Why Local Matters

The Internet, to many, is an opportunity for global exposure. So, why focus on local markets? There are several reasons.

• Money that you spend outside your local area or at chain stores, whose headquarters are generally outside your area, is siphoned right out of your community. Every dollar that is spent locally, however, stimulates about 32 cents in additional economic activity in your community. Read more about local economies here.
• Your local area can serve as your niche– if you offer a service with a lot of competition, it’s much easier to differentiate yourself in your local area.
• Your Internet marketing strategy works in connection with word-of-mouth referrals from others who know you– and more often than not, those people live in the same region as you.

So now that I’ve convinced you that local matters, make sure to set up your Google Local listing and to print your location information in your page footer!

Notes from a Handful of SEO Audits – Part 2: Stream your blog posts and tweets to your static home page

This month I’ve been auditing some small, local Brooklyn web sites for searchability, or more accurately, findability. In Part 1 of this article, I touched on a few elements that help a page stand out on the search results page. Here in Part 2, I’ll offer two tricks for keeping some fresh content on the home page of your static web site.

From an SEO perspective, static web sites are at a certain disadvantage compared with blogs. Search engines like to see text, and they like to see that pages are updated periodically. A blog automatically fulfills both of these criteria. The home pages of the static web sites that I looked at were just that — static. And some were almost completely graphic without hardly any text at all.

For those owners of static web sites who also have blogs, there is a quick and almost automatic solution. Create a box on your home page that will automatically display your latest blog post titles with links to your blog posts. You can also include a short excerpt from each blog post if you desire. I employ this tactic on my own static home page. This is relatively easy to accomplish using this Feed to Javascript service.

In the same vein, if you use Twitter, then you can automatically display your most recent tweets on your web site. Go to the Goodies/Widgets section of Twitter to get the code to add a Twitter badge to your home page.

Doing one or both of these will keep your home page fresh with updates and relevant keywords. Best of all, once these are set up, you will be able to see changes to your home page that you generate yourself without any help from your webmaster.

If you have neither a blog nor a Twitter account, then I recommend adding a Twitter account to get started — it’s a much smaller commitment than blogging, and it will still help enliven your static home page.

Free Offer: SEO audit for small Brooklyn businesses

For the month of October, I am offering a free SEO audit to any independently owned small Brooklyn business, entrepreneur, or sole proprietor with an existing web site.

What does this mean? Send me your web site address, and I will provide you with a document that details what you could be doing to drive more traffic to your web site.

You must meet the following criteria:

1. Your business must be based in Brooklyn
2. Your business must have no more than 50 employees
3. Your business must be independently owned and operated

This offer also applies to freelancers and sole proprietors such as artists, acupuncturists, etc. There’s no need to be a bricks and mortar operation in order to qualify. The offer is good October 1 – 31, 2009.