Internet Marketing For Local Business – Where Do You Start?

I work a lot with local, service based businesses and the more and more people I talk to, the more and more I’m realizing just how mysterious this whole ‘Internet’ thing is.  I’d venture a guess that a large majority of these local, service based business owners definitely know what they Internet is, the certainly know it’s an important thing, but when push comes to shove, they really have no clue how to make it work for their business.

What Keywords Would Someone Use To Find Your Business?

In other words, how can they generate qualified leads online, convert them to customers, and then hopefully build a lasting and profitable relationship, all online through their Internet presence.

Whenever someone asks me what the starting point should be in terms of growing your local business through the Internet, my first answer is always, “you’ve got to do the keyword research” to which they usually reply, “what’s keyword research?”

In a nutshell, keyword research is identifying the words or phrases someone would use to search for your business on the Internet.  So when they go to Google and type in the words they think will bring them the answer to their query, what are the words that will bring them to you?

Just like you need to pick a niche for your services, you should also pick just a handful of keywords and focus on them as you begin your web marketing efforts.

For example, let’s say you run a lawn care or landscaping business. The very first thing you should do is figure out what words someone would type into a search engine if they were looking for your business.

Would it be ‘lawn care’, ‘lawn care service’, or maybe ‘lawn mowing’? And what if they were looking for someone to do lawn fertilization, they’d might search for ‘lawn care fertilization’ or something of the sorts.

The key is to pick 2-3 primary keywords that you’ll focus the majority of your efforts on. This means you’ll want to sprinkle your keywords throughout the content you create for your site, you’ll need to include them in your title tags and meta tags, and you’ll want to create content (articles, videos, blog posts, etc.) that talks about those keywords.

Remember, doing your keyword research up front is like creating the roadmap for where you want to go. If you don’t know where you want to go, you want know what direction to head, and you’ll certainly never know when you get there.

So before you do anything online, spend some time brainstorming the right keywords because it will make everything you do a whole lot more focused and a whole lot more effective.