On February 5, 2014, Google released an update to its Google Places service that identifies several thousand categories and translates them into supported languages and varying customs. Business owners now have thousands of categories to choose from when setting up their Google Places profile. This will help business owners more accurately describe what their business does and it will help users find more specific categories of businesses. Selecting the right category for your business can be an important factor in determining whether or not your business will be found.The level of attention your business gets from search results in Google Places and Google Maps depends on how it is categorized. In order to optimize your search visibility and increase your customer outreach, here are some things you should do to conform to these new updates when selecting categories for your Google Places profile.
1. Evaluate Your Current Selections
If you are a business operating outside the U.S. or Western Europe, try looking at what you have currently selected in the category field. The new update may have already made some changes that more accurately describe your business to potential local customers and more accurately reflect local customs. Make use of these changes so that it will be easier for local customers to find your business.
2. Determine Your Demographics
Businesses located in ethnically diverse areas or a touristy part of town where multiple languages may be spoken should consider updating their categories to reflect the thought processes, hence, the searches, of potential customers in their area. Tourists in particular may be performing searches in their native language using terminology that doesn’t match the way your business is categorized. The results they get may not reflect what they are actually looking for. By updating your categories and utilizing Google’s new updates, you have the opportunity to draw in a larger crowd of customers.
3. Check Out Competitors
Look at competitors business profiles—preferably those that are performing successfully—and try to determine what they are doing to promote their business through this service. You may want to try mimicking some of the categories they have chosen or experimenting with some of the common phrases they are using. If a successful method already exists, why reinvent the wheel?
4. Analyze Popular Keywords
Try and use some of Google’s other popular tools such as Google Analytics to find out what people are looking for on the Internet. Selecting keywords that customers tend to search more frequently is a sure way to promote your business and get your business seen more regularly.
5. Watch Your Site Statistics
Carefully look at what works and what doesn’t by watching your site statistics and observing how users are accessing your site. If your site isn’t receiving any views, it may be a sign that you need to change the categories you selected in the initial setup. The categories should be changed to reflect both your business and customer search patterns. That’s not to say that you should try and manipulate the system in order to throw your business into the spotlight, but some keywords and categories are going to show better result patterns than others.
6. Use Categories with Care
Your business is allotted five categories to choose from so don’t waste them on selections that have nothing to do with your business just to drive results. If someone is looking for a bakery and your store is a pet supply store, those users may come across your business but they won’t click on it to find out more if they are looking for a bakery. Use your first three categories to describe exactly what your business does, as Google only displays three categories unless the customer selects the option to find out more about your business. Customers don’t want to sift through results to find what they are looking for so unless the first three categories match what they want, they won’t select your business. Then you can use the other two to select relevant categories that may draw users into your business if they happen to also need other goods or services that you provide.
7. Don’t Get Too Creative
Creativity is good for growing a business but not always desirable in the search engine industry. Although the option is available to create custom categories for your business, don’t use it. Instead, select from the categories that Google provides for you because that’s why they are there in the first place.Those are common search phrases people use. Customers performing a search want to know exactly what you offer and are going to turn to the first businesses that display that information.
8. Avoid Plurality
Search results looking for doughnut and doughnuts are going to yield the same results—the same set of businesses will display. In other words, it doesn’t make a difference if you select a category and decide to make the plural version of that same category. You’ll only be wasting one the five categories available to you.
9. Use What’s Right in Front of You
Google has published online the Google Places Quality Guidelines to help you set up your Google Places profile and with the expectation that you will follow their standards and rules. For instance, they prohibit marketing taglines in your business name or the manipulation of certain keywords to get recognized in a greater number of fields. To avoid unnecessary problems or the possible suspension of your Google Places account, read through the guidelines that are posted here and try to avoid breaking any of the rules that could negatively affect your business page.
This new category rollout is just one of the many new changes that will be coming to Google this year. It’s a huge step in the right direction because businesses, especially overseas businesses, are no longer limited to categories that work well in the U.S. and Western Europe but often provide misleading descriptions when applied in other parts of the world. Now all businesses can more effectively market themselves on Google worldwide. The tips above will help you modify your categories and improve your business’s visibility in order to make the most of these new changes.