Use the Google Local Business Center (GLBC) to add your business to Google’s local listings.
You can add your address, phone, hours & include images and or videos all for free.
Once you have set up your account you will need to verify your details over the phone or mail.
Once you have been verified you will get a map listing and appear in local search results.

After you have set up a listing in GLBC you have the option to set up coupons.
It’s a free service that allows potential customers to print off coupons and bring them into your business to redeem. It’s a good way of attracting new customers and letting existing customers take advantage of any special offers.

Use Google Merchant Center to upload your product information, this will make it available in Google product search and other Google services.

Add your business to Truelocal.com.au for free; it distributes details of your business over search partners such as Google and Yahoo and satellite navigation such as Nav Man. A free listing allows you to add your business details, listing in 1 category and 1 image upload.

Request a complimentary business listing in yellowpages.com.au. All you need to do is add your business name, address and phone number. You will gain exposure in the yellow directory, yellow online and yellow mobile.

Add your business to free directories such as DMOZ (which acts as a powerful backlink) and BOTW.org which allows you to list your company for free in its search results.

Join Linkedin which is a niche Business networking site, it allows you to make connections with people you know and people you don’t through introductions. It also allows connections to make recommendations about you.

Add your business URL to all your email signatures, msn & social media accounts.

Create a Twitter account specific to your business and use services such as TwitterLocal to find potential connections in your area. Twitter allows you to provide real time information such as news and offers to your customers.

Quality score can range between 1- 10 with 1 being the worst score and 10 being the best.

If you have a low quality score you can end up spending between $5-$10 per click.

Google uses your quality score to determine your ad position and keyword bid price.

If you have a high quality score you will find that your Cost per Click (CPC) will be a lot lower and your ad position will be higher.

It is important to ensure that your quality score is high, otherwise you could end up bidding allot more than the advertiser in position one only to find your ad is appearing at the bottom of page. By improving your quality score you can in turn reduce your CPC which will result in an improved ROI (if the keyword in question previously converted for you)

4 Components of Quality Score

Google quality score has 4 components: Ad relevancy, history, Click-thru-rate (CTR) and landing page quality.

1. Ad Relevancy – Google judges your quality on how relevant your ads are to your keywords. Small ad groups with tightly related keywords are the way forward, if possible just use one keyword per ad group and then include the keyword in the headline. This will automatically make your keyword highly relevant to the ad copy.
2. CTR –If your ad copy has a high CTR you will be rewarded with lower CPC, justification being if your ad has a high CTR it must be relevant to the users search term and thus improving the user experience. I would recommend continually split testing your ads to improve your CTR.
3. History – Google rewards customers who have been with them the longest. By looking at account history Google can identify who the long term, high quality advertisers are.
4. Landing Page Quality – It is important that your landing page is relevant and optimized for the keyword you are targeting. Google wants to provide its users with a fantastic experience; poorly optimized landing pages don’t provide this experience and thus you will be penalized with higher CPC’s.

So how can I improve my Quality Score?

a)      Good account management – ensure keywords are in small tightly related ad groups & keep an eye on keyword impressions; you don’t want keywords generating high impressions and no clicks.

b)      Split test Ads

c)       Build quality landing pages with relevant copy.