Many small business owners are unaware that it’s possible to ‘get listed locally‘
on Google. They think they are supposed to be ranking for the product
or service they offer, for example, if they sold ice cream machines
they think they are supposed to rank in Google for ice cream machines.

“The Customer is Always Right”

Is that always true?

Small business owners *think* they know
what their ads should look like, many small business owners know their
industry backwards and forwards, they often are no where near as
skilled in advertising or marketing (and those two items are not the
same). Even if a business owner knows a thing or two about advertising
when it comes to internet advertising more often than not they are
mistaken.

If you are a web designer or an internet advertising
salesperson, you have to make a sale, if your client wants their
website to look a certain way, you give them what they want. After all
you are more interested in getting a check from the client than you are
in ensuring the finished product actually puts money in the customers
cash register.

Small business owners *think* they are supposed to
be found in Google under their company name. Some web design firms tell
small business owners that they *are* in Google if they can find their
website by typing in the company name. The reality is the prospective
customers the business owner is seeking are typing in what it is
they’re in need of and the geographic area they’re willing to drive to
in order to get it. Even if a product is shipped, or shipped for free,
the prospective customer is likely to prefer a vendor nearby just in
case they want to return it.

Take a hypothetical scenario. Let’s
say you operate Harry’s Ice Cream Machines, a fictitious vendor of food
service equipment that makes frozen desert. And you not only sell these
but you service them. Now you’re a local company, you do not have the
staff to service merchandise on the other side of the country. So you
need to sell these things locally. Ok, to make it more real, the
manufacturer you get the machines from dropships them and you can’t
afford to cut your margin that much, so you compete locally because if
your customers buy from you they’ll get service that they can’t get
from a dropship arrangement.

Now you get a website built… you
don’t yet know what SEO is, so you do what most everyone else you know
does, you get a “web designer”. This designer builds you a site and
puts in the closest thing he knows to do for keywords. Only problem is
he’s shooting for the wrong target (and probably doesn’t know it). He’s
got you “optimized” for ice cream machines.

Well, let’s just see how hard this is (or isn’t):

Google
the keyword phrase- ice cream machines, it returns 83,700,000 results.
Which means you’re trying to knock off 83,699,999 other webmasters who
have a head start on you!

Now let’s say for the sake of argument, you are offering them in Maryland, Now you’re only going up against 422,000 other pages.

I don’t know about you but I’d rather get in a fight with 400K people than tangle with 83 million… what do you think?

So
let’s continue with our hypothetical frozen dessert making marketer (I
wonder if their really is someone in neighboring Montgomery County
Maryland who sells this… I might get a client inadvertently!)

Search
Google (or Bing, or Yahoo) for “ice cream machines “in Montgomery
County Maryland, Now we only have to do battle with 12,000 other pages.

Moral
of this story: at a minimum target the state you’re doing business in,
better yet, target the county you want to do business in and you will
fare much better.