We've known for over a year now that your Google Places page and listing is so important when customers are trying to find you. Since Google blended the place pages with the organic results, we've seen some businesses shift up and others move downwards for their specific keyword phrases.

David Mihms new local seo ranking factors came out on the weekend for 2011 and these are the highlights from the surveys he's conducted:

Overall Top 10 Items That Effect Your Result

1. Physical Address in City of Search
2. Manually Owner-verified Place Page
3. Proper Category Associations
4. Volume of Traditional Structured Citations
5. Crawlable Address Matching Place Page Address
6. PageRank / Authority of Website Homepage / Highest Ranked Page
7. Quality of Inbound Links to Website
8. Crawlable Phone Number Matching Place Page Phone Number
9. Local Area Code on Place Page
10. City, State in Places Landing Page Title

Expert Comments

1. Optimize your website for location+products/services, including building good links to your pages.
2. Choose the proper categories in Places.
3. Make sure Google can associate your website and your Places page together.
4. Eliminate data confusion.
5. Solicit reviews from happy customers.
6. Work on everything else as time and budget permit.
--Mary Bowling

If you'd like further clarification on any of these items,

please contact us now