With Google Local listings taking the top spot in most searches, it’s critical that you claim a listing for your business.

The next step is to ensure that your local listing is in the top spot on Google Maps (within the 10 or 7 box). SEM expert Carrie Hill recently outlined 5 tasks to help your listing get into the top spot, so I want to share them with you:

• Claim and update your listing (and only one listing) – make it as content rich and targeted as you can. Choose the proper categories, and use your local phone number with area code. Make sure you add as many details as you can and they’re consistent with your listings across the web. Don’t expect to rank well in the local search box if your address isn’t in the city within the keyword.

• Upload images and videos – and use brand-name-rich file names. Don’t spam it up, just use a keyword to describe the photo. For example, instead of “kitchen” in the ALT tag and “kitchenimg.jpg” in the file name of a photo, try “winter park condo rental kitchen” in the alt tag and “winterparkkitchen.jpg” in the file name. You’re getting keywords in there, and you’re describing the photo.

• Cultivate Reviews – this is good for a few reasons, not only do users trust you more if your past users love you, the reviews can give you double the benefit by showing up under “Reviews” and under the “More about this place” section.

• “More about this place” – This section used to be titled “Web Mentions” and it’s basically an aggregation of anywhere on the web where your brand name is said, and indexed by Googlebot. Directories, your own website, social network sites, newspaper sites, basically any indexable page of content that has your brand on it can be considered a “web mention”.

Carrie outlines 5 ways that you can get the best bang for buck in this area here.

• User Content – you’ll get credit here for a variety of sites where users can tag images, maps, videos or just content with your brand name. Some examples include Google MyMaps, CommunityWalk.org, Google Earth & Flickr.

So, if you have the time to concentrate your effort on a local listing, then use these tips as a starting point. Alternatively, you can leave the work to us – we guaranteed to get your listing onto the first page of Google.

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• Google Keeping Tabs on Local Business Listing Editors
• How to Setup a UK Bing Local Listing
• ineedhits Launches Local Search Listing – A New Local Search Marketing Product for Small Business
• Bing UK Confirms New Local Business Listing Service