Local Workshop Prep
Date: Thursday September 23, 2010
Time: 11:00 AM to 1:30 PM
Laptop & Logins
- Don’t forget to bring your charged up, wi-fi ready laptop!
- Bring your Search Engine Account Logins (if you have them)
If you already have logins for Google, Yahoo, or Bing, gather the login names (email addresses) and passwords, for easy access during the workshop.
If you don’t have logins, you will need to set up accounts at Google, Yahoo, Bing in order to claim/set up your listings. We recommend that you set up a business account (website related) at each search engine rather than use your own personal search engine account. For example, at Google set up mywebsite@gmail.com rather than use jbrown@gmail.com A couple of reasons for this is that if you sell your business the accounts can go with it, or if a web or marketing professional needs access to your search engine accounts they won’t have to log in to your personal account.
If you are not confident about setting up your search engine accounts on your own we can help you at the workshop.
Information for your business listings:
- 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.
Optional preparation (can be done at the workshop)
- Keyword Research: 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.