places_logoThere are many ways that users of the internet find the businesses that they are looking for. An internet marketing agency or SEO firm can certainly help, but one of the ways that unsers do this is by looking at the business listings which appear after they search for a given term. As a business, making use of the free business listings available as part of Google Places can be one of the most effective ways to reach out and acquire new customers. Every part of this listing is important and needs to be considered in order to make the most of it. The first element that we want to look at is the titling of the business.

The first thing that you need to remember to do is to be careful to accurately list all of your businesses information. This could represent contact from many customers, so you need to make sure that they get the right information when your business comes up in a search. For the “company/organization” field, you need to enter the name of your business in its entirety

There are quality guidelines which Google has in place to govern these listings. You don’t have to include extensions like LLC if they are part of your business name.  Your business name in the listing should look exactly like it does on your business card or storefront.

This means that you can’t add in any descriptors or keywords as part of your business name. Some people do this thinking that it will improve the searches which their business will appear for. However, listings which include descriptors or keywords will be flagged and refused. Also, you cannot include the name of your city or region in your business name in an attempt to get more hits. Only include such if it is part of the registered name of your business. No phone numbers or websites may be inserted into either.

The important thing to remember is that there are fields for all of these different types of information. You can use the description field to add in words which describe your business in more detail. This is the place to outline the services that you provide. Your phone number and address all have specific fields where they are supposed to go further on in the Places listing. The same also goes for your website’s URL.

Remember, if your listing does not comply with the regulations, your listing may be rejected. You should check out the official guidelines at Google to make sure your listing title is fully compliant.

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