It's hard to know how you're doing relative to your competition. You probably have a pretty good idea where you rank in Google generally speaking but how does your business compare against industry average? A recent local business study looked at 11,000 businesses. Personally I think you need to aspire to way better than average but at least this will give you a relative benchmark to determine how you're business is doing.

Asking for reviews is not that difficult but you don't want to make it hard for your client to go through the process. Follow this simple procedure to get your review link on Google.

Do you think Facebook will be the last best social media site? Where is Facebook weak? How about Facebook for business. As Facebook for business is really picking up steam, do you think Google will just sit there and let it happen? I never even thought to ask that question until I went to Google today and typed in my own business in a search. Google has a way of introducing things that sneak up on you. You know they're seething over the fact that nobody actually uses Google+. So what might they do about that?

It seems over the past couple of years that Google has diminished the local business assets that attracted small local businesses to Google in the first place. Up until recently, the Google My Business page was nothing but a directory for Google MAPS and the only thing that you could enter was Name, Address, Phone Number and Business Category. Oh.. and a few pictures. Things are changing!