How To Make Money | The Definitive Don’ts

How Ingenuity Reaps Rewards

Today I happened to be browsing the blogosphere when I found myself parked on quite an interesting blog. Well, to be honest, it wasn’t really the blog that caught my eye. It was rather a post plastered on the front page. What was this post about you may ask? Exploiting Google Listings.

What Is Google Listings?

Google Listings is one of the many services Google provides. It allows businesses to list their name, address, etc. on the SERP pages. The cool thing about these listings is that they are ALWAYS on top of the SERPs. While they don’t appear for any keyword, they do appear for some quite competitive keywords. A keyword typically has to be combined with the name of a city or town to bring up the listings (ex. Mexican Restaurant Burbank, CA)

Why Do I Care?

I couldn’t keep myself from hiding a little detail about what Google’s listing service allows you to do. It allows you to add your businesses website URL to the listing. So what does that mean? Free traffic without the hassles of SEO. Not a bad deal, eh?

I Don’t Own A Business

Many of us don’t own businesses that we could list on Google’s listings. While Google does send postcards to verify the authenticity of the business, this turns out to be a very small issue. You can setup a P.O. box and have mail forwarded to it from your “businesses” address. A simple and effective solution to getting that postcard from Google.

What You Shouldn’t Do

While this is a cool trick, please try to limit the number of listings you make. We wouldn’t want Google catching on to these types of activities. More importantly, make sure that the sites which you include on the listings are quality ones. The last thing we want to be doing is polluting the SERPs with more crap.

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