A business that understands where the future is headed understands that an online presence is an absolute necessity in order to be on the map, both literally and figuratively. A site is not enough, however. Search engine optimization, SEO, must be taken into account. SEO is becoming more locally driven as well, which is good news for small businesses.
If you take advantage of SEO, St. Louis customers will be able to find your site by performing an internet search for the services you provide. St. Louis SEO is a great way to put yourself in front of your customers. You don’t have to sell anything online to benefit from St. Louis SEO. When you take advantage of proper SEO, St. Louis customers will be the only ones to find your site. St. Louis SEO will place your business in Google maps, allowing people to discover your phone in the search engines or while they are using a navigation system on their phones.
Through local SEO ,St. Louis maps located on the internet will display your location. This is helpful for all types of businesses taking advantage of St. Louis SEO. Many people do not realize this, but eighty percent of the time that people find out about a business online, they still visit the store in person. When a business takes advantage of local SEO St. Louis customers will not have to have the option to buy anything online in order for the business to benefit. By the same token, the success of a St. Louis SEO campaign can not be gauged based on the number of purchases made online.
For a business to rank well in the search engines as a result of SEO, St. Louis must be specifically targeted. This requires the effort of skilled professionals who understand how Google works and are able to create a St. Louis SEO campaign that puts a business in a place where its customers will find it. Through the power of SEO St. Louis customers will see the company’s site listed closer to the top of the search engine listings. Since very few searchers click through to the second page of the search results, a well planned and coordinated St. Louis SEO campaign is necessary.
By taking advantage of SEO, St. Louis companies can place themselves ahead of big businesses for specific keywords. This is the power that the internet gives to smaller companies.
Recently we had a customer, 214 Liquor in Farmington, MO, after 10 years of waiting, decide to get their business found online. As in many cases this was a customer who had planned on having a website for the past 10 years and also understood why Facebook and other social media tools could be valuable but was concerned about how much time it would take to get started.
Here is a quick testimonial about local search and social media from the customer:
After a Localtek Account Manager met with the customer they decided it was time to move based on the continued growth of people searching locally for businesses in Google, Bing, and Yahoo.
Also, with over 500 million users on Facebook it was clear there would be a way to tap into the social networking world to promote their products and specials directly to those who were interested.
The preliminary results have been very exciting for the customer and proves that people are looking for your business and the longer you wait to do local search engine optimization on your web presence the more customers that will be missed.
The customer has received calls from customers who have searched and now found their website searching for the town and products the customer offers. Along with this daily there are several visitors who specifically searched for the business name. The question is before the website was there where did they go? Likely to a directory that provided little to no information on the businesses services and products.
Also, after less than 3 days they have 70+ Facebook fans with that growing everyday. With continued marketing of their website and Facebook page they will continue to grow this very targeted base of customers and interested readers.
People are searching on mobile phones, laptops, and social media sites for your business. Are you being found for all the search keywords your business needs?
Whether you are looking for ways to promote a new small business website or a major web development project it is important to find ways to promote the site, although search engines and targeted PPC advertising help drive traffic it is very important, especially for local small businesses to promote their sites on a day to day basis as their storefront on the Internet.
Too many times I have met with a business owner and they talk about having a website but then talk about how it has never had any traffic. In other words it was a neat thing to have but they never thought of it as a way to connect with customers or promote their business.
Here are a few ways to promote your online presence with offline methods:
Business Cards – Plain and simple, the standard business card is a standard in business. If you do not have your website listed on the business card you are missing one of the most effective ways to promote your site. I have seen this too many times, someone has a website but you look at their card and sure enough it is not there. Having your domain name in your email address is not enough, make it clear where to go to find your business online.
Take Out Menus - If you are a restaurant do not miss the chance to promote your website on your take home menus or even on your table menus. If you are a business in the area of a restaurant that has take home menus ask if you can buy space on their take home menus for your logo and website. It works, people take these home and stick them on their fridge and see it everyday.
T-Shirts - If you happen to have a business where a uniform is used or have had T-shirts printed up for various reasons make sure you stick your website on it, I have seen people have their phone numbers, addresses, hours, basically everything you can think of on it except for their domain name. A large portion of people focus on remembering the website name these days not the phone number. They can get the contact info from the website.
Billboards – Same as above, more people are looking for the website to go to more so than a phone number these days. A person I spoke to just tonight who is a very non-tech person said he even realized today that he realized it is now the FIRST thing he looks for and never pays attention to a phone number any more on a billboard. If you have a website and have bought billboard advertising do not miss the chance to promote your online billboard (website).
Newspaper and Radio Ads – Lets face it print media is dying a slow (but quickly turning to fast) death so why miss the chance to promote your online presence if you are still advertising in print media. You know people are heading online, make sure they know where to find you there. If you are advertising on radio same thing goes, people are tuning out ads more and more on radio, make sure you get in your website name so they know where to find your online presence, they are more likely to remember that than just about anything else that you may say.
Magnets – Want to keep your logo and site name in front of people hand out refrigerator magnets in your place of business. People use these to hold up pictures, menus, etc so it is a constant reminder when they go to the fridge.
Letterhead – Many small businesses still use letterhead to send business letters or promotional letters on a daily basis. Take advantage of this to get your website in front of the customers or partners you are promoting your message to with your offline paper mailings.
Car Stickers -Window stickers are a great way to get a site and logo in front of people, I see these daily and they are very cost effective to get printed up. Why not get your site name in front of everyone while you are running to get groceries are heading out on a sales call.
Banners – This is something I have used personally, I see many small businesses on a day to day basis that have banners in front of their place of business or in targeted highly visible locations in their area. Most are missing this chance to promote the place people can go to find out more about them, their website.
Team Sponsorships – For years one of the ways local businesses have shown their support for a community has been to sponsor a little league team or maybe the all star soccer team in their area. Think of the value you can get if you give more than just your business name on the jersey and instead put your site name. People are watching their children run around the field for hours at a time, why not keep your site name in front of them.
Need help getting your website found? Call Localtek at 800 647 2909
Our customer, Blakes BBQ House, in Desloge, MO has been a great success story. The owner, Tim White, has been in the restaurant business for many years and has much experience in promoting local restaurants.
With the growth in local search and the need for local search optimization Tim understood the importance of making sure his business was found online when people did a local search for his business and talks here of the results:
March 26, 2010, Desloge, MO – LocalTek, LLC, an innovator in local search and advertising solutions for businesses across America, announces plans to aggressively hire more sales staff and web developers to meet the growing needs of their rapidly expanding client list.
Traditional legacy media has come under fire during these difficult economic times with massive layoffs and corporate downsizing. With a consistently shrinking market share, newspapers and other forms of print media are closing their doors and causing their unemployed workers to seek jobs in an increasingly smaller job market. LocalTek aims to hire these former legacy media employees to expand the company’s thriving online presence.
“We feel that people who have experience in selling media would be a terrific asset to our company,” said Bruce Marler, founder of LocalTek. “The unprecedented growth we’ve had has led to an immediate need to add more employees to our line up.”
The surge in local search has grown significantly over the past year and with the current economic downturn many people are looking to their own community for their needs and services. LocalTek has developed a strategic business plan catering to these needs and has provided their clients with websites that have substantially increased local traffic and customers to their client’s business.
LocalTek has discovered an economic solution in its business practice by reaching out to small businesses that were previously untapped by larger marketing companies. By providing cost-effective web development, local search & SEO, social media promotion, and targeted location based services that virtually any business can afford, LocalTek is providing a variety of small businesses the opportunity to compete competitively with the same resources used by large corporations.
LocalTek’s business model has met large success and the company has been featured in international news with its innovative community portal, Missouri.me, which serves over 1,000 communities in Missouri. Missouri.me offers visitors local information about news, businesses, weather, and classifieds in their community.
About LocalTek
LocalTek provides cost effective, locally targeted, online advertising, and website solutions for a variety of business types throughout the United States. LocalTek solutions are targeted at specific geographic areas, which allow businesses to focus on the customers they find most valuable.
Headquartered in Desloge, Missouri, LocalTek is rapidly expanding its service offering in over 20 markets nationwide. For additional information, please visit us at www.localtek.com.
If your small business has noticed a decline in business from the same Yellow Page ad you have been buying for years then you are witnessing the results of the drastic shift of consumers in large and small areas taking advantage of the easy access to information online.
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.
Localtek, LLC, a leading online advertising, local search, and web design company based in the Farmington, MO area has been asked to sit on panels at 3 industry conventions to discuss how businesses can take advantage of the shift to online search.
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.
