If you are a local business owner, you must learn that marketing your business on the Internet is much different than marketing your business on the "street".

For example, if your business moves to another location and/or changes your telephone number, all you have to do on the street is change your sign, letter head, business cards and tell all your customers about the pending move or change.

Kind of a pain but pretty simple to do with very few complications and any that do occur are very short lived and easy to fix.

On the Internet, it's a completely different story.

Your business website and Google Places listing rank is based on so many factors, we could discuss it until the cows come home and still need more time.

The most important factor that we can discuss right now is making sure the information for your company that can be found anywhere on the Internet is exactly the same across all content holders. This includes using abbreviations such as ST instead of Street or using the first two letters of your state.

Search Engines (SE) continually scrape the Internet for your business information. When everything they find is the same; company name, address, phone number and website, the SE deem your information as trust worthy and they will show your website and Places listing before other listings they deem as not trustworthy or inaccurate.

Local business directories also scrape the Internet for your business information. Some directories will find your old address and phone number and some won't so your business will unfortunately be shown on many listings with different company information.

When the SE are scraping the Internet after you've changed your company's information and they find conflicting addresses and phone numbers, your rankings will be devastated.

And even worse, if there was a business that had your new telephone number, two businesses will be shown online for that telephone number further complicating the situation.

Just as bad is a previous tenant that once operated from your new address. They will still be showing up online with your new address.

In summary, before you change your company's name, address, phone number or website address, you must map out a plan of attack so anywhere on the Internet the SE look, they will all find the exact same information.

The Vincent Press has helped many businesses overcome this problem and others that cause their website and Google Places ranking to literally drop out of sight. They have all the information any business needs to know about SEO and Google Places rankings.

Local businesses must maintain an Internet presence or risk the consequences.