In today’s hyper competitive market, businesses need to have their websites properly Search Engine Optimized.

While many SEO companies will try to convince you that elaborate steps are needed for proper SEO, there are some things that local companies can do on their own.  Other things require the expertise of a skilled SEO company and should be considered as well.

The first, and perhaps most important thing companies can do online is get listed in Google’s local listings.  This is relatively simple to do.

Go to http://www.Google.com/local and click on the button to add your business.  Click on the link to “put your business on local maps.”  Once you get to the screen, you can choose the “add a new listing” option.

You will be asked to fill out some basic contact information about your business.  One of the lines asks for your website address.  You should still fill out this information even if you do not yet have a website.  While I strongly recommend that every business have a website, this is not a requirement for Google local.

You will also provide a 200 character description of your business.  Take some time to make this compelling because this can be a sales point for the business.

You will then go to a screen where you fill out categories related to your business.  You have up to five categories.  So, a pizza restaurant may want to get themselves listed under “pizza” “Italian restaurant” and “restaurant.”  If you do catering or take out, list that as well.

You have the option of listing hours of operation and payment methods.  You can also upload up to 10 photos.  Uploading photos of your storefront, your owners, your products, and happy customers all enhance your listing.

If you have a video of your business, you can upload that as well.  As the computer becomes more video driven, this can set you apart from your competitors.

There is also a section where you can list any brands you service or carry.  This is a great option for home repair companies to take advantage of.

Finally, you will have to validate your listing.  There are two ways to do this.  The first way is to receive a phone call at your primary business number.  You have the choice of receiving a call immediately or in 5 minutes.  You will also receive a PIN number.  When the automated Google phone call comes in, simply type in the PIN number.

The second way is to receive and respond to a postcard which can take 2 to 3 weeks.

After you have verified the information, it can take up to 4 weeks for the information to appear in Google.

When someone types in a listing with your city’s name in it, your listing should appear.  For instance, when someone types in “Riverside House Painting” a list of 10 companies appears.  Often, this is the first listing in Google, but even when it’s not, it is almost always on the first page of Google.

If there are more than 10 companies competing for “house painting” in the city of Riverside, then there is a section for more results.

If you want to get higher rankings within the first 10 competing companies, do the following:

1. Get listed in as many local directories as possible including online yellow pages.
2. Ask your customers to review you on local business review sites.
3. Be located near the city center (though there’s not a lot you can do about this one.)

A qualified SEO firm can help you with all of this, but if you don’t have the budget to get hire one, get started on your own with Google’s local search.

Stacy Fox owns Stacy Fox Communications. She helps businesses market their small businesses through effective web site promotion as well as offline publicity and advertising. She is an expert in generating leads and building responsive lists of customers.

Do you know that small businesses can now get on the front page of a Google search when people look for services in their city?  Google’s local listings are a new feature which assist Small Businesses in their SEO endeavors.

This article on MSNBC:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29224857/

shows the importance of Search Engine Optimization for small businesses in a shrinking economy.

“one of the top marketing tools a company has is a Google ranking. The difference between a page 1 or page 2 search engine ranking can be the difference of tens of thousands of dollars of revenue for a company,”  the article says.

They point to the Nevada tourism site which has used SEO strategies to go from 9000 unique visits a year to 29,000.

Getting visitors to your site and converting them into customers is essential for small businesses in this environment.  Inland Web Services helps you do just that.

You can take a look at a sample site I built at http://www.RiversideChildCustody.com

It currently ranks #1 at Google for the search term “Riverside Child Custody.”  That’s pretty good considering that there are 306,000 competing pages and the term gets hundreds of searches a month!

I want to highlight the video I made for this site here:

I can make a website and/or a video like this for your site too!

Here are some ideas for using video online for small business.

This is a commercial for a florist.  Notice that they use still photos to make their video which means it can be produced for extremely low cost:

Here’s an attorney giving advice to potential clients, another simple way to use video online:

When you host these videos on YouTube, you can also use them on your own site for promotion!

If you want to start using video marketing on the internet, give us a call at Inland Web Services at (951) 643-8650.

Internet marketing is a very wide term which can be used to encompass a variety of marketing techniques which are used online. Banner advertisements, website promotion, search engine optimization, email marketing and affiliate marketing all fall under the umbrella of the term Internet marketing but there is even more to Internet marketing than those concepts. Promoting your website or business on message boards can also be considered to be Internet marketing. In fact this is one of the simplest and least expensive Internet marketing options available. This article will examine how savvy business owners can use Internet message boards wisely. It will also explain how message boards can be misused and rendered ineffective as well.

Message boards are essentially online meeting places. In general most message boards are focused on a particular niche subject and encourage those who share an interest in this particular subject to get together to discuss relevant issues, ask questions, provide advice and even just socialize. Message boards can focus on any subject imaginable they may focus on a particular baseball team or just the sport of baseball in general. Message boards can focus on subjects such as politics, television shows, bands, current events, jobs, hobbies or any subject imaginable. Savvy Internet marketers can take advantage of these message boards to reach a target audience without investing a great deal of money.

Consider a business in which the focus of the business is to assist people in finding jobs which offer telecommute options. The concept of working from home is becoming increasingly popular and there are many websites which focus on this subject. Likewise there are also many message boards devoted to the topic of working from home. Here those with an interest in the subject meet to discuss issues such as finding employment where working from home is an option, working around the schedule of your children, setting up a home office, dealing with friends or family members who don’t respect your working hours and paying taxes on freelance assignments. A business owner who actively participates in this message board can take the opportunity to post a link to his website when it is relevant and offers something of value to the conversation. This is worthwhile because the message board features a high concentration of your target audience members.

When using message boards to promote your business, it is important to ensure you are following the rules associated with the message boards. Message boards may have restrictions regarding the posting of links and failure to abide by these restrictions may result in you being banned from the message board. For this reason it is important for anyone who is interested in using message boards for promotion of their business to carefully read the user agreement to ensure they are not violating any of the rules. It is also important to simply use common sense when promoting your business on a message board. Just because the rules do not restrict posting links, does not mean you should spam the board with your link. Take care to only include y our link when it is relevant. This will prevent message board users from assuming your link is just worthless spam.

Finally, when using message boards to promote your business it is important to be courteous to other message board users and to keep all posts professional. This is important because you and your business are much more likely to be taken seriously if you act professionally and responsibly. You should maintain this degree of professionalism even in posts which do not include your business link. This is important because other message board participants will remember you by your user name and will not be likely to take you seriously if you have previously made posts which were offensive, mean spirited or inaccurate. For this reason it is important to act as a representative from your company at all times.