There are 2 new changes with the search engines you need to be aware of, both pretty easy traffic wins especially if you’re a small business or retail business where people come to your premises, shop or office.

Click play on the video above to learn more.

1) Bing Places has now gone live in Australia

Bing (Microsoft’s search engine) has now opened up Bing Places in Australia – this is the business directory that integrates with their maps. This is good news as previously the only way you could get listed on their maps was through Yellowpages..click below to open a larger version of the screenshot.

While most people use Google there is still quite a few people who use Bing. In particular there are a lot of people who use Bing search and Bing maps on mobile devices and for some businesses, this could be an easy way to get on the first page of the search results on Bing for their important keywords.

Making sure your business is listed has the potential to drive quite a lot of traffic to your website and is especially important if you’re in the retail space or are a business where people visit your premises. There is also a bit of a first mover advantage as not many people are aware of this yet.

How to get listed:
If you’re one of our clients on a monthly SEO plan, we’ll take care of this for you, you’ll see an email some time in the next week or so about this

If you’re not currently on a monthly SEO plan we can still take care of this for you at a once off cost of $235+GST.

• Bing Places

  SEO Optimisation & Claim Service

• Claim & Optimise

  $235

  once-off
  • Listing Claimed
  • Listing Verified
  • Duplicates Removed
  • Listing Optimised
  • Done For You Service
  • Easy SEO Win!

  Buy now

If you want to do it yourself head to bingplaces.com and follow the instructions to set it up.

2) Google Places and Google Plus have now been merged and reviews are still a big SEO win

Google Places and Google Plus have now been merged by Google which is causing all sorts of layout changes in the search results.

On the positive side, listings with reviews are being displayed more prominently again and will attract more clicks, check it out in the image below:

…so, if you don’t yet have 5 or more reviews on your listing its worth putting the time in, emailing a handful of your best customers and asking for a review.

Because Google Plus has been rolled out to so many users its now a lot easier for your customers to write reviews so you’ll find you’ll probably start getting more reviews naturally too.

Let me know if you need any more info here or have any questions – post a note in the comments below or drop me a line on the contact us page.