Have you ever hired someone for their services and wished you could meet with
them face to face? You call them, and call them, but you end up playing
phone-tag, and email-tag, and yes, even that old Fax-tag? You'd like to set
up an appointment to cover some things about your new ideas, but they are
located in some firm out in Houston, Texas while you're stuck in Rhinoville,
Connecticut?
This situation is happening to more, and more, businesses. The power of the
Internet is showing it's metal. Many businesses, and consumers are learning
that the Internet can be downright convenient. Oh yeah, it makes the world a
much smaller place. Now you can get your boat's motor delivered from Virginia
Beach to Spokane Washington. You'd probably rest assured you got the best
price as well. Having the whole world to price shop is great. Until there's a
problem...
When you have a problem, then the distance is real, and the options are
limited.
I have had clients of mine call and leave messages on voice mail to their
previous "Discount Webmaster" and never get a reply, or wait for days, and
actually suffer some rather unpleasant experiences in solving issues,
especially when the distance is great.
In most cases it would cost a pretty penny, in time alone, to deal with all
the headaches of getting your fair share of whatever arrangements went sour.
Above is a brief description of a problem that encompasses the Internet
World. The solution is simple, really. When a consumer or business man gets
the reality of the long distance problems, they go back to their comfort
zone, back to dealing locally.
Locally is definitely the easiest way to do business. Search engines can help
us do this.
There are several business types that are limited to region and need to be
indexed in the search engines as local businesses. For instance the Car
Insurance Industry, Attorneys or Real Estate Agents. I would personally
rather have my custom printer be local or even my webmaster or marketer.
Being from Connecticut, I would have to type in Connecticut Website Promotion
into a search engine if I wanted to find a local Promoter or Connecticut
Website Design or a local Designer. In a lot of cases the results only lists
one or two relevant sites that are actually local to you. This is because not
enough of us remember to include a localized version of our index when we
submit to the search engines.
Are you properly optimizing submitting your sites to include these localized
variations? If you're not, then you are missing out on these "easily
targeted" markets.
In many cases you wind up being the equivalent to the only hotdog vendor in
the world series.
They are easily targeted because there is little, or no, competition for the
localized keyword phrases. Localizing gets overlooked by almost everybody.
Most people are not even thinking of optimizing their sites to include the
State they live in. Those of us that know the technique, nail that localized
market every time.
More and more people have need for localized services. If you are not taking
the time to create special indexes for your localized listing then you will
surely miss out on business in your local area.
I prefer local clients rather to the long distance ones. Now I'm sure to
specifically target my state and a couple of other ones close by.
There is a great open market for local businesses or local clientele.
Just target it.
About the Author
Richard Bolduc, the webmaster for
The Rhinos Web, a featured speaker and the well known author
of "Front Page, a Webmaster Guide". Guaranteed front page
placement in all the major search engines for under $100.
Results Shown Here. http://www.rhinosweb.com/frontpage.html