Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is very important component to help your site rank well. It is a process that helps your website get found when their potential customers enter specific search terms. Put simply, SEO involves a blend of your site’s Meta Tags, Titles, and internal copy working together to boost your rankings in Google and other search engines.

There is also a supplemental way that your customers can find you. It’s via a valuable tool provided by Google. It is easy to implement… and it’s free. Yet, it’s underutilized. Google Local Business Center will allow you to list your company when it is combined with a city name.

Now, don’t depend on Google Local for search traffic. I want to stress that there is no replacement for a search-engine friendly website with well-written content, meta description tags, keywords, h1 tags, etc. But if you are marketing your business to a local audience, Google Local is an easy-to-set-up potential source of website traffic that complements your other SEO and SEM efforts.

The power of Google Local is that it lists its Local Map-based searches above the rest of the data. This means if you are using this service, your site can get seen before the number one listed site in the Google organic search results. Pretty powerful, eh?

Here are the steps to get your company set up in the Google Local Business Center:

1. Go to Google Local Business Center – you can find this by doing a search in Google.

2. Sign in to Google (or Create a Google Account if you don’t have one).

4. Click “Add New Business.”

5. Enter your business information including name, address, website URL, company description, and the categories that best describe your business.

6. Click “Next.”

7. If it shows your business is already on there, click “claim listing.”

8. If it’s not there, click “add listing.”

9. Then you can enter additional details such as hours or operation, photos, payment options, and videos.

10. Click submit.

11. At this point, you will need to verify you business by phone (don’t bother with the postcard option since it takes weeks to receive it!). Make sure you use a phone number that you can answer because as soon as you click “Finish,” a Google computer will call you to give you a PIN number.

12. Then, enter the Google PIN number in your account to verify your listing.

After you are verified, your info will appear on Google Maps. You can go back to the Local Business Center to edit your information or see how many people went to your listing (there are fantastic tracking graphs). You can even ask customers to go to your Local listing to add reviews – this is a powerful tool to show searchers that people like your company.

So, click over to the Google Local Business Center and list your business. It’s not much work for a lot of exposure. And by doing this, you’ll immediately put your company in front of 95% of your competitors.

Wendy Maynard is a founding partner at Kinesis, Inc. – a marketing and design firm based in Portland Oregon. Our Portland web design firm also specializes in logos, web site design, branding, graphic design, SEO, marketing, and social media. Our clients benefit from out experience at creating websites and marketing materials that help them increase their business revenues.

Still wondering what is the best business marketing list? All the tips you’ll ever need about small business marketing tool can be found at marketing job consultants