Google Listing/Advertising problems

[Lock-Star]

I am more or less a locksmith's apprentice and I want to help this guy (my mentor) with his advertising. He spends $300/month with yellow pages for a small 2"x2" ad in the phone book. They also have a crappy little pissant website set up for him. He's an older guy and doesn't know how to do it himself, and doesn't like computers, etc.. I tell him that people don't carry around phone books anymore - they carry smart phones and if they need a locksmith they google "locksmith (city name), (state)".
If you google his specific business name he comes up BUT if you just google "locksmith (our city name), (our state)" he doesn't show up AT ALL. Anybody know how I can rectify this for him?

[easy-e]

Sorry if some of this is redundant if you already know how search engines work. For Google maps/business go to[url]/ww.google.com/placesforbusiness/[/url] and login with a google account. If he doesn't and account, create one for the business. Then you can "Claim" the business and put it into the locksmith category. Claimed businesses that have pictures, addition info entered, and websites always rank higher than those who don't. Even if the website isn't that great as long as it has your basic contact info and services it should work fine. I'm not a locksmith but I use Google's Webmaster Tools[url](ww.google.com/webmasters/tools)[/url] to make sure all of my pages are indexed. You should check to make sure the metadata keyword tags are included in the html for the site. I'm not up to date on the new HTML standards but I think metadata tags are still relevant.

I'm not sure what kind of locksmithing your company does but having an internet presence is going to get you a lot more business than getting raped for $300/month in the yellow pages. The last time I used a phone book for it's intended purpose was a long time ago.

[Sinifar]

Google or any SEARCH ENGINE HAS been GAMED. The scammers know how to do it. They come up on the first page in a lot of trades, not just ours.

It is a "web problem" and as far as I can tell, there is no viable solution to this problem.

How to spot a scammer?

Lots of listings, usually under the same name, but on almost every corner. Lots of phone numbers which answer at some central point, usually Florida, or New York. They send out some goof ball locally to do the work. Most of those have no idea how to do anything locksmithing except take the quoted price and inflate it super huge.

In our area, we come up on the third or fourth page. Unless you are looking exactly for us - even the "local city" - "locksmith" search tag won't work - we still come up really late in the listings.

The way we have been telling people to spot these is to ask them to pronounce some of the harder local city names by spelling it for them. OR asking if they know anything about the area -- where the fire department is -- the local river -- or other landmark. It really gets them, and usually gets rid of them.

Until, and not before the phone company gets hauled into this mess as an "accessory" to the fraud, it won't stop. It is the same way with the constant soliciting on the phone for "Google" -- and tons of other stuff.

Sinifar

[Capt_Tom]

Smart phones are here to stay, and play a major part of the method the business listings are being searched. Your site has to be mobile rated, or it will not be loaded or viewed properly (and they will simply move on to a site that they can view better)...... or do as I did. I have had a website, and then set up a mobile site through Dudamobile. (You can get a free site, but I decided to pay an extra $9 month to use some of their services.) The Dudamobile people will send you a script to paste in the body of your web site's HTML. The script will recognize if your site is being browsed with a mobile device. It will re-direct the device to the mobile site, for better browsing ability.

Here's their site

.dudamobile.com

Tom

[yogibayer]

You may want to consider using a Google Adwords campaign. [url]adwords.google.com[/url] Without spending any money you can see what kinds of keywords other people are using to search for locksmiths that you may not have thought of. I use it and closely monitor what advertising drives customers to me. Of all of my advertising expenses Google has been, by far, the best.