Dominating your local market on the search engines is pretty easy. This is because there is not a lot of competition for local search phrases. How many carpenters are there in your town, how many roofers, dentists or what ever?

Optimizing for local search:

If you live in a town or city named “Lowell” and your business is auto repair. I would start by buying the domain name lowellautorepair. You can put your business name on the website, but you want the phrase lowell auto repair all over your web page.

Now all you need is a few links from other site with the anchor text lowell auto repair that lead to your website and you will be number one for that phrase. Some times with in a week.

Now sign up for Google Maps, Yahoo Local, and Bing Local directories. Most websites that rank number one for a phrase on the main search engines will also be number one in the directory listings like; Google Maps, now also called Google Places.

So how do you get the links to your web site?

Write an article like this one about your topic and submit it with a link.

You will notice In the bio box below I have a link included with this article. What ever this link says is what I am trying to rank number one for.

Once you rank well for your main phrase start going after your surrounding towns, and try different combination’s, like auto mechanic in Lowell or auto repair in Lowell. If you change even one character, you have changes the phrase. Adding plural keywords is always a safe bet.

Now you will own two spots on top of Google, there is on more area on the SERPS (search engine results pages) you could show up. The more real estate you own on the top of a search engine, the less you competition can compete with you. This third place is called sponsored listings or Pay Per Click.

Google’s program is called Adwords, setting up an account is free but you have to pay them each time someone clicks one of these ads. You actually bid, like in an auction. The person who bids the most for a keyword usually will be placed the highest on the page. I have to say usually because there are other factors, but these are beyond the scope of this article.

You will need to utilize every possible and available place on the Search Engines to compete in todays market place.

Keep attaining back links, because your competition will learn what you now know before to long, but by then, you should be way out in front.

This is pretty much the how and the why of online advertising, it is pretty simple if fallowed to the letter. If you need a cheap website that looks professional I recommend just using WordPress or Blogger.

WordPress has a ton of options for search engine optimization and marketing a business. They also have shopping cart solutions, as well as contact form plug ins.

Author Bio: Mike Kern President and CEO of Inform Local an Online Advertising and Marketing Consultant the specializes in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising. Call or Visit us at: SEO Massachusetts

Category: Marketing
Keywords: online advertising,business marketing,internet advertising,small business advertising,small business