Today people are much more likely to search for “Bonne Terre Restaurants” on Google before they pick up the print edition of the Yellow Pages. Along with this is the shift of people doing the exact same thing from their internet enabled mobile phone.

This trend is here to stay and is only going to accelerate with the rural broadband stimulus driving broadband access deeper into rural areas.

What do you do to be prepared?

It is not as simple as just having a website, you must have a website that has been properly setup to show up in Google or the other major search engines when someone searches for your business or the service or product you offer.

Most small businesses are not aware of this need, they are not aware that their website is now the primary way people will find information on them. The internet has become the phone book and your website has become your ad.

It is likely that even if you have a website it has not been properly optimized for local search and almost guaranteed if it was built more than a couple years ago it will not be setup in the proper way.

We at Localtek specialize in these services and our small business customers are proof positive that this works. Contact us today for a review of your website or quote for a website to help your business get online now.

Bruce Marler, President of Localtek, attended the Affiliate Convention in Los Angeles last December and spoke about using alternative domain names to help grow a business and help businesses create a unique brand online.

Over the next month the company will be attending DomainFest in Los Angeles, CA where they will be on the networking panel discussing search engine optimization. Localtek has strong history of supporting rural small businesses with their local SEO needs.

Next up on the agenda will be a panel spot during the Domainer Mardi Gras event in New Orleans where Bruce will be speaking on the “Show Me The Money” panel based on the quick growth Localtek has had over the past year in both their local search focused web design as well as their Missouri.me community platform.

For more information you can visit Localtek.com

In many cases the companies you use as vendors for certain products, or may have joint promotion agreements with for offline promotion, could also benefit from joint marketing online as well.

What does this mean, an example would be having your logo on a partner page within their site with a link back to your website, or a simple news post on the partners site announcing the business arrangement with links to your website. This is an often overlooked but very cost effective, in many cases free, way to promote a business and at the same time drive traffic to your website.

So many times customers have great intentions with their new website but are not quite sure how to promote it, a simple logo with a link to your site can do wonders for bringing customers to your door.

Also, since they are coming from a website where they may already be doing business there is a trust factor with the partner they are recommending. This will help with conversions once they reach your online business presence.

For more tips and tricks on how to get effective, low cost promotion of your business online contact us at 1-800-647-2909 or use our Contact Us page.

This is not only happening in the rural areas but also in the metro areas like St. Louis and Kansas City, this means that if your business does not have a properly local search engine optimized site then your business is being overlooked by the millions of people searching for local businesses online rather than picking up the Yellow Pages.

Even if you currently have a website that was designed in years past it is very likely it was not properly setup to draw in the people looking for your business, for years web developers have focused on the technical and visual aspects of a website but never on actually drawing business to the site. That is where Localtek is different.

Contact us now to learn how we can help your customers find your business when searching for your product or service online.