Small businesses who do not take advantage of the Internet are missing the boat when it comes to promoting their products and services. Applying local web marketing services can turn a small business web site into a lead generation tool.
Many businesses have taken the very first step of building a web site. There is a bit more to it, but more on that later. Let’s focus on the web site first. Here are some tips to make the web site more effective. Keep the content and the look-and-feel simple and appealing. The visitor should be attracted to the site and able to find clear information about the company’s products and services. In fact, there should be just enough information to answer the most common questions that the visitor might have. However, just putting up a site on the Internet isn’t going to be enough to bring more business.
More and more people are using search engines to find local businesses. In fact, recent surveys indicate that more people are searching for local products and services on the web than in the “yellow” page books. The search engine companies are wise to that and are adapting their search results to how the web user searches. Therefore, businesses need to do two things to take advantage of this trend.
1) Adapt the web site to the ways people are searching for their services. That means optimizing the site pages each to the desired search phrase. That’s called on-site SEO (search engine optimization).
2) Promote the web site to maximize the odds of being found. Promoting a site includes the following: getting listed in normal search results for targeted key phrases; signing up on local business directories; adding profiles to social media sites; and building links to the site from a variety of other sources. The Internet provides many opportunities for a site to be found beyond normal search engine results.
The key to driving more visitors to a web site it to make it easy for them to find it when they search for targeted keyword phrases related to the business. Nowadays, targeted keyword phrases include geographic modifiers. For example, “marietta ga hvac” gets searched hundreds of time a month. If a local HVAC contractor in Marietta, GA exploits that, his/her business can be well-positioned to capture that search audience.
