Local Business Online Marketing Shouldn’t Break the Bank

Never in the history of American commerce has it been more difficult for a small, local business to compete against the monolithic national corporations.  Wal-Mart sells tires. Best Buy fixes computers.  Home Depot and Sears not only sell hot water heaters, but in many cases they’ll install them too. 

What is the small business owner to do?  They cannot compete price wise.  They cannot compete in advertising expenditures.  They cannot compete in brand recognition.  It is a wonder there are any small businesses left.  But wait…

A new trend has evolved that may very well be the saving grace for small business – if only small business owners take advantage of it.  The Internet.

But wait, you say, the big guys have already saturated the Internet.  Not true…allow me to elaborate.

According to Hitwise.com, over 95% of Internet searches originate on Google, Yahoo! and Bing.  According to a variety of sources, anywhere from 25~60% of all searches can be classified as local.  In light of the imminent demise of print directories, it is safe to say that local businesses receive a majority of their NEW customers from the Internet. 

This is the key.  It is easier for a local business to make an impact in local search than it is for a national corporation.  Read the previous sentence again…slowly. 

The big guys spend literally millions to make sure their brand is virtually omnipresent, but they put all of their effort into a single focus.  One website sometimes augmented through pay-per-click.  The one website is rarely optimized for local searches because it is difficult to optimize a single site to show in every city in America when geographic factors are included into the mix. 

A local business can easily position themselves more prominently than the big guys when the goal is limited to a finite geographical area.  The process is two-fold.

First, if a local business has a website, the process of Local SEO is virtually identical to what most experts recommended for any website 5 years ago – but with the addition of geo-factors.

Proper use of title tags, meta tags, embedded interactive maps, BBB links, keyword content with proper keyword density all can have a huge impact on a local business site in local searches.

I recently revamped a website for a fence company using these “old-school” SEO techniques and the site moved from page 28 to page 1 for over 25 top keyword local searches within a week. 

Filter out the World Wide Web and focus on the local web and the ability to affect change is substantial. 

The other side of the coin is optimizing a business for local search without a single website.  Do a simple search for “what and where” on Google and you’re likely to see results consisting of a bunch of directory sites instead of a list of individual businesses. 

Using our Optimized Local Search Services, we’ve been able to strategically place local businesses with or without a corporate website on the top local search destinations so that they show on the first page of Google multiple times for multiple local keyword searches.  When Merchantcircle, Insiderpages, Brownbook.net and several others spend in excess of $50 million a year on SEO, getting listed properly allows a local business to reap the benefits of quality local SEO while spending less than $300 for the setup. 

We’ve helped several hundred businesses reach local customers through organic optimized local search services.  With multiple optimized listings, a local business can obtain a broader presence in local search than the big guys do.  And the impact is about as permanent as anything can be on the Internet. 

A real world analogy:  If you knew all of your customers walked through a certain intersection, wouldn’t you do what you could to place a sign in the intersection? 

Combine five-year-old rudimentary SEO techniques with local search destinations and a local business can finally compete with Wal-Mart because the general population goes to Google before they leave their house.  Thankfully.  Long live the small business owner.