Google Maps is the first site that any business should visit before starting mobile or geospecific marketing. Google Maps Local provides a range of tools to make it easy for anyone to check their details and claim your business.

Why do you need to claim your business on Google Maps?

We all know the phenomenon that is searching for something on Google from a Mobile – so as more people have Android phones or iPhones or other smartphones, more people will use Mobile Internet for Search. Google is already enabling Search results limited to the users current location so it’s important to keep your listing up to date.

For anyone into SEO then Google Maps is another good place to promote your business and increase your keywords, link juice and so on.

In many cases, Google Maps data is sourced from 3rd party directories and it could be possible that your business is listed, but with information from some other website. In this example, you can see the Google Maps has detail for mmchanel not mmCHANNEL – which is a misspelling and the map data is from a 3rd party website.

Easy Guide to Claim your business

Go to Google Maps – try http://local.google.co.uk/ or http://local.google.cm and search for your business. Then click on the link for Business Owner?

If you have a new business or can’t find your listing then go to http://www.google.com/local/add/

Then you can choose to edit your listing, suspend your listing or add a new business at that location.

There are a number of steps to claim your business including updating your business details, writing more blurb about your company and at th end you will need to verify you as the correct business contact. You can do this by phone, text or snail mail (takes about 3 weeks).

Damien Saunders

In the next couple of weeks, I’ll be looking closely at Mobile Search and Mobile SEO. This week will be a round up of features on Google Mobile Search

Click to Call

Click to call has been a feature of WAP and mobile portals for sometime, however the mobile phones needed to support this action.

Google has now added Click to Call to Adword Mobile Search Results

Anyone running SEO or Adword campaigns should make sure they have configured the mobile search results as well and to now include the primary phone number for customers or clients to ring in on.

[Source: Google Mobile blog]

Damien Saunders