Tune Up your Martial Arts School’s Local Business Listings for the Holidays

With the holiday season coming up fast, one place you might not have considered tuning up is your local search pages, especially your Google Places page.

Martial Arts schools of all sizes can benefit from updating their local business listings to prepare for the holiday season and capture the attention of your prospects.

These listings are a free and easy way to get more interest in your martial arts school.

As I wrote about recently, your local business listing now shows up in the Google organic search results in a much more prominent way than ever before.

Without doubt, it has never been more important to claim, update and manage your local business listing than it is right now.

You’ll first want to make sure you optimize your Google Places listing to increase response rates.

Then, tune it up for the holidays.

Here are some tips to help you prepare for the holiday season:

• Create a coupon that features a special holiday offer (Gift certificates or gift cards are great ideas during the holidays).
• Link to your holiday offer on your website.
• Add seasonal photos of your martial arts school.
• Upload a new holiday video of your martial arts school explaining your holiday offer.
• Update your hours if they change during holidays.
• Add a Google Tag ($25/month) during the holiday season as it will help draw more attention to your listing and allow you to feature your coupon/offer.

As a side tip, be sure to also make a card or print out that helps encourage people to leave you positive reviews and feedback on Google Places. Make sure it’s easy for them to get back to your Google Places page with a simplified link (“www.yourdomainname.com/places” that forwards back to your Google Places listing). Given how important positive reviews are for businesses, let alone ranking in Google Places, it’s a good idea to complete the circle.

Or, if you have a computer on site, you can even ask your students to add their review right at your martial arts school.

How are you going to optimize your Google Places listing this holiday season?

Popularity: 5%