Finally, an Internet Marketing Service for Local Business.

A few weeks ago, I sat down with a local business owner to talk about her web presence. She owns a franchise and the parent company had recently decided to take over everyone's internet presence. They had hired a big internet marketing service that handles lots of national accounts and I'm sure this company will serve the parent company very well.

The problem is that local internet marketing and national internet marketing are two different animals. At ibusnesslocal, we don't work with giant companies who want to be number one of hot terms like "make money fast" or "brittany spears" or whatever the flavor of the week. Instead we focus on getting our local clients more local customers.

Your customers are searching for you online. Do you show up?

The reality is that your potential customers are searching for you online. And if you don't show up they will end up someone elses customers. That someone else may be further away, less attentive and generally less able to serve your customer than you are. But your potential customers will never have the opportunity to find out - because you don't show up.

A 2009 survey of 4000 US Consumers found that 83% of respondents say they have researched a product or service online before making a purchase offline from a local business within 20 minutes of their home. This is up from 72% in 2007. Since Google dominates search, if your website isn’t on page one of Google results when someone searches for you using words like “CPA in YOURTOWN” then you essentially don’t exist. Only 32% of searchers even read to the bottom of page one results and only 10% will look through the first 3 pages. (Sources: Nielsen/WebVisible, iProspect)

3 things to do today…

It doesn't have to be that way. You can act to help your customers find you - TODAY. Start with these three things: Make sure your local business profile is accurate. Even if you don’t have a website, you have a web presence. But it may not be accurate. It’s not uncommon for business listings to be incomplete or outdated. They could even list your competitor’s phone number or contact information on your listing. (Yes, really.) Go to http://ibusinesslocal.com/localbusiness to add or review your profile.

Optimize your website for “search.” Even the Google “spider” needs help sometimes. Make sure your make consistent use of the words your customers use to find you throughout your website. This includes all of your meta tags, H1 tags, image alt tags and, of course, your content.

Optimize your website for your customers. Make sure they can immediately tell that you have the solution to their problem. (They don’t want to wait for the cool flash video to load.) Make sure your call to action is clear, above the fold and on every page. Dig your testimonials out and put them on your content pages (where your customers can see them without hunting.) Have different content pages for different customers instead of trying to talk to them all at once.

We understand that you are an expert in your business, not internet marketing. That’s where we come in. Your future customers deserve to meet you. We’re happy to introduce you.

More Visibility. More Clients. More Profits.™

Greg & Melissa