Here’s the third and final installment of the “Importance of a Web Presence” series by Kevin Kao. I’m sure your convinced now based on “How Has Word of Mouth Marketing Changed” that you need a presence on the web. And based on the last article, you’re relieved to know that you don’t have to have a website or spend any money to get that web presence! So, here’s how to make the most of being on the web. After all, that’s where everyone’s going to find you these days!

Optimize Your Google Places Listing

Hopefully by now you’ve taken the first steps to getting a google listing and gotten the post card from Google and verified your listing with your pin number. Now let’s dive deep into how to optimize your piano studios’ Google Places listing so that potential students and parents find you when they search for piano lessons.

With any search engine ranking work, the results come slowly and there’s no secret sauce that’ll take your listing to the top right away. What I can do is share with you some of the things I’ve done to get my local listing from being buried many pages deep (i.e., nobody’s ever going to see it) to top 3 in searches for “piano lessons”, “piano studio”, and “piano teacher” in my area.

The 3 main steps of optimization are:

1. Complete listing with as much information as possible
2. Gather reviews and testimonials
3. Build consistent citations on the web and in local business directories

Complete Your Listing

The first step in making your listing stand out to Google is to complete it 100%; give Google as much information as you can and show that you’ve put in the effort to make your listing as rich and complete as possible. It’s gotten easier to do because Google asks for fewer details now and made the whole process less daunting. Currently, here’s the information you need:

• Business name
• Address
• Contact info
• Category
• Hours
• Photos
• Description

For the contact info, click the edit button to enter your phone number, website if you have one, and email address. I recommend putting a Google Voice number (with your studio’s local area code) because you can record a professional piano studio message and you’ll also be able to screen web marketer calls (I just let all my Google Voice calls go to voicemail).

Now for uploading photos and the description, you’ll want to keep some piano-related keywords and your location in mind (e.g., piano lessons, piano teacher, piano studio, your city and state). Upload as many pictures of your studio as you can, but before you do, change the file name to include one of your keywords in describing the photo.

You’ll also want to include your keywords when filling in the description for your listing. This used to be kind of hard because Google limited the number of characters to basically 2-3 sentences. I would recommend still keeping your description as succinct as possible while using your keywords naturally.

Get Those Testimonials!

Testimonials and reviews online are the word of mouth of today. In fact, it’s an even more powerful form of social proof because it lasts forever and its reach is limitless.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Google—in the business of providing relevant and reputable search results—also value reviews in determining your ranking.

So what’s the best way to get testimonials? ASK FOR IT. Most students and parents will be more than happy to help you. All you have to do is ask and make the task as easy as possible. Here are a few ways to do it.

Family/Student Loves You

Simply include this in your next email (I usually start with something the student accomplished recently, give a mini progress report and remind the parent of the things I do for their child first):

“I was wondering if you could please do me a favor. Would you write a testimonial for me to help me grow my studio? I’d really appreciate it and it’ll help me and other prospective students out a lot 🙂

If you don’t mind, here’s the link that’ll take you to the review page on (whatever review site you’d like reviews on) where you can leave a review for me.”

Make it as easy as possible for them to help you. You can include a link to any review site you want (in order to leave a review on Google, they need to have a Gmail account, takes like 37 seconds). Getting positive reviews anywhere will be good for your studio; Google actually links to reviews on other sites right on your Google Places page.

Not Sure if Family/Student Loves You

If you aren’t sure about how a family thinks of you (you don’t want to ask someone who’s going to leave you a one-star review…), it’ll take a couple more steps.

Email asking for feedback and what they like or why they chose your teaching/studio. If you do progress reports every semester, this will be a good time to ask for feedback from the parents also.

If they respond positively, ask for a testimonial. When parents give you unsolicited positive feedback, that’s also a good time to ask.

To make it REALLY easy for them, compose the review using the words they used in their feedback, tell them you wrote the review for them based on their feedback, ask if it accurately reflects how they feel and if they’d be willing to post it for you. This is especially useful if your studio has a lot of parents whom English isn’t their first language; they’ll be glad you did.

Local Citations

Now, the last important thing that affects your listing’s ranking is the number of citations your studio has around the web. Citations are basically mentions of your studio’s name, address, and phone number (NAP).

Some places you can get started at are Yahoo, Bing, Yelp, HotFrog, and Manta (these links should take you directly to where you create your business listing). With the exception of Yelp—don’t expect any leads from listings at these other directories; Google is where pretty much all the traffic is and these other listings help in increasing your visibility on it.

Quick tips on obtaining citations:

Make sure your NAP is consistent (identical) across all your listings.

Slow and steady wins the race, create one or two citations a day or even a week—just get started.

DON’T PAY FOR THEM (unless the amount is really minuscule and it’s not recurring).

Additional Resources

Here are some other very good and reputable resources if you’d like to learn more:

• Simple SEO Tip for Small Businesses: Local Citations from Forbes
• Top 20 Local Search Ranking Factors: An Illustrated Guide from Moz

READ ALSO:

• Importance of a Web Presence: How Word of Mouth Has Changed for the Piano Teacher
• Marketing to Homeschool Students
• Free Rhythm Drills and More!

Kevin Kao just celebrated his piano studio’s one-year anniversary after moving back from San Diego where he taught class piano at San Diego State University under the guidance of Dr. Mitzi Kolar. He’s currently teaching piano lessons in Irvine, California to an awesome group of kids (mostly boys) and a few adult students. He also writes a blog for piano students and their parents designed to educate parents about piano lessons and answer commonly asked questions through his posts and interviews.