3 Reasons local internet marketing is crucial

So many businesses operating online focus their marketing campaigns more at the wider public, even when they aren’t necessarily meaning to. So many use a kind of autopilot setting without necessarily considering the benefits of focussing on a smaller, more targeted audience.

Local internet marketing is beneficial for so many reasons, 3 in particular we’d like consider in this post. It’s also worth mentioning that local internet marketing can be done in a variety of ways, many of which are affordable if not completely free.

Direct
So firstly local marketing is direct and responds precisely to a precise search. If someone requests a hair salon in LA then companies which mention they’re based in LA in their content are going to feature more immediately and receive more attention from users.

Relevant
Also local internet marketing is relevant. So many businesses operate on the basis of making money at the point of sale, all retail companies, restaurants, salons, and so on. For this type of company as well as many other service industry jobs your local area is your core customer base and it makes sense to focus some energy on them. Feature on maps, and set a free google page with a photo, number, opening times and other info about your business.

Gives you a USP for first page ranking
Finally, your small window cleaning operation might not feature on the first page of Google often, but if you’re really precise about your location, and take advantage of other forms of local internet marketing then for local searches you just might reach the top spot for a Google search.

Imagine your customer is waking in your neighborhood looking for the service your provide on google and they can with a few clicks be directed to your front door by gps. These are just a few examples of why taking advantage of local internet marketing is a must.

Are you missing out on Local Internet Marketing?

Another big way that companies are taking strides forward in SEO for their online business is by taking advantage of local internet marketing. There are a range of ways you can use your local area to to boost traffic, and increase your rate of return of traffic converted to customers.

Who should use local internet marketing? The relevance of attaching your local area to your web strategy has become more and more useful over the years. For some companies which sell from the website it can simply be a case of improving trust, having accountability, and customers preference for using local suppliers and so on.

For other businesses using local internet marketing is even more important, and this applies to none more than businesses which trade in store. Any type of business which is based in a retail premises, including businesses like restaurants are the prime candidate for making big gains by using local internet marketing.

What difference can it make?

In today’s culture if somebody wants something, whether it’s a shirt or a cheese burger, he’s sure to have plenty of choice in most local areas. He or she will often pull the mobile from the pocket, perform a quick search, and instantly he’ll see all the competition nearby with the option of GPS navigation to his or her chosen location. By utilising local area marketing you’ll become a competitor in this respect, and will begin to attract a new type of customer.

Ways of implementing local internet marketing:

– local keywords

Though it might be hard to compete with the main keywords that define your industry, by piggybacking the name of the city or town you’re based in in your keyword strategy you can pull in more traffic, and the right traffic.

– Maps

The way search engines work is constantly changing, and google now doesn’t necessarily need a local keyword to know where you are thanks to gps. If a customer simply types florist into their browser, a local map of the businesses will often be the first thing they see.

Should I Launch an Affiliate Program For My Product?

One of the main reasons to consider offering an affiliate program for your product is simply because it’s going to result in increased revenue over the long run. While not everyone is motivated by affiliate commissions, you’ll still probably be able to find a large amount of people willing to promote your product (if it’s good).

Power of Returning Customers

Remember that although you might be giving away 70% on the front end, you’ll be earning much more from that customer over the long run. For instance, let’s say that your product is worth $100 and it’s being offered at 70% commission for affiliates. Although you’ll only make $30 per sale now, it’s very likely that you’ll earn much more from those customers over the long run. That’s the potential power that launching an affiliate program has.

Why Shouldn’t You Start an Affiliate Program?

There are obviously two sides to the argument: it could be said that starting an affiliate program will only eat away at your local internet marketing profits. After all, who likes to see 50% of their earnings go down the drain? The second thing to consider is that an affiliate program can take a lot of time to manage. Granted, there are platforms (like Clickbank.com) that allow you to effortlessly collect commissions on your affiliate sales, but as a general rule, it does take a lot of effort to run such a program.

Finally, there’s the idea behind lost control. When you launch an affiliate program, you virtually lose all control over how your product is marketed. This might give false expectations about your product to customers, which will result in greater refunds and less website SEO satisfaction. These are the pros and cons to the argument. It’s always best to at least give it a try and see if you’re able to increase long-term sales this way.

Local Internet Marketing Begins With Networking

Networking is possible in two ways: Internet and word of mouth. Old school methods that do not use electronics are still extremely viable as a means of starting a business. If you want to have successful local Internet marketing then you need to start with word of mouth networking.

If no one knows you exist even locally then there is no reason for your website business to do well. It takes time for a website to get crawled by search engine bots. It takes time for consumers to find you and the people that do may not be in your area at all.

While targeting local keywords will help with local internet marketing, you need to let the local world know you exist. Newspaper write-ups, radio interviews, local cable interviews, as well as handing out cards to every person you meet is imperative.

Once you have a local base and have established your professionalism you will start to see a gain in popularity for your site.

You will also be working on Internet networking for local Internet marketing. It goes hand in hand. As you get your website prepared and launched, you will be marketing through social media sites, articles directories, blog postings, Pinterest, and other sites. The more you let people know you exist and use all the tools available to you the easier it will be for you to find consumers. With local Internet marketing it pays to have a keyword based campaign as well as a catchy tagline.

How Confusing is Local Internet Marketing?

There tend to be a lot of big disconnects between SEO companies and our clients. Most of them revolve around bits of jargon, like defining ‘SEO’ vs. ‘SEM’ vs. ‘Paid Search’ and so on. But sometimes, we talk to a group of clients and we realize that there’s not just a disconnect between us and them — there’s absolutely no consensus on their side of the able at all about what a certain term means.

So, for example, we were talking to a table of regular clients about ‘Local Search.’ Now, online, we’re pretty conscientious about using the term ‘Local Internet Marketing,’ because frankly, that’s a keyword we’re targeting — which tends to focus your vocabulary. But in the offices, we talk about ‘local search’ pretty frequently; it’s a good shorthand for the longer term.

But our clients had vastly different ideas about what exactly ‘local search’ meant.

• A few assumed (correctly, by our definition) that it meant ‘getting found in the SERPs when local people search for the relevant keyword.’
• But at least two thought it referred specifically to getting your business’ address, phone, and other information available on and consistent across all the major online directories.
• One thought ‘local search’ was an aspect of PPC marketing exclusively, and had nothing to do with SEO.
• One thought ‘local search’ was ‘search performed on mobile devices.’ We’re still wondering how she got that one.
• And one of our long-term favorites honestly believed ‘local search’ was some sort of SEO keyword for advertising offline.

So, we’re going to settle this ‘once and for all’ (or at least, for here and for now.)

Local Search is the use of localization techniques within both organic and paid marketing areas to improve your business’ website’s position on the results pages of searches made either by local individuals or by distant individuals that specify your locale.

Local Internet Marketing is the use of both Local Search and other localized Internet resources such as area-specific directories, reviews and ratings sites, and many other tools.

It’s that simple! This is not to say that all marketers do you these exact definitions, but if yours tries to sell you on something called ‘Local Search’ that has no effect on your search results, or ‘Local Internet Marketing’ that isn’t, you know, on the Internet you may want to find a new marketer.

The Advantages of Local Internet Marketing

Having a business is filled with challenges to overcome in order to be successful, but the primordial step for success is standing out from the competition. If you can separate yourself from the rest of businesses offering similar products or services, you are already on the right track, but how do you do this? We believe the proper way to accomplish this is hiring a local internet marketing company, but don’t trust us just because we say so. Below you will find three reasons why we believe this to be true in the local economy.

Hire Local

When looking to develop a great marketing campaign people tend to look after mega internet marketing agencies based solely of the success of the marketing agency itself, but they don’t really know how or if their projects have had the expected effect. When hiring local internet marketing agencies you can see the projects they have worked on and relate to the businesses they have worked with in order to know if they will be able to develop a good marketing experience for your business without having to pay expensive retainer fees which can go from five to ten thousand dollars a month.

Local Agencies Are Familiar with the Local Market

By having worked on projects in your area they are familiar to your local economy and to your local market from suppliers to customers and your competition. Other companies may be able to study or investigate how your market is made of but no one will understand it like someone who lives it and breathes it every day.

Impacting Your Local Economy

As a local business you are interested in the well being of your local community, as it is where your customers will potentially be coming from. Hiring local is a great, less expensive way to give back what you are trying to develop for yourself, and that goes a long way when it comes to corporate image.

We believe these are three very important points when looking to hire an agency for your marketing needs, and we hope to have shed some light and perspective why: it will fit your budget, you will understand each other better, and you will be investing in your own economy.

Top Seven Tips for Local Internet Marketing

If you are an owner of a local business and highly depend on local internet marketing, then one thing you will know for definite is the importance of keeping your site on top amongst search results. In order for this to be possible, you need to work on search engine optimization (SEO), so read on and discover some important tips to how you can go about doing this.

Meta Tag

The first vital step for all websites is ensuring you have the Meta tags set up that contain the vital keywords, which people can use to find you. You may also want to include a top keyword within your domain name; this has proven to be very effective for SEO. With Meta tags, these ensure that search engines rank your site correctly and for the right keywords.

Content that is Relevant

Relevant content is always given first priority by search engines. More than anything, the quality of the content is usually given more importance, which is why it is necessary that you have relevant content that can increase the chances of your site being ranked amongst the top. As well as relevancy, your content must also be useful, as you certainly want the reader to come back after their first read.

Social Media

Local internet marketing with social media is an effective way that can be used to attract new customers. With this method, you can easily create a variety of links through social networks such as Twitter, and Facebook, etc. More importantly, you can build trust and form relationships with your customers.

Link Wheel

These are a group of websites interconnected to one another. The idea behind link wheels is to enhance the search ranking of your website by using a variety of websites that are consistent with each other.

Blogging

If you form a blog, individuals that visit your site can easily leave messages and comments. You can also share your expertise via your blogs and link them to your website, which will generate more traffic to your site.

You may want to try these methods of local internet marketing and take your online business beyond your dreams.

Local Internet Marketing Affects the Growth of Your Business

Local internet marketing brings many advantages to small businesses, which is proven by the following fact:

• Seventy percent of households in the US use the internet as an information source whilst shopping for local services and products.

So, if local internet marketing is not part of your business, then you really are missing out on local targeted traffic. However, if your business is online it is important that your website is properly working for you.

How Do You Know?
The way to identify if this is working for you is to see if local users can find you whilst searching in major search engines. Secondly, and even better can they find you when they use search terms that relate to their needs? When searching for a business the majority of consumers don’t search for the name. Instead, they search for terms that mostly relate to their need. You can also put yourself in the consumer’s shoes and try searching it yourself and see what comes up. You need to find out if your business is listed in the results and exactly where it is. If it is not on the first page of the search engine, what this means is you are missing out on previous targeted traffic, as a user doesn’t usually go past the top ten results that are listed.

Businesses and Internet Marketing
The business that is most likely to attract the majority of clients via internet marketing is one that has a website. Recent studies have shown 80% of customers who made purchases from stores actually visited their website first. You need to ask yourself the questions that are listed above if you have a website. Think like a client and visit the top search engines and start your own search by using certain keywords, which are related to your business. Find out where your site is listed amongst search engines and fix the problem, so next time a consumer goes to find you, they do so in complete ease.

Is Your Business Online?
If no, you are really missing out on a lot! Nowadays, services and products are usually found on the internet and if your website is correctly created, then there’s no reason to why individuals won’t be able to find you. Make sure you expand your business via local internet marketing, and do it before your competitors beat you to it!

Local Internet Marketing VS. Print Media

Developing a website for your company and a local internet marketing campaign leads to further success of your business. Today, both these strategies can be used by people for advertising their products and services, which results in a small business reaching a high level. Techniques for local internet marketing have been developed for some time now, and are responsible for taking simple ads to popular and fast-growing social networking websites.

Local Internet Marketing: The Facts!
A fact about the service is the instant leads it brings. As soon as people visit your site, they will have instant access to your services and products straightaway. When it comes to print media and television advertising, these can be time-consuming for you. What you want to receive is traffic and what you want to see is your business doing well. Thanks to the Internet, many people around the world can easily access your service. SEO efforts and PPC ads help a big deal and are a main reason behind your site receiving visitors.

Domain Name and Internet Marketing
When it comes to domain names, there are so many out there that one cannot remember all sites. However, if your domain name is easy, simple and catchy, then that’s another plus factor for you. If your domain name is like the above, then it will most likely be remembered. This means visitors will always return as the name will always stay on their mind. Terms and phrases that customers would type in to find your service need to be considered for your domain name, as this is very effective.

Save Money with Internet Marketing
A main benefit of this local strategy is that you can save both time and money. The many strategies and techniques involved with internet marketing do not require a big investment.

You need to ensure you avoid the black hat marketing. This is used by some website owners in order to promote their site, but if you use SEO for your website, then an increase in traffic to your site is definitely guaranteed! A few other effective strategies include email marketing, banner advertising and email newsletters. These will help notify your clients of any updates as well as help with promotion.

Local Internet Marketing’s Importance to the Service Industry

Every kind of business can reap the benefits of local internet marketing. The service industry, however, could benefit the most. The service industry does business through appointments rather than walk-ins like many other types of businesses. Some examples of service industries are doctors, lawyers and realtors.

Paper Ad vs Local Internet Marketing
Everyday more people turn to the internet to search for new service providers. With that said, it is important for businesses to continue to make a smooth transition into local internet marketing and still use paper ads as a fallback. An advertisement found in a magazine or phone book for example, is not going to help nearly as much as an internet marketing campaign. Ads such as the ones previously mentioned limit how much information is provided to potential customers. The usual ad such as these displays a logo or photo, basic contact information, and possible key services that are offered. These ads however, do not help to build a relationship between the customer and the service company. When using local internet marketing there is no limit to how much information can be given to the potential customers. This helps to begin building a relationship with customers very early on.

Customer Relationships
You may ask how a relationship would begin to build by being on the internet. Unlike paper ads, on the internet service providers can publish article and relay news updates which future customers have the opportunity to read. Those who are searching and researching the companies and services will find more enough information to decide whether the business is trustworthy and reliable, before even making the first phone call.

Tools
There are also many tools that can be made readily available to customers online. For example, a realtor may have a mortgage calculator on his page or a lawyer may have an area where he explains different state laws. Having information and tools such as these readily available makes potential customers more interested in your services. Customers are also interested in offers such as discounts and changing costs. All of this information can be consistently updated on the internet.

Use Local Internet Marketing to Expand Your Small Business

The internet has become the default place to obtain information. When people are searching for a business or product the internet is where they go. This has now extended beyond computer users with most phones having internet capabilities bringing the ability to search to anyone, anywhere at any time. This makes it important that every business no matter how small has some sort of web presence.

Local Internet Searches
Small local business have traditionally used letterbox delivery of marketing material, the yellow pages and local area printed directories to draw customers. These forms are becoming increasingly expensive at the same time as also becoming less effective. This is because of the move by search engines to implement searches that target local businesses. People have fully embraced the concept and this has made it the number one way to achieve useful local internet marketing.

Advertising in the Internet Age
It does not matter what industry you are in the base of having a web presence is a relatively low cost way to start your journey into local internet marketing. You do not need a complicated site just some basic information presented well that has the information about your business, what is does and where it is situated.

When people are looking for services by incorporating the location information for your area and any surrounding areas that you normally service you will appear higher in the returned searches. This makes you more prominent in searches where they are looking for a local business to help them. You can make sure that you are visible by having a website that contains this information.

Build a Local Profile
Once you have established a website then you can enhance your presence by adding content, photographs or even some video. If you are unsure what to do then your web design company can do these tasks at a competitive rate. This not only will improve your visibility on the internet but will also help you to convert people that view your website into customers. Contact information, prices for common tasks and information about products that you sell and why they should buy them all help to make visitors choose you as the person to buy from.

How to Use Local Internet Marketing?

The global reach of the internet and publicity about being able to expand some businesses by selling to customers all around the world has left the impression in some peoples mind that local internet marketing is not useful or important. There is nothing further from the truth with more people than ever using computers, tablets and smart phones as their preferred method of finding local businesses.

As with targeting people that are looking for a particular group of goods or services the use of SEO techniques is also able to target location making local internet marketing workable. The ability to target a local market is used by many large companies to ensure that their local outlet is featured prominently in any location specific searches that potential customers make.

The most prominent search engine, Google is making it easier for consumers to more effectively use their search engine to find local businesses. This is because they can see location based searches are being used more often and by responding to the need Google is ensuring it will continue to attract the majority of people that are searching on the internet.

As the internet has become more integrated the previous most popular way to find local businesses the Yellow Pages is becoming less and less relevant. A smart phone can be used anywhere at any time and the large book or books that make up the Yellow Pages just cannot compete with this level of convenience.

The need for specialized SEO services that will target the local area is important and selecting a company that has the ability should be the number one priority. The use of keywords that include the local and surrounding areas is important so that people that input one of these areas in their search your information will be returned.

It cannot be understated how potentially profitable this can be because local internet marketing connects potential customers to your business. This can give you a huge advantage against your competitors funneling local people that need your services straight to your doorstep. If you want to get ahead of the competition then do it now!

The Benefits of Local Internet Marketing

You can start benefiting from local Internet marketing, by using organic SEO methods and other simple techniques. Running a small business can be difficult, especially when you operate out of a physical location and rely on local customers for sales. It is just as hard to successfully market a local business online and receive visitors that are in your area. This is where local Internet marketing can help increase the number of potential local customers that visit your website. With local Internet marketing you can more specifically target Internet users in your area, which will hep with your conversion rates and bring people into your business. Learn how to begin taking advantage of this useful form of marketing.

Before you can start taking the right steps towards effective local Internet marketing, you need to have your business set up. This means that your website should be completed and your brand established. Having a simple and recognizable logo helps customers remember and easily identify your business. Once the foundation is in place, it is time to start marketing your business.

Local Internet marketing can be divided into three main parts: social media, search engines or directories, and targeted email marketing. Social media is a convenient way to use local Internet marketing to focus on Twitter and Facebook users near your location. Use Twitter and Facebook posts to inform customers of updates, sales, and services. Another aspect of local Internet marketing is using search engines and business directories to promote your website. Search the Internet and try to find any business directories that focus on your city or general geographical area. Then use the local tools that the major search engines provide, such as Google Places, Yahoo! Local, and Bing Maps. Each of these search engines has their own format for creating a business directory and adding your information.

The final part of local Internet marketing is targeted email marketing. By using a newsletter that visitors to your website can sign up to receive, you can start building a list of subscribers to use for a targeted email marketing campaign. Local Internet marketing is useful, and when done right, can increase your relationship with local customers.

Three Paths To Local Internet Marketing

Local Internet marketing is, writ short, the art of making sure that when someone searches for “your_industry your_area”, they see your name first. But that’s a pretty narrow definition; it’s also local internet marketing when you make sure that the first link on the appropriate Yelp page is your business, and so on. Here are the three most significant kinds of local internet marketing.

Google
When you search for almost anything and put a town name next to it, Google kicks in a special tool that not only lists a pile of competitors, but it pulls up a small map with several little ‘stickers’ on it show where you are and where all of your competition is. This is the mainstay of local internet marketing; if you don’t show up on the list, you’re missing out on foot traffic, end of story.

As a secondary mention, getting your name, address, and phone number consistent across Google, Google Maps, Bing!, Bing! Maps, and all of the other various similar sites that you can find is a very good way to create a solid web presence.

App Marketing
The mobile market is somewhere upwards of 30% of all Internet searches, and it’s only increasing. That makes it smart strategy to show up in apps that people use to find things in their immediate environment. Yelp, Google Places, Urban Onion, and dozens of others have apps designed to create a social platform to list and compare businesses from around whatever area you sign up to.

Pay Per Click Marketing
Not many people think about PPC when they think about local internet marketing, but any PPC manager will be happy to talk your ear off about the power of ‘geo targeting’ and the ease with which you can both limit your expenses and improve your conversion rate by focusing your PPC marketing on people who are near enough to walk over and enjoy one of your products in person.

If you’re a small business owner and you’re looking to use the Internet to drive business through your doors, don’t let your SEO company stop after they’ve gotten you up on Google and Google Maps — there’s still a lot more than could and should be done if you want to dominate the local marketing all by your lonesome.

Small Business SEO Doesn’t Have to Be So Small

Small business SEO is often regarded as a relatively minor project: you get some keywords, you write some content, you create some backlinks, and the business eventually starts to see some traffic to it’s website. It’s kind of a pity, because there’s no particular reason for it. We’ve trained ourselves to look at a small business client and say “the poor broke entrepreneur barely has $35/month for our basic link-building package; he’s toast.”

Sure, a small business almost by definition doesn’t have a huge budget, but that doesn’t mean that we should be offering them low-budget options. $35/month is more than enough to purchase a blog post every week for a couple of cents per word — and for a price like that, you can find a native English blogger more than willing to put the effort in to generate sharebait once a week.

When you shoot the moon like that, one of two things happens: either you get normal everyday results, and the money you spent is just as well spent as if you had spent it on the low-key, low-budget link building and other low-level SEO practices, or you get success — you get a blog article that gets shares and gets it’s own natural backlinks and becomes a valuable part of the business’ traffic funnel.

So why are we as a industry not trying to crank up our levels of small business SEO? The answer is because that it takes thought. It’s not easy — there are a lot of good reasons why we want to keep doing the same repetitive, nominally-functional linkbuilding day and in and day out. It doesn’t tax our creativity or ask us to vary our routines. It gets home sooner so that we can all watch the Daily Show and relax over a pizza.

If you’re a small business owner, don’t settle for crap linkbuilding packages. Ask what your SEO company can give you in terms of:

• Local internet marketing
• Content marketing
• Social media
• Custom blog creation and Blog posting
• Video marketing

There are dozens of powerful options for SEO, but many companies will discard most of them if you tell them that your budget is in the double digits. Don’t let them; tell them you’re willing to negotiate, but that you want marketing that will do more than just have your website’s URL creeping up the SERPs over months.

PPC, Management, and Why You Shouldn’t Always Mimic Success

There’s an adage in the business world that says “find someone that’s succeeding in your industry and copy them.” It’s true in most circumstances — naturally, you won’t have their budget, but hopefully you shouldn’t be plagued with the kinds of problems they currently have, while their current solutions will be to the problems you’re facing today. There are, however, major exceptions. One of them in the area of PPC. Management types in big companies often go in large for pay-per-click marketing. They spend huge bucks on it because they need results that happen this quarter.

If they wait until next quarter, see, they might not have their jobs anymore. Business at the C_O level is just that volatile — you never know where you’re going to work next quarter. Investing in any long-term programs that will show a profit in six months, much less five years, is going to result in some schlub you’ve never met crediting his recent “Let’s replace all the mops with fuzzy little dogs” program for the company’s windfall.

That’s why 80% of the money spend on SEM is spent on PPC, even though SEO accounts for 80% of the results — because C_Os aren’t worried about results as much as they’re interested in results they can take credit for.

If you’re a small business owner, you don’t want to drop huge bucks on PPC management like the big boys do. A little PPC is wise, because it helps you get the traffic flowing quickly — but you want to balance it with an equal or greater amount of local internet marketing and SEO. You might be interested in instant results, but it should be more important to you to guarantee that you’re still in business in five years — and relying strictly on PPC isn’t a good recipe for that.

A blend is the best path for most of America’s small Internet-savvy business. The PPC gets you off the ground and gets some initial traffic as the SEO builds — and then a year later, as the SEO starts to build traffic, the PPC can slowly be decreased each month so that by the end of the second year, you’re entirely on SEO and your PPC budget is no more. That’s the safest path to Internet business success.

Local Internet Marketing Needs a Social Component (and Constant Attention)

If you’re a small business that’s just getting into the local internet marketing scene, you may be under the impression that it’s basically just like the SEO you’re already doing, only with different keywords — ones that add a geographic component. But that’s not local internet marketing, it’s just local SEO. If you want to market, you have to go beyond just ‘the same thing only with a smaller audience’.

So how do you get the word out to local people using digital means? Isn’t the Internet inherently a worldwide thing? Sure, you’re right, there’s no such thing as a ‘local internet’ — but there are plenty of websites out there devoted to your local area. If you live in a place large enough to have a Chamber of Commerce, you live in an area large enough to be marketed to online.

How? It’s simple: find websites that make lists of stuff in your area. It’s not hard, just search for “best in Flattery Hills” or “top in Babushka Park” — almost every area large enough to have a Chamber will have a few people who are devoted to blogging, listing, or otherwise talking about your area online. If nothing else, the Chamber of Commerce and the city websites will sometimes link to vibrant local businesses. Get in touch with those governmental, community, and locally-run sites and ask them what it would take to get a reference.

But that’s just the beginning. The real secret to successful local internet domination is the social media. There’s a “we love our town” page for places as miniscule as Carlsborg, Washington and Gulliver, Michigan — you can certainly find one for the place YOU live. Get your own Facebook page, link it up with your local area pages, and get buttons that link to your Facebook page on every web page, blog posting and other web presence you build, and you’ll be just barely getting started — but that’s better than 99% of your competition, and it’s only uphill from here. That’s right, uphill: it’ll be hard work, but when you get to the top, the view will be well worth the climb.

People Watch More Videos Every Day — Local Internet Marketing Can Make Sure They’re Watching Yours

Every day that goes by, the number of videos watched on the Internet goes up. Back in January of this year, the number of YouTube videos watched in a single day reached four billion — and that’s just on YouTube! Granted, the total number of videos watched off YouTube probably wasn’t that large, but even if it was two-thirds YouTube’s amount, you’ve got an average of one video watched per person on the planet. That’s jawdropping.

At the same time, YouTube claims that it’s users up load one hundred years’ worth of video every day — so how are you supposed to get anyone to find YOUR videos in the avalanche of new uploads? That’s where you turn to your small business SEO professionals. SEO is the art of getting the search engines to show people what you want them to, so it’s the right tool to get your videos in front of people’s eyes.

The specific trick is called Local Internet Marketing: a method that attaches a placename and a keyword phrase to your video, so that only people who are actually relevant to your business (who use that placename in their searches) will be exposed to your videos. It would be a waste of everyone’s time if you made an awesome video about your new rock polishing business and then the people who saw it mostly came from Germany.

By leveraging Local Internet Marketing, your video can get in front of the people who will care about it most, and it’ll accomplish it’s goal — presumably, to increase awareness of your business and drive foot traffic into your store. Of course, this means you’ll have to have a video that can actually do those things.

Fortunately, that’s not as difficult as it seems, as long as you’re willing to not take yourself seriously. Producing a video that’s funny, useful, and tangentially relevant to your business is going to get a lot more attention and be a lot more memorable than focusing on “Hi, I’m Mike Barker and I sell smooth rocks.”

Small Business SEO: How You Can Use Videos Even If You Can’t Afford Them

Small business SEO is a delicate balancing act between needing to improve your income and not being able to spend a lot of money to do it. That’s why SEO companies love to encourage small businesses to engage in certain high-value, low-cost practices like local internet marketing. But the world is a large and complex place, and few SEO companies know even most of the tricks that small businesses could be using to leverage inexpensive assets to get profound results.

Most small businesses shy away from video marketing, for example, because making a video is an expensive proposition. You have to hire someone to organize the whole affair, and assuming that he can run the camera as well as take care of storyboarding, scriptwriting, preproduction, postproduction, and distribution (good luck with that), you still need actors, a camera, and a few weeks.

OR…

…you can use one of those leveraging tricks. This one comes to us from the world of late-night commercials like those original 5-Hour Energy adverts from back in the day. These 1.5-minute commercials were marvelous feats of splicing in that they used 100% stock video clips available from various websites for what had to be a total of nearly (gasp!) eighty dollars.

Neatly spliced together to tell a story and given an appropriate voiceover, these supercheap commercials helped launch an entirely new category of product — the energy shot — into existence. Yes, it was a good idea whose time was ripe, but without these late-night promos to spread initial awareness of the product, it’s quite likely that 5HE would have taken years longer to become commonplace.

So ask yourself — what kind of story would you like to tell your customers? Can you find a series of video clips that will tell this story if you give it an appropriate voiceover? (If not, can you hire someone to do it for you?) If you could build a series of marketing videos for only a few hundred dollars, would you?

Local Internet Marketing: The Next Level — Mobile Website Design

Mobile website design — the art of turning your normal website into a website that can be easily viewed on mobile devices like tablets and smartphones — is a huge step forward in any small business’ Internet presence. What many small business owners fail to see is that a mobile-friendly website isn’t just ‘more traffic’ (though it is) — it’s also the next level of local internet marketing.

If you’re not engaging in local internet marketing, you should be — it’s the single best tool for small businesses to get feet in their doors. Local internet marketing is the online equivalent of putting billboards at the most well-traveled crossroads in your city (online, we call that place “Google”.) It’s the process of making sure that when someone searches for some combination of your city name, region, or neighborhood and a keyword related to your industry, your name shows up in the search results.

For normal desktop websites, that’s a pretty powerful tool. It means that when someone says “Where do I find a place to buy X?” and they Google it, they see your store. That makes them much more likely to come buy from you, especially if they find convenient information like where you are and what hours you’re open alongside (which local internet marketers can make sure shows up.)

But combine that with the power of a mobile website, and you have this scenario instead: a soccer mom is cruising the local highway when she realizes she forgot something her family needs. She pulls over at Starbucks, whips out her Kindle Fire, leeches some wi-fi to look up ” ” and finds your store. Without missing a beat, she turns her minivan around and drives right up to your front door.

It’s the power of meeting peoples needs on the fly, right when they realize they have them, without giving them time to change their mind or think of a better alternative. It’s the power of right now. That’s why local mobile design is local internet marketing’s next level.