A quick thought on the yellow pages:  Even a hot-air balloon won’t save them.

I know it’s hard to imagine a world without that big book(s) in your drawer, and I know that sometimes it occasionally still works for finding a local service, like a plumber.  Or a roofer.  Or a jumpy-house for your daughter’s birthday.

Or does it?

Local Search from Google, Yahoo and MSN (now known as Bing for some reason) will replace the yellow pages, because they’ve all gotten better.

Way better.

Better at presenting all the tradesmen in your area, instead of a random few.  Better at displaying all the florists, photographers, estate agents — you name it, it’ll land in Google.

In the past local search has fallen-short because we’re not getting the results we want

. . . so we used to turn to the big yellow book.

But the advertising revenue is too great for the search industry to ignore, so local results are becoming more relevant, more useful, and they have become the search method of choice.

Where is the local-search opportunity for your business?  If you deliver a product or service within a specific regional area you still have time to beat the competition.  How?

1. Build a clear, smart, professional website.

2. Optimize it (ie search engine optimization, or SEO) for specific, local keyword searches.

There are two simple equations to bear in mind.

No Website = No Top 10 in Google = No chance

AND

No SEO = No Top 10 in Google = No Chance

(SEO is what I do for a website to make it show up Top 10 in Google when someone searches for something).

Here’s the big news: As at July 7, 2009, nearly 90% of people used Google to find what they wanted.  Another 5% used MSN (now called Bing) and Yahoo and the littlies got the rest.

How keywords and Google search affect your business income.

Let’s say you have a carpet business, and you’re in the Gold Coast. (There are 105 retail carpet businesses on the Gold Coast as at July 2009).

People searching for anything carpet will use terms like cheap carpet or quality carpet, or discount carpet. They’re called keywords, or key phrases.

NOTE: If you haven’t got a web page landing Top 10 in Google, the people using Google will only see your competition.

And if you haven’t even got a website, you’ve missed out on the lot.

All those searches in Google. All those chances to get new customers.

All that money . . .

Sourced from hitwise.com.au

Just showing up in Google’s “Local Results” is not enough to win the business.

Did you know when someone from let’s say Ashmore, searches for carpet they mostly also type in where they live??They instinctively search for someone near them. So they’ll search for discount carpet runaway bay or carpetlayers ashmore.

So even if someone gets the Gold Coast tag, you can still win by getting something a little closer to home, like best carpet deals nerang

And a one-page website created by your mate’s nephew’s son who’s at Uni is not going differentiate you from the other guys.

Local search is the biggest opportunity for small business on the web.

And THAT ladies and gentlemen is why yellow pages are a thing of the past. They cost too much, they encourage you to pay big money to get tyre kickers, and you can’t change your ad for 12 months. With a website you can change your content almost at will.