* Same page for all three.
** Same page for both (click on 'Sign Up' to create an account).
*** & **** Same page.
Business Information: company name, physical address, city, state, zip, main phone, website address, service area, hours of operation, payment options.
Photos & Videos: You can add photos and videos to your listings. Photos should be of your location if possible.
Business Description: Prepare a short business description of about 2-3 paragraphs, including keywords where possible. This description will need to be somewhat flexible to fit the character limits on the different services (maximum length on Google Places is 200 characters).
» Click here to download a Word doc to help you organize your info.
Find the keywords that users are typing in to find businesses like yours. Focus on broad keywords with high search volume.
Categories: Think about possible categories for your business listings, check Google, Yahoo & Bing to see what categories other businesses in your industry have chosen.
Competition: It is a good idea to view the listings of your competitors to help you determine what kind of information they are providing to your customer base already, and to allow you to brainstorm how to be competitive with your listings.
In a yearly survey, 34 experts, including a handful of gurus from Canada and Europe, weigh in on over 60 factors that positively or negatively effect rankings in local search listings. The importance of the 'ranking factor' being discussed, the agreement level among the experts, and comments from the experts are all included.