Local Fundamental 101 - Google Places First?

[Randy Kirk]

In the never ending confusion regarding all things Google Local Business, should a brick and mortar business who has no listing start with Google Places, then do a Google+ listing or start with Google+. Just for fun, should a one location store also do a separate maps listing? In my 5.5 years of doing local, I have never done a maps listing. Should I now be doing so?

 

[Broland]

If you are looking to rank quickly for local terms, start out with some business listings (citations) on popular sites for about a month. Then use Google Places (Places for Business ? Google) to create a new listing, and continue with some quality business listings (citations) for a couple more months.

 

[Linda Buquet]

If you are looking to rank quickly for local terms, start out with some business listings (citations) on popular sites for about a month. Then use Google Places (Places for Business ? Google) to create a new listing, and continue with some quality business listings (citations) for a couple more months.

Broland is right.

Always start with Places. Right now DON'T do G+ page.

Randy, were you aware Google is in the process of auto-upgrading all Place pages to merged G+ pages? That's why Google is saying don't create a G+ page or do a manual merge right now.

Google Begins Auto-Upgrade of G+ Local Listings to Google+ Business Pages

(Moving this to the G+ L 101 beginners forum. The help section is more for help on a specific listing, not general discussions.)

 

[Randy Kirk]

I don't keep up like I used to, Linda. Stable client base. : ) Good news! I have seen some of my clients switched over, and others still only on Places dashboard. We stopped creating + pages more because it was hard to see any immediate ROI from + action on the page. We are treating it more like LI, with our focus on the owner rather than the business page.