Google Places is a free, fast and easy way of reaching customers in your region. It can help you jumpstart your online presence even if you don’t have a website. This article will guide you, step by step, with creating a Google Places account. I will list John’s Used Car Shop, the company for which I created a Facebook account last year.

Before we get started, you will need a Google account. It can be the same one you use for any of Google’s services (the feed reader, calendar, Gmail, Adsense, Adwords, Picasa or any of the rest.) If you don't have a Google account you can get one here.

Step 1. Point your browser to http://www.google.com/local/add. Log in. Hit the large “List your business” button. You will be pointed to provide your phone number, so that Google can look up existing information on your business. I will further assume that it’s a brand new number that Google knows nothing about.

Step 2. Fill in the Basic Information. The details are more or less straightforward – you will need to fill in the country, name of your company, the address, city or town, province, postal code, email address, website and the category that best describes your business. The email and website fields aren’t mandatory, you can simply check “I don’t have a website” if this is your first shot at taking your business online.

Step 3. Make sure that the information on the right hand side is accurate. Go back and tweak details if it doesn’t show correctly, or use the Fix incorrect marker location link at the bottom of the map.

Once everything appears to be alright, proceed to the next step.

Step 4. Does your venue offer services to customers in your stores, or do you service them at their locations? Since John has a used car shop, we’ll tick the first option (which is marked by default.)

Step 5. What are your business hours? The section is quite self-explanatory and allows you to enter up to two sets of opening hours per day (quite useful if your employees have lunch breaks at noon.)

Step 6. Specify payment options. For this example, I will assume our John accepts cash and the major credit cards.

Step 5. Add a picture of your main product, the logo or the storefront. Let’s put up the company logo I used for the Facebook account

Alternatively, you can provide the URL to the image you want to use.

Step 7. Use a video from Youtube, if you have one. I haven’t prepared one for this article, so let’s move on.

Step 8. Finish up by entering additional information in pairs of term: value. A five storied mall could, for instance, use Restaurants: 2nd and 4th floor.

Step 9: Verify your submission. Depending on your area and the number of businesses listed under your phone number, Google can offer you the option of getting verified by phone, text message or postcard. You will get a code you have to fill in your Google account and afterwards your submission will go live.

… and that’s about it. Once you follow these nine easy steps, your business will be listed in Google Places.