As a small business owner trying to manage your Google Places page to stay ahead of the SEO game, you’ve probably noticed that Google Places is no more. While you can still manage your business information via the Google Local Business Center, the old way of displaying these pages in search results has changed, and Google are trying to migrate away from this tool.

Instead, Google is now encouraging business owners to create a business page in its social media platform, Google+. Even though they say the old Google Places pages will be migrated across to Google+ Local, this could take an indefinite amount of time, particularly for non-US businesses.

To stay up with and ahead of your competition it would certainly be worthwhile signing up for Google+ and creating a local business page. Although currently Google+ (which is their Facebook rival in the social media scene) looks quite empty, Google are pushing it hard by integrating it into their dominance in the search, online advertising, browser, analytics, email and other fields, and it would certainly be shortsighted to write it off as a waste of time just yet.

While Google+ Local is still ramping up, however, Facebook still dominates as the primary social media medium. If you don’t yet have a Facebook business page, or don’t use it often, you are certainly missing out on a good way of attracting and engaging clients, and it is in your best interests to start doing so.

For more information on how to make the best use of social media for your business, get in touch with JebWeb Solutions now. Or you can follow us at our JebWeb Solutions Facebook page or JebWeb Solutions Google+ Local page.