The Local Search Engines
Over the past few months I've come to the conclusion that Local Search is key to the success of online strategies for small businesses. Face it, if you own a small business in, let's say, Middletown NY... unless you have a really niche product or service, a large percentage of your customers are coming from a 30 mile radius.
And, as OCEA's clients have surely experienced, it's extremely hard to rank high in "national" searches; search for
pizza and you're going to see Pizza Hut, Domino's, and Papa John's, not
Franco Di Roma of Middletown NY. (To be fair, Franco's restaurant is not just about great pizza - their catering services are phenomenal and I love their veal cutlet dinner).
The point is, local businesses should start learning about
local search. In the next few years, customers are going to be using these local search services a lot more, and like the phone book, you don't want to be left out.
So check out some of these services, see what you can find, and start figuring out how to get your business listed:
Posted by joseph at March 3, 2005 07:43 PM
