Frequently Asked Questions

Yes, it’s good to be visible in other areas of the Web, and no, Places isn’t the be-all end-all.  But visibility there is by far the most important: of every 10 people who search locally for a business, 7 of them use Google Places (about 3 billion local searches each month).  Local Bing is becoming more popular, but it’s a distant second.

If you can get all the customers you need by tweeting and Facebooking all day, by all means continue to do so.  More power to you.  But if you don’t feel you’re getting enough customers, Google Places is where you’ll find them and ought to be priority #1.

They sure do.  Google doesn’t care what country your business is in.  The only differences are that local markets in other countries sometimes may have different levels of local competition (e.g., a greater or lower density of competitors in a specific city), or that you might need to list your business on different third-party sites than you would need to in America.  But the local-visibility process is 99% the same.

There aren’t too many 100% certainties in life, but you can always make good educated guesses.  Every time I suggest a technique for more visibility, I try to use specific real-life examples—like “success stories” and examples of what not to do (like in the 2011 Google Places Freak Show).  I also try to explain how and why certain techniques work or don’t work.

Above all, the way to find out what will get you visible to customers is just to try stuff.  My advice is only helpful to you if you try it for yourself.  The whole point of this site is to give you as much info as you need to draw your own conclusions about what’s best for your business.

Sure, I offer my services on this site, but I’m not pushing them on you.

Like you, I run a business.  I’d be a fool if I didn’t make sure you knew full well about my services and how I can help you attract customers.  But unlike too many local search “experts,” I try to give before I get and give you a choice as to how you’d like to get more visible—hence all the free info I’m offering you.

I started using Facebook back in ’06—several years before everyone and his grandmother had one.  But I don’t use at as “home base” for my business (this site is home base).

If you want to stay up-to-date, the best way is to get on my private (free) email list and follow me on Twitter.

All my free stuff, absolutely.  The only thing I ask is that you don’t remove my name from the materials and slap someone else’s name on it.  Regarding anything you bought from me, it’s totally fine to share with any friends or colleagues, as long as you’re not reselling it or stripping my name off of it.

No.  Nobody can, because nobody knows the Google Places algorithms.  But I can do for you what I’ve done for others and seen work for others—and I’m sure you’ve seen the full-money-back, 100%-satisfaction guarantee that I have.

You can never be absolutely certain, but you can be pretty confident:

I’ve helped business owners of all shapes and sizes in 18 states, Canada, and Australia.  You can see testimonials from a number of my clients.

You have a good idea of the specific work I’ll be performing for you because I’ve laid it out in detail in my materials.  You can judge for yourself whether the steps I’ve shown you sound like they can work for your business.

Last but not least, I’m confident enough to offer a 30- to 90-day, 100%-satisfaction guarantee on all my services and products.

Currently $650.  I already mention that on my done-for-you visibility service page, but it’s worth repeating in case you didn’t see that part.

Probably.  It just depends on your particular situation, obviously.  Just email me.

No.  Once you’re visible in Google Places initially, it’s generally not hard to maintain visibility—and certainly not the kind of thing that you have to set aside time for on a daily basis.   But to the extent that you need some ongoing tuning-up to preserve your high ranking, I’ll always show you how to stay visible to customers.  I do this so that you at least have the option of maintaining your local visibility 100% by yourself, regardless of whether or not you want ongoing help from me.  I’ll show you what to do, and I won’t charge you for it.

Most likely yes, in an indirect way.  Getting visible in Google Places involves—among other things—making some tune-ups to your website.  This usually helps boost your website’s organic ranking.  So a common “bonus” of my work on your local visibility is that your non-local (AKA organic) visibility will also improve.

Maybe.  It depends on lots of factors—like what your business is, how dead-on relevant each of the keywords is to your services, and how many businesses like yours are in your local area.  The most important factor is whether 3-7 Google Places local-business results pop up on the first page when you type those keywords into Google (you can’t show up visibly in the local search results for a given keyword when Google isn’t even showing the local search results for that keyword).

The key thing to realize is that it’s very tough to engineer exactly what keywords you’ll be found for.  But if you know the basic service or terms you’d like to get found for locally (e.g., “roofing” or “optometrist”), then we can get your business visible for a whole bunch of keywords related to the most basic ones that describe you.

It’s definitely possible for you to get visible in all of the towns you serve IF you have a Google Places listing for and a physical location in each town.  It’s more of a “maybe” if you only have one location: in that case, it’s also possible (though a bit harder) to get visible in the neighboring towns you serve.

What’s nearly impossible is to cherry-pick: to get visible in a city your business isn’t physically located in or within a couple miles of.

Feel free to contact me if you want even more detail as to why this is, but suffice it to say that the way Google Places works, you just can’t take the “local” out of local search.

No: I’ve worked with business owners outside the US.  Of course, most of my clients are fellow Americans, but I like working with smart, results-driven business owners from any country.

As in something I sell through ClickBank that you can simply sign up to sell?  No—at least not right now.  Am I willing to discuss an affiliate arrangement in which you introduce me to other business owners who need local visibility?  Of course.  Just contact me with whatever you have in mind.

Sure.  Just email me and we’ll discuss what you’re looking for.