google my business

Top 3 Behaviors That Will Hurt Your Web Presence

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

At Prospect Genius, we’ve spent years and years perfecting our online advertising services and adapting them to meet Google’s changing standards. We do this so we can provide the most effective advertising possible and produce satisfying results. However, our efforts can only take a client so far if that client is doing things that are inadvertently sabotaging their online advertising campaign and web presence.
Man With Computer
To keep your campaign successful, stay on Google’s good side by avoiding these three behaviors at all costs.

1. Duplicating Content

Having duplicate content on your website is a major crime in Google’s world. If your site contains content that’s been copyrighted to another company, you have duplicate content. This is in direct violation of Google’s guidelines. Google’s bots are constantly indexing and scanning through webpages, and sooner or later, they’ll detect that your content is identical to someone else’s. When they do, Google will decide which page is the original source; the other page, presumed plagiarized, will be removed from Google’s index, never to be shown to users.
So while it may seem like you’re taking a shortcut by “borrowing” someone else’s content—or content that was written by an advertiser like Prospect Genius—you’re actually creating a situation where the duplicated pages will never rank for any search. Obviously, this will do serious damage to your web presence in the long run.

2. Using Fake Addresses

Some business owners think they can get away with using a fake address on their Google My Business listing. In doing so, real businesses are trying to put themselves in prime locations for local SEO, while shady businesses without a physical location are making up addresses out of thin air to seem legitimate. Regardless of your motivation, if you use a fake address on your Google My Business listing, you will be caught.
That’s because Google has a variety of tools, including cars and satellites, used to verify that businesses are actually located where they claim to be. When Google discovers that your business is not at the location listed, you’ll be slapped with a hefty penalty. Your listing will plummet in ranking or it might be suspended completely.
It’s a much safer bet to just stick with your real address. In fact, in 95% of cases, business owners will get good rankings just by following the rules. That means using a fake address is not only risky, but it’s also unnecessary.

3. Hiding Information

Some business owners have a tendency to hold their cards close to their chests. They’ve learned from years of competition that they don’t want people having access to sensitive information about their businesses. Fair enough—but this behavior does not mesh well with Prospect Genius’s online advertising services.
When you hire us and don’t give us a full history of your web presence or you lock us out of key resources like your Google My Business listing, you’re stunting your own advertising efforts. We not only need to make sure your Google listing is working in harmony with the other work you’re paying us to do, but we also need to know where else your business is listed and what types of behaviors you’ve engaged in previously. For example, if you have a history of bending, breaking, or ignoring Google’s policies, or you worked with a different advertiser before hiring us, we need to know. If there’s something in your history that you don’t tell us, then we might end up making matters worse by spreading conflicting information about your business. (And as you know, Google despises conflicting information.)
When you hide this kind of crucial information from us, it’s like hiding the level from your kitchen renovation contractor. Sure, they’ll be able to get the job done without it, but all of your cabinets are going to be wonky and crooked, and your kitchen might end up being unusable. You’re essentially hiring someone to do a job for you and then taking away their ability to do that job effectively. Simply put, you’re wasting your own money.

Conclusion: Don’t Lie

That’s the general rule when you want to stay out of trouble online. Don’t lie to Google. Don’t lie to your advertiser. Don’t lie to your customers. Just don’t do it. It may seem like a simple white lie, but Google’s punishments don’t always fit the crime. You have no way of predicting or controlling the consequences. Google might delete all of your reviews, penalize your rankings, suspend your listing, or even mark your business as “closed.” The potential consequences simply aren’t worth the gamble. Help yourself and your web presence by remaining honest at all times.

The Do's and Don'ts of Expanding Your Campaign

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

Thinking about expanding your Prospect Genius campaign in 2015? It’s not uncommon for clients to want to take their campaigns to the next level after being with us for a certain amount of time and achieving a certain level of success. You want to see how far you can take your online advertising campaign, and we can’t blame you!
You should feel free to make upgrades and additions to your Prospect Genius campaign, but be careful: more does not always mean better. Here’s what to do and what not to do.

Goal: Expand Service Offerings

If your goal is to expand your service offerings…

DO NOT just add any old service to your site.

It may be tempting to stack up your services as a way of offering the widest selection possible, but that strategy could actually backfire. Google likes specificity. The more laser-targeted your offering is, the more credible you’ll be in Google’s eyes. Love it or hate it, it’s just the reality of dealing with Google and their expectations. Google likes to put things in tidy boxes, so even if you do offer an eclectic range of services, your Internet marketing strategy should focus only on advertising what’s relevant to your main category.

DO add specialized service pages to your LeadTrax™ site.

Instead of just tacking on extra services, a more effective way to generate leads from your service offerings is to offer specialty services. Think depth over breadth. By offering a specialized service like Samsung or LG appliance repair, you’ll be able to capture attention from prospects who have highly specific needs and corner that niche market. Google likes this approach, too, so the hyper-specific search terms targeted by these pages rank really well. We’ve had many clients see fantastic success by adding specific brand pages and specialty pages to their LeadTrax sites.

Goal: Expand Your Market

If your goal is to expand your market or service area…

DO NOT create a fake Google listing.

If you want to reach a different geographic area, do not under any circumstances create a new Google My Places listing with a fake address. It may seem like a shortcut to getting listed in a different area, but this trick would only work if you actually had another physical location at that address. Google uses Google Earth technology, their own cars, and even local volunteers to check out new listings and determine whether they’re valid. If you try to pull the wool over Google’s eyes, you’ll pay the price with a suspended or penalized listing (which can take up to 12 months to rectify). So while faking an address may give you a temporary improvement in rankings, it’s not worth the risk of what could be a year or more of penalties and other problems.

DO use a pay-per-click campaign.

This is the smarter alternative to creating a fake listing. Did you know that pay-per-click (PPC) isn’t as geographically limited as organic SEO is? That means adding our PPC package to the mix will help you to expand your geographic market, regardless of whether you’re already a Prospect Genius Core member or you’re using one of our à-la-carte services. While local search is dictated by the address on your Google listing, PPC is much more flexible. You get to decide on how broad or narrow your targeted geographic area is. For example, you could choose to target ads specifically at Schenectady, NY, or you could choose to widen your ads’ reach to all of Albany County. It’s totally up to you. In other words, PPC will allow you to reach a wider audience without hurting your organic local search rankings.

Goal: Maximize Results From Online Advertising

If your goal is to get even more out of your online advertising efforts…

DO NOT use two SEO companies.

You might think, “My campaign is doing well. I’ll add another one to get even better results!” That couldn’t be farther from the truth when it comes to SEO. While combining organic search optimization and paid search optimization typically generates great success, combining two organic search campaigns from two different providers will do the opposite. Working with two separate SEO companies at the same time will essentially sabotage both your campaigns. Read more about this in our blog post, “For SEO Companies, Two’s a Crowd.”
This principle applies to all forms of online advertising: You don’t want to hire two different companies that provide the exact same services. Whether it’s two SEO providers or two social media specialists, they’ll counteract each other’s work, get in each other’s way, and create a disaster for your web presence.

DO leverage social media.

If you want to get more out of your online advertising without sabotaging your own campaign or paying for PPC, then optimize your social media presence. By leveraging all the social media tools available to you for free, or even taking advantage of our specialists who can do the work for you, you’ll be able to reach customers in a whole new way. Not only will you be able to spread the word about your business more efficiently, but you’ll also create a terrific showcase for your business’s unique personality. When prospects get a glimpse of what your company is about and see that there are real people behind it, they’ll be much more likely to connect with you. Plus, the more “Likes” you have on Facebook and followers you have on Twitter, the more credible your business will seem to prospective customers.
To that end, consider taking advantage of Prospect Genius’s SocialStart or SocialStream packages. If you’re looking for an even greater push, we also perform Facebook ad campaigns that will boost your posts and get more “Likes” for your page.

Always Ask Questions

If you want to expand your campaign but you’re having trouble setting goals or deciding where to start, give us a call! We’re always happy to discuss your company’s needs and work on a solution that fits perfectly.

Know Your Google

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

How familiar with Google are you, actually? Not just the search engine—we’re talking specifically about Google’s policies as they pertain to your business. As a business owner, if you’re not careful, ignorance or misinformation could wreak havoc on your online advertising efforts.
Recently, Prospect Genius discovered two troublesome examples of what can happen when business owners aren’t informed. First, some of our clients have been tricked by fraudulent phone calls from scammers pretending to be Google. Second, some of our clients can’t help us set up their campaigns because they don’t even have access to their own Google account information. Both of these scenarios are extremely problematic for different reasons.

Fake Google Phone Calls

There has been a rash of incidents of unknown individuals or companies calling our clients posing as Google. (And we’re sure this has been happening outside of our client base, as well.) In these phone calls, the unknown party attempts to solicit private information from a business owner under the guise of a Google employee who wants to verify their information. You can see how this could become very dangerous: Giving account information (including usernames and passwords) to the wrong people is a surefire way to sabotage your online advertising campaign and compromise your privacy.
So, the key is not to fall for these phony calls. To do that, here are some things you need to know:

Phone calls from Google will always come from the (650) area code for Mountain View, California, which is where Google is headquartered.
There are two reasons why Google might call you:
- To verify your Places listing
- To sell AdWords
Calls from Google Places may be outsourced internationally (commonly to India), so you may hear a non-American accent—but the area code will still be (650).
Calls from AdWords sales reps will be domestic and will also have a (650) area code.

Remember these crucial facts the next time you’re faced with a phone call from someone purporting to be Google.
Here is a prime example of a solicitation call posing as a Google call.

Right off the bat, this phone call comes from an (818) area code, so you know it’s not from Google. (The caller ID displays the company name as “WEB SERVICE CO.”) Next, note that the caller claims to manage local listings for “Google, Yahoo!, and Bing.” That role simply does not exist. He proceeds to ask general questions about the business’s services, which means he is not verifying address or contact information on behalf of Google Places. As the conversation goes on, you can clearly tell that the caller is angling himself to pitch a new advertising service to the business’s office manager. Luckily, she ends the call before it goes too far.

Missing Log-In Information

The second problem that business owners face is not knowing their own log-in information for their Google My Business accounts. Most often, this happens when business owners work with a less-than-professional advertising team. The advertisers set up accounts for them but neglect to hand over their account information when their partnership ends. Then, when the business owner hires another advertising team, they aren’t able to grant their new advertisers access.
Obviously, this is problematic because your new advertising team needs access to your account in order to do the job that you hired them to do. Without it, they won’t be able to track your Analytics, update your listing, or manage your AdWords. Even if you don’t hire another advertiser and are attempting DIY advertising, you should still have total access to and control of your own Google account at all times. After all, it’s your business and no one else’s.
If this has happened to you, you must rectify it right away. An old company should never retain access to your Google My Business account for any reason. First and foremost, you must inform your new advertisers of the situation. Then—and this is the hard part—you’ll have to call your previous advertiser and ask them for your log-in information. It may be an uncomfortable phone call, but you have to do it. Once you’ve obtained your information, you can make yourself manager of the account, and two weeks later, Google will allow you to become owner of the account. At this point, you can give your information to your new advertiser or make them your account manager.
However, there’s one exception to this approach. Sometimes, preexisting Google listings might not have lots of good content or reviews to begin with. In these cases, instead of going through the trouble of transferring ownership of the account, we recommend deleting the listing and starting over. Not only will this provide you with a clean slate for content, photos, and reviews, but it will also prevent your new advertiser from having to retrace your previous advertiser’s footprints and redo all of their work.

Ignorance Is Not an Excuse

Whether it’s a deceptive company tricking you into giving out your information or an old advertiser hanging on to your account ownership, or something else entirely, it’s up to you to know what’s right and what’s wrong. Arm yourself and your business with knowledge about Google, as well as all other advertising-related services, in order to ward off scams and build the strongest campaign possible.

Google's New Policy Lets You Separate Business and Personal Accounts

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

Do you remember having to pass along your Google log-in information when you first signed up with us? That’s because, due to one of Google’s flawed policies, we needed it in order to access your business’s listings and data. It was a flawed policy because it forced you to consolidate all of your Google applications under one username, regardless of whether they were for personal or professional use. This policy created a lot of headaches and confusion, which is why we’re so relieved that it has been fixed.
Now, with the new dashboard launched as part of the new Google My Business, business owners can name a third party “manager” of their listings, which doesn’t require them to give out their log-in information. We believe it’s a huge improvement. Here’s why.

Better Privacy and Security

Google’s old policy meant that a third party (like us) could only access your Google+ Local, Google Places for Business, and Google Analytics data by using the same password that you used to log-in to personal applications like Gmail, Picasa, and Google Voice. An online marketer, no matter how trustworthy, should simply not have this kind of access to your personal accounts—but alas, that’s exactly what Google forced on us all.
Now, you can keep your private matters private while Prospect Genius works within the bounds of your business-related needs. We’ll be able to update your listings as needed, track your visibility and performance, and keep your campaign running smoothly without ever needing your personal password again.

Greater Control and Ownership

The previous policy also posed problems in regard to ownership. If you didn’t want to give out your personal log-in information, the only way around it was to eject your listings from your personal account, thus completely relinquishing control and ownership over them. Then, the third party would claim that listing as the “owner” in order to manage it as needed. Understandably, this made lots of folks feel uncomfortable. What if the marketer was unprofessional or ineffective? The business owner would have zero control over what happened to their listing.
Thankfully, the new policy allows business owners to maintain ownership of their listings while third parties simply become the managers of Google My Business. This way, if there’s a conflict, the business owner has the final say—as it should be.

Heightened Efficacy and Power

When Google created its old policy, it assumed that every individual performed his or her own Internet marketing, SEO, and PPC. That’s simply not the case. Frankly, small business owners who specialize in a specific trade should not be attempting their own online advertising in the first place (a topic we’ve covered extensively). The simple reality is that DIY management of Google Places listings, Google AdWords, and Google Analytics by inexperienced individuals is not effective. Unfortunately, this policy led a lot of small business owners to attempt it themselves, for fear of giving a stranger total access to their e-mail and other personal applications.
Now, small business owners can hire a professional like us to manage their Google My Business accounts without worrying about compromising their privacy. The experienced and AdWords-certified professionals at Prospect Genius can work their magic on your company’s listings while you have some peace of mind. The result? A powerful online advertising campaign that packs a lot more punch.

Set Up Your Manager Today

No business owner should have to choose between their personal privacy and their company’s web presence. Thankfully, Google’s new policy provides you with security while also enabling you to maximize your online advertising by turning over managerial control to the pros at Prospect Genius.
All you have to do is add our e-mail address to the account as your Google My Business manager. It’s that easy! Just contact your Account Manager now for specific details.
As always, call or e-mail us with any questions you may have.

Should You Be Worried About Google My Business?

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

A few weeks ago, Google launched a brand-new platform for small businesses. Called Google My Business, it combines the features of Google+ Local and Google Places for Businesses, streamlining advertising and campaign management. Should you be worried about the change? As a Prospect Genius client, the answer is no. We’re staying on top of the updates and can safely say that we’ll be able to continue managing your account without any interruption to your campaign.
For several years now, we’ve been predicting that Google would eventually make this kind of platform available. So far, we’re very pleased with the layout of Google My Business and the accompanying dashboard (which all of our clients should now have access to). As you’ve hopefully noticed, the new dashboard provides you with access to the social sharing features of Google+ as well as the Maps features of Google Places. It helps you manage your customer reviews, too, and lets you track your visibility and performance.
Overall, Google My Business is a highly anticipated design that removes the need for two different platforms and makes advertising management much less complicated.

Will Anything Change?

Since none of Google My Business’s features are actually new—they’ve always existed, just in disparate locations—there won’t be any major changes in the way we do things on our end. The only difference is that we can be listed as your account’s “manager” instead of the “owner,” which means you won’t have to give us all of your log-in information. Being your account manager provides us with access to all of the same features as before, so we won’t be limited in the revisions and additions we can make.
From the new platform, we’ll be able to perform a multitude of tasks, including:

Managing your customer reviews
Tracking your visibility and audience engagement
Sharing photos, links, and other updates from your company
Accessing your Google Analytics data

Remember: In order to continue managing your Google account effectively, we need all of your online information to match. Since we use your Prospect Genius LeadTrax™ URL and CallTrax™ number when creating accounts for you on social media and business directories, we also need to use them on your Google account. This keeps all the parts of the campaign working in harmony, maximizing your return on each dollar.
Google My Business is nothing to worry about because Prospect Genius has you covered. Any questions? Don’t hesitate to call!

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