Local Business Profit from Local Search

Why do I want to Advertise on the Internet?

I often get business owners asking, “Why should I have my business on the Internet?” There are many reasons but the most important reason is your bottom line. Compared to the cost of Phone Book Advertising, Magazine, TV or Radio Advertising against the cost of having a website. The Return on Investment is mush higher with a website and Internet Advertising.

More and more people are turning to the Internet to find services instead of having bulky phone books. According to JuxtConsult Stats 30.32 million of all Indian citizens use the Internet. JuxtConsult conducted a survey of online users - 33% of Internet users make purchases online. If 67% of your online customers are using the Internet to get information and make purchasing decisions, and 33% are actually making purchases, then you need to be represented on the Internet.

Companies that do well with local search results are service based industries. With people moving into metro areas they need to find new service providers and are turning to the Internet to find and compare services that are available in their new location.

Two Types of Internet Advertising

The first type is paid advertising through a company like Google. Google’s paid advertising is called AdWords and is known as Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising. The concept is simple - you define your best keywords (through keyword research) then bid on the keyword phrase. When someone types in your chosen keyword phrase then your website will come up in the listings for that customer to click on and go to your site. The cost of this type of advertising is industry specific meaning that is varies by industry. Keywords can sell for pennies or well over $50.00 per click. For business targeting the local market it is possible to take a costly keyword like “Web Design” and put a city or area behind it and get a much better price on the keyword.

The second type of Internet advertising is called Organic placement - these are the sites that are listed in the main area of the search results page. The goal is to get placed in the top half of the first page. There are many variables that come into play for the search engine to decide who gets prime placement. It is all based upon relevancy of the phrase typed in by the searcher to the websites listed. Some factors are:

* Keywords in the title of the website
* Keywords in header tags
* Keywords listed in the text of the page
* Keywords in the URL
* Keywords bolded or emphasized on the page
* The Keywords in the text of inbound links
* How many inbound links
* The PageRank of sites that are linking to your site

That is a short list of considerations made by the search algorithms - but all of those items are in control of the owner of the website. They should all be taken into consideration when optimizing your site for organic placement in the search engines. This is called SEO (Search Engine Optimization).