Good Day Biznik! Copywriter from Portland Oregon

I'm Nanette, a copywriter and Internet marketer here to say hello to everyone. I've mainly worked in online retail and am now moving into non-profits, government, and mental wellness.

Anyone else intrigued by "local search" methods to get websites found? (i.e., online Yellowpages, etc). After all, people look online look for services in their own city. I'm implementing local search into my business with positive results.

5 Bizniks have posted replies

Posted by Susan Tilley, Southern Oregon, Oregon | Aug 14, 2008

Hi Nanette,

Co-incidentally, Dan Sisson just published an article about this. You can see my comments there.

link to article

Welcome to Biznik. I hope you make a lot of friends here.

Susan
Posted by Nanette Jaeger, Portland, Oregon | Aug 14, 2008

Thanks Susan, for the link to Dan Sisson's article. I'll read it for certain.

I hope more businesses "go local" with their website advertising and marketing plans. It seems like a small thing, but including your city name in your search engine optimization and website content will boost you up in the search engines.

Thanks for the welcome!

Nanette
Posted by Jeff Fisher, Portland, Oregon | Aug 15, 2008

Nanette -

Welcome to biznik. Great to have another creative Portlander here.

For me the "go local" aspect of my marketing and promotion does exist - but purposely not at high levels. I've spent about 30 years developing a national and international reputation, with 80-85% of my business coming from outside of the State of Oregon; including some from foreign countries. I like it that way. The saturated local design market is not my primary target when it comes to marketing and promotion efforts.

Jeff Fisher | Jeff Fisher LogoMotives
Posted by Barry Hurd, Seattle, Washington | Aug 15, 2008

"Going Local" for online advertising makes a lot of sense for some models of business. It just depends on what your goals are.

It really depends on if you can increase the prospect range of your business or if you need to stay local. For many "local" businesses, it is actually better to choose a place that has low levels of competition but high levels of demand (a lot of web designers instead fight for high demand, high competition areas) or registering hundreds of local services (I'm registered for a few dozen)

In the end, it is just another way of searching local. Another key to local search is making sure that there are no "local favorites" as far as engines go. Citysearch, Superpages, Yelp, Craigslist, and a variety of others still kick the tar out of Google in some areas.
Posted by Nanette Jaeger, Portland, Oregon | Aug 15, 2008

I'll agree that it depends on your business model. A therapist for example, would benefit mainly from local search. But also major search engines if they offered counseling by phone to anyone in any location, or had products to sell.

After 9 years of worldwide Internet business, I'm happy right now to "get smaller" with business and clients. And also keep worldwide clients too, of course. Kind of reminds me of Steve Martin's comic routine "Let's Get Small" (but I digress....)

Many businesses haven't caught on to the advantages of "going local" with search. Many don't realize that there are searches beyond the worldwide platform of Yahoo and Google.

I wonder if local search will travel the same path as Yahoo and Google......more expensive PPC and inclusion, as there is more competition. It'll be interesting to see what local search companies such as Citysearch etc. are cooking up for the future (and also Yahoo Local). The ROI is good.....for now.....

It won't be enough to differentiate themselves just because they are "local" as more businesses join the searches. Will it evolve in to something more than a competitive and saturated way to advertise, time will tell.

TGIF