I once read an e-book from an internet marketing company that said they created 50 different pages for a local business website.  The idea was to have a targeted page for each town in the coverage area to increase search engine rankings. 

I thought this was a great idea, so I went to work on it immediately.  I mapped out the local towns and created a couple of pages, but soon abandoned the project because it was boring, time-consuming and I was creating ‘hidden pages’ with ‘duplicate content.’ 

But after converting my wife’s property management website to WordPress, I had an alternate strategy.

With WordPress I am able to add a new blog post for each town in our coverage area.  This creates a new page for the search engines to index, with keyword rich URLs.  The content of each post includes zip codes, keywords and links.

This improves our search engine rankings by adding new, relevant content to the site. For smaller, more obscure searches, we are able to dominate the rankings.  If there is a certain area that we want to focus on to get more leads, we can simply write more posts about those particular areas. 

In our case we created Property Management Perspective which is a series of local reports on the towns and neighborhoods in our coverage area.  We give quality insider information on the area and current rental market. 

This strategy can be applied to any type of local business.  The posts should not be hard to write since you already know the area and can give some expert advice.

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Does anyone have time to talk on the phone anymore?  Do your prospects really want to talk to you?  Are you cold calling?  Seriously?

With Facebook and the other million social media sites, your customers have plenty of friends.  They are not looking for someone to get to know, they want someone who is going to get the job done and not waste their time.

The internet has changed the way people buy forever.  The consumer now can do research, compare prices and make purchases online without ever talking to a salesperson.

As a customer, I would prefer not to hear a sales pitch, have an awkward conversation, feel pressured or listen to some slick salesperson trying to close the deal. 

As a small business owner, I would rather communicate by email.  This gives me a chance to edit the conversation, give my full attention, not be surprised or need to rely on thinking on my feet.

When people visit my website and are interested, they fill out the contact form (where only name and email are required fields), which sends an email to my phone so that I can immediately respond.  From there, we will email back and forth a couple of times to work out the details. By the time we actually talk, it is a done deal.

Customers today only want to talk to you after they have made a decision to buy, and only if buying requires that they talk to you.

If your website is visible, with a powerful message and clear call to action, closing the deal is just a matter of getting out of the way and not saying anything stupid.

Once you have a happy customer, then you can sell, up-sell, deepen the relationship and ask for referrals.

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The concept of the referral generation is that as the world gets more connected, referrals will account for almost all of your business.  Businesses that are good at generating referrals will quickly rise to the top, while businesses who are not, will not last long.  Here are five ways to effectively build a referral network in the new economy.

1. Ask -  Yes, it is that simple. This is often overlooked, but if you can ask a satisfied customer if they know of anyone else that would also benefit from your service, you will be way ahead of the game.

2. Email List – Build a quality email list, use a service like AWeber so that you can stay on top of mind with your current customers and give updates on your company’s promotions and news.

3. Affiliate Network – Have a network of affiliates doing your marketing for you.  By paying them a commission for referring sales you can broaden your reach and have your business marketed in ways you would have never thought of.

4. Gifts – The law of reciprocity refers to responding to a positive action with another positive action.  If you are giving to your clients, they will give back to you.

5. Gimmicks – You have to have some type of edge, whether your product or service is the fastest, cheapest, best quality, most convenient, etc.  Be known for what you do.  People love to be able to spread the word that they know someone who can get the job done right.

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For marketing my wife’s local business, I try to take the techniques that major internet marketers use and apply them to a local campaign.  Advertisers such as Amazon use affiliate networks to market their products and broaden their reach. I followed their example and launched an affiliate program to generate more leads to her business.

An affiliate marketer is someone who advertises a product or service in exchange for a commission based on number of sales or leads.  These affiliate links are everywhere on the internet (even in this post). The links can be tracked so the affiliate gets credit for referring a sale or lead.

Since she is in the real estate industry, there are plenty of local professionals that have twitter and facebook accounts, email lists, blogs and websites.  Affiliates can set up their own accounts and get links with a personalized tracking ID. This allows the affiliate to publish the ID on any of their websites.

This was actually pretty easy to set up through has offers. I was able to create an offer where she pays the affiliates for sales they send to her.

This is taking the idea of a local referral network and moving it online. I don’t know of anyone using the affiliate system for a local service business. It is good to be first in the market and provide an easy way for related professionals to make some extra money online.

From an SEO standpoint this also helps your rankings by adding a lot more local relevant links to your site.

You can build your own network at has offers.  Amazingly, it is free unless you go over 250,000 clicks per month.  If you have that many clicks on your offer, I don’t think you will mind paying for it.

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I know what you are thinking, I’m an accountant, not a writer, or I’m a roofer, not an author. But, your future customers are online seeking information and you must be able to deliver it.  In the Information Age, writing on a blog can be the most effective way to market your business.

Blogs are considered to be more trustworthy than static web pages.  They allow your business to provide useful information and news, become an authority in your field, express personality, build communities and keep your website ranking high on search engines.

Blogs are naturally search engine friendly because they are constantly updated with new content.  They also allow you to incorporate lots of your keywords in the titles, posts, categories and tags.  Readers can participate with comments and build a community around your business through email and RSS subscriptions.

Having a blog does not have to seem like an impossible task.  It is actually free and easy to set up and update.

WordPress and Blogger are the most popular.  You can go to these sites and create an account, pick out a template and you are ready to go.  The hosting is free on these sites but you can buy the domain name at a place like www.GoDaddy.com so you do not have wordpress or blogspot in your url.

Your content can come from helpful tips you have learned from your experience.  Observations and opinions on the state of your current industry,  Links to local news stories, company news, promotions, tips, etc.

Most businesses offer services that people could do themselves, if they have the resources and wanted to invest the time required to learn how to do it.  Usually hiring a professional will save time and money.  For my wife’s property management company, the strategy I employ is to give away the information for free, and then when they choose to hire a professional, they call us. Example- a new real estate investor read our blog and learned how to buy investment property and manage it.  He would comment on the blog and email me questions.  He was enjoying managing his property until his job transferred him out of state and he could no longer effectively manage it.  Who do you think he called to manage his property?

One tactic is to have your domain as your business name, but then set up the blogs with keyword phrases and links pointing to your main site.This works well for building relevant links to your main site and long term branding.

Don’t think taking on multiple blogs will take up all of your time.  You can use Windows Live Writer to post to all of your blogs from one spot.  Just make sure you change each article so that none of them have duplicate content ( a negative in search engine rankings).  Include links to your main site in the content of your posts with strong anchor text.

Blogs are a great way to connect with your clients, become an expert in your field and a resource for information.  Blogs are also a great way to network with other bloggers in your industry in order to generate referrals and traffic to your site.

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