In the landscaping business, it appears the game has changed again.

I hadn’t been a big believer in the value of the local Google Business listings in terms of getting landscaping customers.

However due to the recent local listing changes (called Google Business), I have been forced to change my tune when it comes to advertising your landscaping business.

The New Google for Business

Search Place is the new way that the local business listings are displayed on Google. Instead of being on top of the local searches, they are now placed in the organic listings area. This has profound effects on those companies not listed in the top three results (it used to be 7.) If you were working hard on ranking your landscaping business, and felt good about making it to the lower part of the first page, sorry Charlie, you are gone. If you made it to the top of the page, your in luck. In fact, you can now effectively be “double listed” by showing up in the top three organic and the Google Place Search listings.

Getting into the “Snack Pack” (top 3 business listings on Google)

So, with the business listings and ads now  taking over half of the first page, how do you get in the top Place Search listings? Here is a secret, it is the exact opposite (kinda) of ranking your site organically.

I’ll tell you the secret in a minute but first, here is the new Google for local search:

As you can see, only the top two organic survived by staying at the top of the page, the rest are Place Search listings. So, if you can’t get listed in the top two or three organically,  what is the secret to getting listed in Place Search?

Citations

The secret it to have the exact same business information spread out all over the net. Whereas the technique to rank organically is to have lots of unique content on the internet, ranking in the business listings is identical content everywhere.

Same name, phone number and address, also called NAP for short. That is how you optimize your Google business listing, by having your exact same contact info everywhere. As you know, even a small city landscaping business listing will have 200+ companies, and you need to get in the top three.

So how do you spread your contact information  like warm butter all over the web?

Links

Start a Facebook fan page with all your contact info. Start a Flickr.com business page, and make sure you tag your photos with your keywords AND a few photos tagged with your contact info. Put up a YouTube video and put your contact info in the description. Make a podcast (just a MP3 recording about your business) and put it on Itunes.com and PodcastAlley.com, again with your info in the description.

But, that is still not enough.

You need local directory listings, and lots of ’em. So how do you get them?

Well, you could spend days researching every possible directory on the internet that will give you a free listing, and then another couple of days typing and replying to verification emails, or you could pay a service $30 to do it all for you.

Kind of a no brainer, eh? So What is the service? It’s calle Konker

Now, they have basic packages for around $30, which if you are in a smaller city may be enough, but for more $, you get a lot more.

But here is the kicker:

If you are in a big city like Atlanta or Dallas, where getting to position #1 or #2 organically was going to be a rough ride and a lot of work to begin with, this is an opportunity. Due to the new Place Search, and using UBL, you got a great shot at now getting on the first page.

So you may want to opt for one of the more expensive packages to rank in the bigger cities.

So, check it out now before your competitor does

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