Hi Michele,
I'm one of the internet marketing experts referred to earlier on in this thread and I'm hoping I can help you address your map ranking concerns. First off, here's some free resources I've personally written for small businesses who want perform DIY local seo.
1) How to Get Your Google Maps to 100% Completion - http://bit.ly/gmapscompletion . We normally give this away as a free report when you sign up to our newsletter but I thought I'd lead you straight to it.
2) I wrote a complete guide to Local SEO at Work.com. It covers the following topics:
- Market Research
- Keyword Focus and Use of Local Modifiers
- Optimizing Your Website for Local SEO
- Creating or Claiming Existing Local Business Listings
- Optimizing Local Business Profile Listings
- Building Citations and Links to Enhance Listing Rankings
- Encouraging Customer Testimonials and Reviews
- Staying Up to Date with Changes in Local SEO
http://devbasu.com/guide-to-local-seo-and-local-search-optimization-on-work-com/#ixzz0vYJbF07W You can get this guide here - http://bit.ly/completelocalseoguide
Now to clear up some myths:
- Images aren't invisible to Google. If you give an image the proper alt tag and caption, and go as far as including it in an image site map then Google will pick it up. You can rank for super competitive phrases like 'nissan altima' by doing so and undercut competition who doesn't bother to optimize their images.
- Modifying and adding to your place page content DOES affect your listing ranking positively. Unless you're at 100% as per Google places (not Getlisted.org) you have not completed the basic requirements of having well optimized listing.
I hope all of the information above helps. If you still need consultancy or a managed program, get in touch with me at dev@poweredbysearch.com and we'll talk about setting up a proper SEO program. I've got a couple of dealer case studies on the way proving the incredible value of getting on Google maps 7-pack and that should further justify your efforts in getting ranked.
