Sometimes if you conduct a business search you will see a listing for a Place. What exactly does this mean? What is a Place?
Google Places is a free, quick and easy tool that many law firms and businesses are not using. They should. To avoid playing favorites, I am not going to show you a law firm Places page. Instead I am going to show you Best Buy. If I search Best Buy I get the usual results. But I also see this:
If you look closely (or click on the image for full size) you will see that one of the blue arrows posts to a link called Place page. The other blue arrow points to a map. You will also see that there are quite a few listings for Best Buy with Google Reviews. These are Places pages too. Each of the letters represents a Place.
Click on any of these links and you will end up at the Place page for the business.
Here you can see the Place page for the specific Best Buy at the Harrisburg East location. The red arrow shows that the listing is verified. This means that the owner of the store, or someone with permission, took over the page and went through the process to verify ownership. This actually is a relatively simple process. When you create or take ownership of a Places page, you just need to provide the actual address. Google sends a postcard and you respond accordingly. Once you are verified you can begin to design your page.
In this case the page simply has a Best Buy logo, a picture of the building, and some reviews that have been written by customers. But this page is very limited.
Imagine instead a group picture of the attorneys in your firm, or your firm logo. Pictures of the various attorneys. Videos and other information welcoming potential clients to call you or email you for more information. Detailed information about your area of practice, the opportunities are endless.
A good Places page contains a lot of information that helps people to find your firm and encourages them to call you. In addition, a Places page stands out, and helps to improve your search engine optimization.
If you haven’t set up a Places page for your firm or business, consider doing so. It isn’t difficult to set up a basic page, though I recommend making sure your page is complete and inviting.
Start the process by visiting Google’s page on Places.