It is simply a matter of logistics, whether your business takes the SEO (search engine optimisation) or GLSEO (Google local search engine optimisation) route.

Example 1.
You are an export and import company, based in the South of England. Your client base spans the globe and your company, regularly, imports and exports goods from far flung places.
This business would benefit from SEO because there are no geographical constraints. They desire to attract potential customers based anywhere on the globe and SEO would offer the broader appeal that this company aspires to.

Example 2.
Your business is supplying and fitting replacement windows and doors to private residences and commercial buildings. Your head office is based in Manchester, but, you have a further ten offices based across the UK (Bristol, Cardiff, Liverpool, Newcastle, Leeds, Birmingham, Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Glasgow and London). You have a large team of tradesmen who travel from their local office bases to anywhere in the country.

Obviously, the solution for this business would be to offer SEO. They are a national company that can travel to any location within the British Isles. So, perhaps, this was too clearly an SEO choice and should not have been used as an example, but wait, it is possible that you are not grasping the bigger picture. The offices in Glasgow and Birmingham are newly opened; they are not attracting customers at the same rate as the other locations because potential customers are unaware that the company, now, operates in their areas. So, whilst the advice offered to this business, as a whole, may be to utilise SEO on their business website, the offices in Glasgow and Birmingham would, definitely, benefit from Google Local Search Engine Optimisation.

Google Local Search Engine Optimisation allows your business to advertise its presence, within your local area and to potential customers, who by entering geographical keywords, as well as, business or product keywords into the search engines, have already shown an interest in what your business is selling and are, merely, trying to discover a locallly based company to provide their requirements.

UKIM are specialists on SEO and GLSEO and can advise the best route for your business needs.

Article marketing has a reputation for being able to draw traffic to a website from all over the globe. After all, the World Wide Web knows no geographical boundaries, so no matter where you live people on the other side of the planet can easily be exposed to your business.

But what if your business is a local, non-internet based business?

What if you simply want to have a website that attracts the attention of the people in your neighborhood or city?

Can article marketing work for you?

Definitely!

ARTICLE MARKETING ATTRACTS TARGETED CUSTOMERS

Don’t let the “global domination” aspect of article marketing overwhelm or intimate you.

At its heart, article marketing is an excellent way to draw targeted traffic to your website.

This means that if your target market is in your city or your neighborhood, you can submit articles in such a way as to draw those specific types of people to your site.

HERE’S HOW:

Write on the topic of your business. For example, if your business sells gardening supplies, then write about gardening.

Then, in your resource box, provide an author bio that includes your location (city and state). If the neighborhood is important, then include that too. You should also include your business name.

There is no need to include your address and phone number in your resource box–people can go to your website for that info.

If appropriate, you may be able to work your location into your title also. For example, if you’re a real estate agent in Atlanta, and your article is about upcoming neighborhoods in Atlanta, then your title can be “Upcoming Atlanta Neighborhoods” or “Atlanta Real Estate: Top 5 Upcoming Neighborhoods”.

By writing on the topic of your niche and including your location in your resource box (and possibly your title, when appropriate), Google will know to associate your location with your business.

YOUR CUSTOMERS ARE SEARCHING FOR YOU

When you have your article marketing campaign going strong, the goal is that your target customer will go to Google (or any other search engine) and do a search for “Boston garden store” (or whatever the keywords for your business are), and then your website will turn up high in the results listings.

Having a high search engine ranking is beneficial to ALL business, even local ones. The reason is that nowadays folks do their research on the web rather than via the phone book.

If they want to find a garden supply store, then they Google it. If your website turns up high in the rankings, then you have a much better chance that that customer will patronize your shop rather than the shop that appears further down in the rankings.

ARTICLE MARKETING HELPS YOUR CUSTOMERS FIND YOUR WEBSITE

And here’s another way your customers will find you online–let’s say a friend tells them about a great garden shop that they’ve been to, and you want to go there as well. Your friend told you the name of the shop, but you need to find their website so that you can figure out directions for getting there and store hours.

How will you find this info?

Most people will do a Google search on the business name.

Now, even if you have a website, it is not a given than your site will turn up high in the results when someone Googles your business name.

In fact, unless you have been marketing your business online and doing things like article submissions, your website might not show up at all.

I ask you–what is the point in having a website if your customers can’t find your site even when they Google your business name?

HAVING A WEBSITE IS ONLY THE BEGINNING

Every local business owner must have a website, but having a website is not enough. You must market that site in order for it to turn up high in Google’s rankings.

The sad fact is that most local business owners do not market their websites online. Usually the most that a local business owner will do is set up a website and then expect the customers to come pouring in. Unfortunately, the internet doesn’t work like that.

The bright spot is that your competitors are likely not spending much or any time marketing their websites online either. That means that when you start submitting articles that you will have an easier time dominating Google for your keyword terms.

HERE’S HOW TO GET STARTED:

Just write articles on your niche and submit them. Include your location in your resource box. Keep on doing this month in and month out–just make it a regular part of your marketing plan. Be very thankful that most of your competitors don’t know about this very powerful marketing tool.

From my previous articles hopefully you have seen why your local business must have a website to stay competitive in today’s online world. And you should also know that just putting up a website online isn’t going to cut it either. Your site must rank high on Google so that when your potential customers are looking for your product or service BAM your business is listed on page 1 right for them to see. If your customers can’t find you then any money you have spent on your website is just a waste. You may as well have bet it all on the races.

So how do you get your website ranked high in Google??

Well there is probably dozens if not hundreds of people you could contact in your area to build you a website. You can even go online and find thousands of people who can build you a site, all of which will charge you hundreds of dollars if not thousands of dollars to build you a site with no guarantee you will make that elusive page one ranking. If they cant get your local small business into a page one ranking for your business then what is the point of spending your hard earned money.

Most web designers, especially ones who aren’t working for big companies have learnt to make excellent websites with all the bells and whistles that look fantastic. You will look at it and say WOW, yours friends will go WOW, there will be no doubt you can have a good looking site made.

You just wont get any customers because when your customers go looking for you, you will not be on the first page of google. And that’s all there is too it. No page one ranking, no business PERIOD.

Why? Mainly because Google doesn’t rank sites on how good they look or how much they cost to build and set up. As a matter of fact Google couldn’t care less for how great your site looks. In fact not only does all the fancy web designer bells and whistles not rank high it can have an extremely negative effect on your ranking. Which is the last thing you want to do if you are searching for a page one ranking.

What does Google look for? Google judges a website on how relevant it is to the search term. When people look for carpet cleaning in Sydney Google wants to be able to put in front of them listing that have a direct bearing on their search term. After all if I’m looking for carpet cleaners in Sydney and Google brings me up a list of carpet cleaners from around the globe and not Sydney that will be pretty useless to me wont it.

You can build websites that Google likes. It’s called optimizing. When you have a website built you should optimize the underlying code and the content of your webpages. This will allow you to rank high with Google, very high in fact.

The higher up in Google your website gets the easier it is for you to stay there. Why? because as you are higher in the rankings more people click on your site and that tells the Google “spiders” that your site is even more relevant to the search term. When we build a top ranked website you go right to the top and you stay there.

Want some even better news. Most website designers want thousands of dollars out of you and you would be surprised of the amount of people willing to pay these high prices with no guarantee of a page one ranking. This is totally unnecessary, for $795 you can get a really cool looking website that ranks high in Google and pulls in leads and customers by the hundreds.

There is no need to spend thousands of dollars on a super fancy website, thats not the point anyway. The point is to get your business noticed, when a potential customer is searching for your product or service in your area they see you.

You can literally start an Adwords account with just $50. For anyone on a small budget, this ability is amazing. What’s even better, is the targeting which Adwords offers is unavailable anywhere else. Being able to speficically target keywords on a local level an create very precise targeting.

Creating your first local ad campaign:

Register a domain name, and sign up for hosting Develop a basic website with a few pages, descriptive articles about your business as well as your contact details in a highly visible area Create an Adwords account Develop a targeted keyword list, create a local campaign Write a targeted Ad Measure incoming traffic to your page, noting where it comes in and leaves Monitor how many users go to more the one page after they arrive there after clicking your ad Remove keywords which are expensive, or not sending high quality traffic Continue to adjust your landing page, or develop new landing pages for more keywords Manage, sell and develop new clients and customers through your targeted campaigns

If your local business cannot conduct online transactions, then place your physical location and phone number in a very obvious spot, it may even be ideal to include your phone number in the ad text itself. This is more of a branding/awareness campaign since you have nothing to gain through people using your website, as you would rather them go to your location and physically purchase items.

If you have an online store set up, it is important to install conversion tracking. This will give you a cost per action figure, easily informing you if your campaign is costing too much. Coversions are tracked on the keyword level, this way you will know which keywords are working for you and which ones are not working.

There are many more ways to develop your local business through online advertising. To learn more, see my Adwords help website.

The holiday season is just about upon us and many people want to spruce their homes up for the season. Are you looking to get a fresh paint job in your home or are you more interested in redoing your floors before you have company in? Maybe you want to remodel your bathrooms or your kitchen or finish an unfinished basement. No matter what renovations you are looking to make on your home, you’ll need to find local businesses that provide the services you need to do the work you want done.

Why Local Contractors? There are several reasons to use a local contractor for your home repairs and upgrades, and reputation is only one of them. Ask around your local hardware store or talk to your neighbors to see who the recommended vendors in your neighborhood are. Your local hardware shopkeeper will know the regulars that buy tools and products at his shop, and will probably be able to give you an idea of the types of work they do and what the local buzz is about their services.

Beyond the ability to get the gist of a business’ rep before hiring them, when you find local businesses to work for you, you also have the added bonus of being able to see work they have done in your area, and having a face to face meeting with the contractor long before they come to your home to work.

To find local businesses on the web, you can search the web using the contractors name or type of business along with your town and state or even your local zip code. Be sure to choose only businesses that offer references that you can check or work samples on their website to ensure a quality product for your job. Couple that information with their local reputation and you will find the right contractor for your remodel, paintjob or project.