Most local small businesses do not come where near reaching their potential audience. It is easier to get customers in your local market than ever before. Here are some tips on how to do it.

Become Your Customers

You will benefit greatly by taking some time and putting yourself in your future customer's position.

Let’s assume that someone is looking for your particular product or service. Go online and look at things from their end.

• How would they find you?
   
• When they type in search terms related to your business, what sites come to the top of the listings?

Once you become aware of the different ways they could potentially find you, then you start working on getting your site in front of them at those spots.

You would also do well to pay attention to your own online habits. Try to learn from yourself as you go along by paying attention to your own searching and surfing habits.

Local Media

The local media is an excellent source for a very targeted market. You should consider advertising your site:

• In the local papers which include your web address
   
• On the local papers web site with an ad(excellent targeted market!)
   
• Local cable advertising. (Some ad spots can be had for as little as $5 during off peak hours in some markets)
   
• Radio

Local Web “Portal” Sites

There are web sites that focus on a particular area or place of interest near you. These are what is known as portal sites.

Many of theses sites will gladly link to you. They are trying to build a list of relevant links so that visitors to their site find them useful. You should make every effort to contact the web site to get yours listed in the appropriate categories.

You can find these sites by going to the search engines to look them up.

For example, let’s say you live near a tourist area called “Sunnybeach, CA”. Search for this in google.com in different variations like “sunnybeach ca” “sunnybeach official site” “guide to sunnybeach”

Don’t underestimate the important of getting a link from these sites! Some of my clients receive extremely good traffic from these portal sites and it is well worth the link.

Search For Yourself

Go into the search engines and search for your own product or service. Pay attention to what sites come up.

If yours is coming up near the top, congratulations!

Odds are, it isn’t however.

Look at the sites that do come up when you search. Is there any opportunities to get in touch with them and have them link to you?

Perhaps they offer services which are slightly different than yours and are not a direct competitor. By contacting them, you can make an arrangement to mention their site or service on yours in return for them doing the same.

Paying For The Traffic

This is powerful and works!

Probably one of the most powerful methods you can use is to open up a pay-per-click account with google.com or overture.com By paying as little as .05 (google) or .10 cents (overture) a visitor you can get your site listed when someone searches for your particular service in their area.

An Example

Let’s say you own a jetski rental shop in Sunnybeach, CA. You can create a pay per click ad which says something like:

Jetski Rentals in Sunnybeach Have fun! We rent jetskis by the hour or day in Sunnybeach http://www.sunnybeachjetski.com

You would then tell the search engines what keyword or phrase that you want to have your site appear for. In this case you might choose:

jetski sunnybeach, jetski rental sunnybeach, rent a jetski in sunnybeach, things to do in sunnybeach

You want to be as specific as possible. Do not just put “jetski rental”. This will have EVERYONE around the world who wants to rent a jetski looking at your ad. Remember, you are paying for everytime someone clicks on your ad. You want it very specific to your area so that you aren’t wasting money.

The top pay per click engines that you would want to get listed on are:

• google.com
• overture.com

Some of the lessers ones that will also drive some traffic to you are:

• findwhat.com
• kanoodle.com
• sprinks.com
• lycos

If you commit yourself to applying these tips to your local business web site, you are sure to see some dramatic changes to the traffic coming to your site.