Sure, you have a website that works hard to give your practice visibility, but if you want to make sure your firm appears in Google search results, Google Places makes good sense. It's a more direct way to advertise your practice than putting your dollars in newspaper ads, Yellow Pages or other local efforts.

What's more, iPhone and Android users can find your business listing immediately while on-the-go. They don't need to be in front of a computer to do a search or visit your website.

Learn From Your Relationships
As part of your free Google Places listing, you can add content and visuals to your Place Page, highlight special offers or services, and use the platform's reporting tools to gain valuable insight about potential and existing customers.

For example, the Google Places dashboard is especially useful for understanding how customers find your practice. Review how many people are seeing your Place Page at any given time, find out how they have come to your page and see where they have come from. The dashboard makes it easy to see how many times your listing appears as a result of a Google or a Google Maps search, and what keywords people are searching to get to you.

It's also useful for tracking effectiveness. Check the dashboard's top search query results to see how many people found your listing when looking for an accounting firm. Google Places makes it much easier to measure online advertising effectiveness and determine how new business inquiries correlate to Web traffic than, say, a Yellow Pages ad - and, it's a whole lot cheaper. With Google Places, you can make more informed decisions about how to be found on Google and interact with your customers.

Put Your Best Foot Forward
If you can find 15 minutes to spare in your day, you can gain visibility on Google Places. To get the most out of your listing, follow these guidelines to get started.
• Represent your practice exactly as it appears in the offline world. The business name field is just for that: providing the name of your practice. This is not the place to include your marketing tagline, phone number or website URL - unless they are truly part of your business name. You will allow for better searches if you stick to a concise name rather than trying to manipulate search results by adding extraneous keywords.
• Use a precise, accurate address to describe your practice's physical location. One out of five searches on Google are related to location, so every Google Places business listing must have a mailing address. If you office out of your home, you can specify a "service area" during the sign-up process and choose to hide your physical address. If you specialize in multiple services, it's best to create a single listing that highlights all of the specialties rather than creating multiple listings.
• Provide a phone number that connects to your individual practice location as directly as possible, and provide one website that best represents your practice location. This should be pretty straightforward (in any line of business).
• Be specific, but brief, in categorizing your practice. Say what your business is (Certified Public Accountant, Accountant, Enrolled Agent) instead of what you offer (tax accounting). This information can be added in your description.
• Complete the registration fully. Provide Google Places with all relevant information, such as hours of operation, photos and appropriate logos. As part of their algorithm, Google measure the percent of completeness so lightly completed Google Places pages are seldom visible.
• Verify your listing. Your Google Places account must be validated or verified just like a newly issued credit card. Verification is required to confirm that you are the business owner or an authorized representative of the business being listed. No validation, no exposure.

Armed with this information, you should be ready to improve your practice's visibility and customer base by using Google Places. Not only will you boost your ability to get found and build relationships; you will increase your ability to "go places" in your business. Why not be there when a customer is looking for you?

Hugh Duffy MBA

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Hugh Duffy is co-founder and chief marketing officer for Build Your Firm, a leading practice development firm dedicated to the accounting industry.  Based in Madison, Conn., Build Your Firm works with small accounting firms providing accounting marketing, practice management and Web site development services. 

Prior to co-founding Build Your Firm in 2003, Hugh was a Vice President of Internet Marketing for Business & Legal Reports (BLR), a business-to-business publisher for small and medium sized businesses.  Prior to BLR, Hugh was a Director with a publicly traded global internet media company, 24/7 Real Media responsible for Business Development and Strategic Partnerships.  The foundation of Hugh’s marketing background is fourteen years of consumer packaged goods marketing with Schick, Nabisco, Clorox and Coca-Cola. 

Hugh has 25 years of marketing experience, an MBA degree in marketing from the University of Rochester and a B.S. in finance from the University of Maryland.  While at Maryland, Hugh was on a golf scholarship and his coach was Fred Funk, PGA Tour player.  Today, Hugh’s golf game suffers and he is content watching his two kids play college lacrosse.