Switching from Google Plus Local to Google Plus Business

[hard]

Greetings,

We have a website design firm located in India. We wanted to target customers in our city who are looking for website design locally. And with google plus local and a few content marketing would get us into first page very soon because none in the competition is using social signals or even content marketing. BUT unfortunately from last month even though our Google Places is verified we cant verify our Google Local Plus page https://plus.google.com/b/116513400635428782065/

It just shows error 500. Its a bug and its been a year for people without it being addressed. So we are skeptical if our strategy  would work without Google+.

At the least we decided we would just make company local page and connect it with website. But it might not have effect as local. So we are still unsure which step to take either to wait for google to fix it.(feedbacks emails calls nothing worked) OR We start the process with Google Business Category.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Chauhan,

I'm going to leave this question open for discussion, as, unfortunately, I am not well acquainted with the state of Local SEO in India (just the US). In 2010, Google stopped showing website design and SEO firms in their local results, so if this is the case in your country, the pursuing a Google+ Local page may be of little or no value to your business. Instead, going with organic an social efforts will be important to you.

My understanding of the 500 error is that it has affected merged Google+ Local pages. See:

http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/11/26/google-page-500-error-bug-work-around/

I honestly don't know when the 500 error issue will be resolved, but it does sound to me like your business isn't really a candidate for local inclusion.