subject: Defining Online Service Area In Local Business [print this page] As local search and geo based SEO became more and more important, people were beginning to have concerns about the service areas of businesses. The problem was that most of the local search results for businesses were being provided based on the physical address that they had presented. This presented problems for a number of different reasons. Now though, the notion of a service area is becoming one that the search engines are starting to accommodate, and this small business marketing tip can make sure that the service area of your business is being reflected in how it ranks in search engines.
First of all, the problems that came from only using the physical address of a business were pretty large. Take a pizza delivery company for instance. They may provide deliveries to a very large service area, but if only displayed based on their physical address, many people searching for Pizza might only see results which are actually closer to their location, even though they could have the option of many other pizza places. This is a small example of the problem, which becomes magnified in businesses with even larger service areas, such as delivery companies and on site service providers.
Another problem that this presented was that there are some people that don't want to list an actual address for their business all the time. There are many people working from home that might have a service area in a part of the city which is where they might not actually live, and they probably don't want their home address plastered all over the internet as their business address. These reasons and more are why search engines started to sit up and take notice that there needed to be ways to more clearly define the service areas offered by a business.
Enter Google places. Since the rebranding of the Local Business Center into Google places, there have been a lot of additions and tweaks to the service, and one of these has been the changes that have made it possible to designate the service area of a business.
When you log into Google places you now have the ability to define the service area that you provide service too. All you have to do is list the various towns, neighborhoods, or areas that your business services. This might sound like a little thing, but the truth is this one little tip can make a big difference. For most of us, a lot of our traffic still comes straight from Google. If we're looking to try and get more people in our city to start using our services, then making the most of Google Places is something that we need to be doing, and this includes defining a service area. Otherwise, you may be limiting your best search engine performance to local searches centered on the immediate area that your business is based in.
Also, for home based businesses that wish to define a service area but hide their physical address, that is a feature that is also available in Google Places.
by: Rich Reese
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