How to Submit Your Business to Google Places and Get Found on the Web
by Sarah Gooding on Sep.03, 2010, under Houston, SEO, Web Design, Wordpress
For the past few weeks we’ve been posting tutorials about how to use some powerful and free SEO tools to help you improve your WordPress site’s rankings with search engines. Whether your site runs on WordPress or not, you don’t want to neglect the opportunity to promote your business and get some attention online using Google Places.
What is Google Places?
Formerly known as Google Local Business Center, the new Place Pages help people who are searching to make more informed decisions about where to go. Google lists everything from restaurants and hotels to dry cleaners and bike shops, as well as non-business places like museums, schools and parks.
Place Pages connect people to information from the best sources across the web, displaying photos, reviews and essential facts, as well as real-time updates and offers from business owners.
Step 1: Go to Google Places and click “List Your Business”
If you have more than 10 business listings you can add them quickly using the bulk upload feature. They make this as easy as possible for you.
Step 2: Check to see if your business has already been picked up by Google Places.
Simply type in your phone number on the first registration screen and see if it matches correctly with your business number and location. If it matches, then you can go ahead and edit your existing listing. If not, you’ll want to create a new listing and make sure you’re signed in with the Google account that you want to use.
Step 3: Follow the steps that Google guides you through.
Enter all of your basic information, add categories that apply to your business, hours operation, payment options, photos, videos, and any additional details you want potential customers to know about.
Step 4: Get your listing verified.
Google will call you to verify your listing, so have your phone handy. Otherwise you can verify via SMS or postcard. It shouldn’t take more than 12 hours for your listing to appear. Now you can track how your business listing is performing on Google with a personalized dashboard within Google Places. It includes data about how many times people have found your business on Google.
Want more free ways to promote your business and boost your SEO? Check out our tutorial series:
Mark Jaquith: I have to ask: Can you explain the bear?
by Mark Jaquith on Sep.03, 2010, under Web Design, Wordpress
Oh yes.
This is why I love going to WordCamps. Stilly stuff like this that you can laugh about later.
Matt: Only in New York
by Matt on Sep.03, 2010, under Web Design, Wordpress
Last night around 10:15 decided to head out for dinner, and somewhat randomly picked the Cuban restaurant Guantanamera because it was nearby. Sat down in a booth near the bar, facing the band, and ordered some mojitos. Over the din of the other diners I thought “hey this house band isn’t half bad.”
Within a few minutes of listening it became very apparent that beyond “not half bad” they were actually really remarkable. What a treat! Ordered a steak and sank in, letting the music (and mojito) flow over me. A half hour later a lady from one of the front tables got up to sing with the band — which isn’t always a good thing. They started on The Man I Love and it was sublime. The song started out as a ballad but then they kicked it up to a fast afro-Cuban beat, and the singer scatted over the beats for a good 4-5 minutes. It turns out it was Janis Siegel of the Manhattan Transfer! I felt particularly fortunate as I had been bummed to miss the Manhattan Transfer show at the Montréal Jazz Festival in June, but here, of all the most random places, was one of my favorite members performing at a small family joint in Midtown West.
Janis sat down after one song but a string of similarly talented musicians came in and out of the band until the restaurant started to close down. I didn’t recognize any of them but the music was so good. 
There was a recording device above the band that was collected by a fellow who I caught up with outside the restaurant as he was hailing a taxi. His name was Paul Siegel and he’s the co-president of Hudson Music which is a music education group (with a website powered by WordPress). I learned the percussionist leader of the house band was Pedro Martínez and Paul follows and records him several times a week at different venues. Apparently Guantanamera is a long-time musician hang-out where even folks like Eric Clapton sat in with the band.
Only in New York.
Top Web Design Companies
by webmaster@REMOVETHIScssdrive.com on Sep.03, 2010, under CSS, Web Design
RightJS Framework
by webmaster@REMOVETHIScssdrive.com on Sep.03, 2010, under CSS, Web Design
