Connecting with Local Clients requires more than just adding your site to Google! Many small businesses today struggle with Search Engine technologies and end-up over paying or just adding their site to a search engine blaster which may or may not work as advertised because its difficult to judge these types of services. What we do know is that your next client could be Joe next door searching a search engine for products and services that you offer but will they find you, if so how will they find you. How can we get our services and products to the local consumer using search engines stuffed with millions of businesses from around the world?
First you have to know that adding a site to google is only a small portion of what has to be considered when driving your products and services down to street level. You need to take into consideration things such as; is your sites physical location directed to your physical business address, do you have the best describing keywords included in your sites meta data for each page, do you have a site map for search engines to crawl on, do you have a site map uploaded to google, is your site linked to other sites, was your site easily indexed, etc... These things to consider will give you a basic understanding of what kind of strategies will have to be in place to really take advantage of search engines and the Internet.
To take this a step further do you have all of your websites, blogs, twitters, etc linked together at some point where they are working in concert providing leads and traffic to a central monitoring tool? Are you asking your users to fill out anything or capturing their information in some form? If not you will have a hard time trying to figure out whats working and what doesn't. Not knowing may cause you to over spend into areas of the Internet that deliver no ROI.
These techniques, tools, and ideas will help you drive your business down to the street level but if you don't take the time to identify how you plan to utilize website/search optimizations, market your products/services via websites, capture your clients information, how you plan to service the information captured, and so on then your not going to see much ROI.
The primary take away is we have to start focusing more on a Regional Methodology which will give Joe next door the ability to find you and your services. The old idea of placing a site in a search engine and forgetting about it is over. You have to be prepared with fresh flowing content, review your captured analysis data, and quickly make adjustments to keep up with today's sophisticated users.
I would like to offer you more in-depth methodologies and techniques on setting your sites for capturing local consumers. So, just send me an email and I will be glad to share with you this valuable information.
