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Posts Tagged ‘Local Online Marketing’

End of an Era: Yellow Book, Dead?

February 4th, 2010

101 Ways to Use a Phone Book

Last time I flipped through a thick yellow book to find help was over 10 years ago. This was a result of my being new to town and embarrassed about driving around without a muffler. I remember scanning the pages in the automobile section looking for service shops. There was AAA Muffler & Brakes, AAA Muffler Man, Midas, and Tank’s Mufflers ‘N’ Donuts (just kidding about the last one – but can you imagine the combination?).

There must have been 50-plus local services. It was hard to know which one to pick. Beyond the cheap “triple-A” tactics to nudge for first place in service name listings, paying a little extra for bold red font, or a few eye-catching star stamps, I wanted to know about their reputations, prices and wait-times.

Turning the next page I saw quarter-page ads. These shops pay a lot more for their heightened exposure, adding graphics and wordage to attract me. They listed benefits, spelled out guarantees and, on some layouts, pasted Hot Rod cover models holding mufflers in one hand while adjusting stilettos in the other hand.

Times have certainly changed. While yellow books still get regularly tossed on my driveway, they serve different purposes, such as:

A booster seat for my young’ins
An x-treme fly swatter
Last resort toilet paper

I have bookshelves overflowing with editions and I need to pare down. Can spring-cleaning come any sooner?

These days, for mufflers and much more I turn to the Internet and I bet you do too. The Internet has become so much more effective at finding a local business I need.

An article published by David Clarke, an Internet marketing consultant, former Yellow Pages sales rep, and obvious Brit, explores the current challenges small businesses (SMB) face with their marketing plans. Should SMB continue to spend chunks of their budgets on ads in phone directories that modern society may not cracking?

Check it out at: http://www.articlesbase.com/internet-articles/internet-marketing-vs-yellow-pages-529254.html

To learn more about our local online marketing services visit us at boostability.com

–JK

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Posted in Local Online Marketing, Small Business

Local Business Resources

June 25th, 2009

What are some Local Online Marketing resources available for local and small businesses?

Domain? There are easy inexpensive domain registration options available. My favorite is Godaddy. Make sure you don’t buy into any of their other services, just stick with the $10 domain registration. Make sure you register for at least 3 years. This will tell Search Engines that you are in it for the long haul, creating valuable content. Don’t use the private registration either.

Website? For a simple no cost domain, Google Sites is your answer. If you want a little more control that just a web template, try Bluehost. Expect to pay around $7-$10/month.

Email? I currently use and have used Google app mail. For small businesses with less than 100 employees, it is a great solution. Your mail will be unavailable a few times a year, but hey its free and all web based. You don’t need to buy an email client. Make sure you just do the free hosting, don’t pay for the premium service.

Web design/logo? The basic web design will be taken care of through your web hosting company. However you probably need a logo created. For a cheap do it yourself solution, logomaker. It really does give you some nice designs. For a more professional look, the sister website to logomaker is logoworks. Expect to pay about $300 for a few designers to submit their designs. You pick the best one and make changes as needed.

Business cards and letter head paper? The two biggest players are logoworks sister site, MarketSplash and VistaPrint. Do a search on the internet and you will find they offer free business cards. They are both participating in aggressive competition. You as a small business owner can take advantage of that.

Local Advertising? As a local business, the best resources you have are the local resources offered by the big three Search Engines. Google local, Yahoo local and MSN(Bing) local. This will get you the most bang for the buck.

And last but not least, Local Online Marketing? There are many full service companies offering PPC (pay per click) and SEO(search engine optimization). Typically for a local or small business, you don’t need these services. There are also a lot of learn it yourself sites that I am sure you don’t want to spend the time, nor care to learn.

This is where I pitch our company, Boostability for local online marketing. We give you the easy to use tools and resources to effectively run an SEO compaign. We tell you what to do, how to do it and why. No need to pay someone or take a college course to get yourself found on the search engines.

Does anyone else have any other resources that local and small businesses are looking for?

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Posted in Local Online Marketing

Tags: bing local boostability boostability.com google local internet marketing local business resources Local Online Marketing small business resources yahoo local

Are there SEO best practices by Google?

June 22nd, 2009

Local Business trying to do their own Local Online Marketing are asking themselves the same questions. What are SEO best practices? What can I do to improve my Search Engine Visibility on Google?

Although Google doesn’t publish a best practice guide, they do have a resource called “Webmaster tools”. Within the help section there are a few notable sections ( Webmaster tools checklist and Webmaster Guidelines ) and a PDF document called Search Engine Optimization starter guide is available.

Before Google released these resources I think they really frowned upon companies helping other companies rank on their search engine. They viewed it as cheating the system. Granted there are SEO companies that do try to “beat the system”, but there are many that just help companies follow best practices.

Google should really embrace these types of companies, because they are helping search engines become more relevant. I’ve recently read some articles claiming to be discriminated by Google because of what they do. I can’t see why any search engine would do this as long as they are following their rules. Are they unreasonable? Maybe, but they are just trying to keep people from abusing the system.

At Boostability, we try to follow what we think would be Google best practices. What are their best practices? From their published document Webmaster Guidelines. Here is a brief summary.