’s looking a Kudzu. All these places where people can write reviews. My personal opinion is, Places is important, but all of those other places are extremely important as well.

In some cases, Google actually is going to penalize you if you only have reviews on Google Places. Where are your Kudzu reviews? Where are your Insider Pages reviews? You want to make sure you’ve got a diverse population of reviews online.

That begs the question, how can I get reviews? What can I do to get reviews online for my plumbing, HVAC and home services business? There are a lot of different things. What we feel is the best thing to do is first of all, have a strategy in your business where you’re consistently asking for reviews.

Print out a review card, make sure that each of your guys has it with them, and it’s just a simple card that reads “We appreciate your business, if you enjoyed the experience of doing business with us, go here. You can either direct them right to the Google Places page, or, if you want to get a little more strategic, if you have a little more technical know how, direct them back to www.yourwebsite.com/reviews, and have a place on your website that will link out to all your online directory sites. Like Yelp, Kudzu, Insider Pages, CitySearch & Google Places.

That way maybe they could write multiple reviews, or maybe for some reason they’re just a big advocate of Kudzu and they want to write the review on Kudzu. Make it easy for them to write a review, and be consistently asking for those types of reviews. The other thing you want to do is you want to start sending emails to your customers after service.

Start collecting email addresses and then after service, send them some type of email that thanks them for their business and reads “If you had a good experience we’d love to get your feedback. Write us a review.” Again, linking directly to the Google Places page or a place on your website where they can access all of your different review profiles. There’s a couple of different ways you can go with that but when done correctly, it really helps.

Now, on this subject of reviews, you hear a lot of people talking ask “Why don’t I just write reviews myself? Or just create a bunch of Google accounts and write a bunch of reviews?” I’m going to suggest not doing that. Google looks at a variety of things when it comes to reviews. It’s not just “OK, you’ve got 25 reviews so you’re ahead of this other guy.” There’s a reviewer profile that’s being built on every single individual online.

A Google Places review, for instance, has to be done from somebody that has an active Google account, typically associated with a Gmail account. If that person just set up their Gmail account and has no activity inside of Google itself, on their Google account, that review doesn’t carry as much weight as somebody that set up a Gmail account six years ago, does their email there and has an active profile as a legitimate person in your city, doing stuff online.

It sounds hokey pokey but the reality is Google is tracking this, and the profile of that reviewer comes into play at some level. The same thing with Yelp. Yelp is very proactive. Yelp is an online review site where people do write reviews. There are active Yelp users and non active Yelp users. If Yelp sees somebody set up an account and write a five star review, in many cases you won’t even see that review show up on Yelp, because they don’t want to show bogus reviews, they only want to show legitimate reviews. They’ll filter out the nonsense.

You want to have a strategy that’s going to help you get legitimate reviews from legitimate people that have legitimate online accounts with Yelp, City Search, Google, and they’re writing reviews that happen to be in your area. The other potential problem with doing this bogus review thing, and ordering reviews from various sources, is Google ultimately wants to understand what your real service area is as a professional service provider. They want to know that you really do service that 25 mile radius you claim to service, and the best way for them to do that is by looking at the reviews that you’re getting online, but more importantly the profile of those reviewers.

If those reviewers are legitimate users of Google and they’ve got activity online, Google knows their IP address, or the IP address they’re typically accessing the web from, and has a pretty good idea where they’re located. Google is starting to factor that into the equation, to determine what your service area is.

If you really want to talk about advanced Google Places optimization techniques, a strategy that we found to be extremely effective is having your technicians check in at the client’s site with their GPS enabled mobile phone, whether it’s an iPhone or an Android, and ultimately by doing so, if you’ve got the right tool in place, you can collect unquestionable GPS data showing you’ve been at a certain site in your service area.

Just think with me for a minute. Whether you’re a small one man operation or you’ve got 20 guys out in the field, imagine if you or all your guys were checking in at places that you’re providing service on an ongoing basis, and then that information was being captured, syndicated, passed to your website and then being passed to Google through the micro format data. This is a way to really show Google exactly what your service area is, and we’re seeing it really produce some significant results in helping our clients get top placement on Google Places.

We do have a tool like this available, it’s called “Nearby Now” at http://www.nearbynow.co/ContractorSEO if you want to register. It’s a web based tool that enables you and your technicians to check in on a mobile device (iPhones, Android, iPad, even if you just have a regular mobile phone you can check in through SMS).

The concept is you and all your guys check in at each location, that information is captured through nearbynow.co, it’s passed to your website, it’s also stored on nearbynow.co, and it pushes that information through the micro format data to Google, showing your true service area. You say that you serviced this area, and you’ve got these 500 check ins with GPS data to substantiate it.

The other really cool feature of this tool is after service, it has the ability to push a review to the customer. One of the challenges we’re finding with our advanced Google Places strategies is we know we need to get reviews, but how the heck can we get reviews and how can we consistently request those reviews? What’s the mechanism for accomplishing that? Well, if you’ve already got a mobile device in hand and you’re at the client’s site checking in    because you’re there to do a bathroom remodel or to install a water heater, whatever you’re doing    if you can just press one more button and have an email or a text message go to that customer reading “We really appreciated the opportunity to be in your house today and service you, we’d really appreciate it if you’d write us a review.”

Now you’ve got GPS data showing exactly what your position is in the world, and you’ve also got a potential review from a customer where they can just click one button, write a review for you on Google Places, click a button and write a review for you on Yellowpages.com, click a little button and write a review for you on CitySearch. I think you can see this is the ultimat advanced Google Places strategy to get Google the information they need to know you’re the key player in your market, and feel comfortable that you really service the area you say you service.

Again, that website to register for that is www.nearbynow.co/contractorseo. I hope that these ideas and strategies have been helpful. To Recap:

• Claim your Google Places listing at www.google.com/places
• Establish that name/address/phone number profile on the web
• Start getting reviews from real customers by sending emails and passing out review cards, or even better, register with http://www.nearbynow.co/contractorseo and start checking in at your customer locations and start requesting reviews directly through an automated process like that and you’ll start to see yourself on the Google map in your market in short order.

If you’d like more information, more ideas on how you can really do more online, get better placement on Google Places, improve your placement on the search engines like Google, Yahoo! And Bing in the organic section, how you can leverage social media tools like Facebook and Twitter and YouTube, I encourage you to go to www.contractorseo.net/free. We’ve got a free guide that we’ve developed that takes our best ideas and techniques and really spells them out in a step by step process, on how you can leverage the Internet to take your services business to the next level.

If you have questions, if you’d like to talk to me directly, if you feel like “heck, I’d like to have somebody do this for me and implement all of these strategies to help me really get the ball rolling”, I’d love the opportunity to work with you. That’s what we do at Contractor SEO. Give me a call at 866 610 4647.

Tagged as: advanced google places optimization, Google Places Optimization, google places strategy, google places tricks, how to get on google map, How to get on the Google Map

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