Paid Results are highlighted as paid ads and usually appear in a yellow-shaded area at the top of the search page. If you are like me, you ignore them!

For your local business the very prospects that you most desperately want and who are most likely to buy from you, are right there. Yes, Virginia, Google does know where you are, scary, eh?

Google wants to see more interactivity with their Google Places section to people keep coming back. By adding coupons, it adds value to the user experience and helps with your rankings.

Try this little experiment. Go to Google and enter [keyword tool] and click the «I'm feeling lucky» button. This will take you to Google's External Keyword tool. Put in the type of business you are and then add your geographic location and hit enter. What you get back will be the number of searches made each month for your type business in your service area.

Local business customer growth is something that you need to be very focused on. You need to be very much aware of the things happening around you. That is the right way to make it big in any business. You could be learning a lot by market research that can come handy in your business.

Every business owner has the opportunity to also show pictures. Each listing can have up to five pictures included with it. You should take full advantage and upload five pictures of your business, your employees, your products, or your completed projects.

This is not hard to do yet it is amazing how many small businesses do not take the time to do it. It's important to be specific when placing your listing so they include keywords that you would like to be ranked for.

This year all three search giants have improved and best site when it comes to local search they have really stepped up their game. So how do they do it? After reading all of the patent changes and using a little common sense we see some trends. A high priority is given to government records like business licenses and permits. You would be amazed how many businesses don't have a business license or permit. Some areas don't require them either.