Just because you’ve decided to market your business online doesn’t necessarily mean you intend for it to turn into a global business empire. For many small businesses it simply wouldn’t be possible anyway. Somehow I can’t imagine my gardener travelling over to the States to cut some fellow’s lawn.

Yet I’m seeing more and more ‘offline consultants’ offering ridiculous services such as domination of the global search results! Why on earth would you want to be first in the search results for someone in America if you only offer your services here in Shotton? (note that Shotton is where I live, but you can just insert the name of your home town instead).

Of course, as usual, the ploy is to trick unsuspecting business owners, (who aren’t too savvy about how the Internet operates), into parting with more of their cash. It sounds great to think that your website could be topping the list of results whenever anyone typed in a particular search phrase related to your business.

But, (aside from the fact it’s very probably not going to happen),why show up for customers you can’t service? When your website shows up for a particular query the search engines take notice of a couple of things:

1. How many people actually click through to your site when it shows up.
2. How many people click through and leave immediately.

The search engines then use this information to decide whether to continue showing your website for that particular query. Now it’s fine for them to not show it in a country where you aren’t operating, but what happens when they also decide not to show it in the country you are servicing?

Just because you’re operating in a global marketplace does not mean you have to compete globally. In fact, Google is trying her hardest to make sure local businesses stay local.

Google Places

Forget paying for advertising on sites such as Yell.com. You can have your own listing on Google Places, totally free of charge.

If anyone in your area searches for your type of business, you’ll show up, right on the map, along with details of your business such as name, phone number, opening hours, etc. You can even include special offers and update them as and when needed.

One of the things which makes Google Places such a good fit for small, local businesses is that you can be listed even without having a website for your business. So there is zero cost to advertising your local business online.