One of the best places to advertise your local business online is with Yellowpages.com. Since most people go online to find local services then drive to make their purchase, or call, it is entirely logical to expect the reputation of the Yellow Pages to migrate online. More and more people every day are going online to find what they need locally. It just makes good business sense to advertise online.

The Yellow Pages is a staple of American business. That’s why people are using it - even on the Internet. And you should too.

With Yellowpages.com, you can advertise your business to local residents and they can call you or visit you based on your online ad. With your ad you can include the products and services you offer, the hours you are open, payment methods you accept, and other pertinent information. There’s no reason not to advertise in the Yellow Pages online.

If you aren’t aware of the various local online advertising strategies available to you, let me remind you. There isn’t just one strategy and you’d do yourself and your business well to keep all the strategies in mind when planning your online marketing. Some of these strategies might prove more beneficial for certain businesses than others while other strategies will work better for another business. Online advertising is largely a test and retest exercise. If one thing doesn’t work, try something else. Here is a list of local online advertising strategies you should consider for your business:

• Articles
• Blog
• Forum posts
• Directory listings
• SEO
• Search engine marketing
• Local mobile marketing
• E-mail newsletter

There are other avenues of marketing your local business online, but these are the basic strategies. Does it matter which one you do first, or last?

The Order Of Your Local Online Advertising Strategy
For the most part, the order of your marketing strategies is as individual as your business. What works for one business may not work for another. But I do have a suggested order that should work for most local businesses and I think the following order is pretty sound. Some modifications for each business might be in order. This, however, is only a recommendation:

• Before you do anything, you should optimize your website for the best search engine performance
• Right away, you should start marketing your website with articles
• You should also start your blog as soon as possible
• Place an opt-in form on your website and your blog immmediately, but don’t start your newsletter until you have enough subscribers to justify the time and expense it takes to produce it
• Meanwhile, send out periodic e-mail marketing messages with coupons and specials that you offer
• List your website in as many directories as you can find that are appropriate for your business
• List your blog in directories
• Start your search engine marketing campaign
• Begin visiting forums and building contacts through the forums and bulletin boards
• After measuring the results of the above and doing some tweaking for better performance, go ahead and kick off your local mobile marketing initiative

Again, this is simply a generic recommendation. Some of the order here might change based on your individual business and specific niche, but I’d say this is a pretty safe order for most local businesses when they start advertising online.

Superpages has a great feature that I like. There is an online shopping feature that allows users to enter a product that they are looking for and a page will pop up that shows them where they can get that product - both locally and online.

Shoppers can shop according to category or by the search box on the shopping page. Categories that you can shop under at Superpages include:

• Cars
• Health and Beauty
• Clothing
• Home and Garden
• Musical Instruments
• Office Products
• Jewelry
• Computers
• Electronics
• Kids and Family
• Sports Memorabilia
• Flowers and Gifts
• Events
• Media
• Video Games

Each categor of course has subcategories as well. There’s a column that shows results for eBay as well as another column just for Superpages results. Then there is a review column that allows users to do research on the product they are looking for. And a really cool feature that I like is the user can hide any one of the columns. So if you aren’t interested in seeing what’s on eBay, just hide it.

If you click on the Superpages column then Superpages will bring up a list of merchants that carry the product you are looking for. At the top of the page there are three tabs:

• Yellow Pages
• Shopping
• Web Results

If you click on Web Results you can enter your zip code or city and state into a search box and bring up local places that carry your item or advertise it online. If you advertise your local business on Superpages, do you think your business will show when people make a local search there? I’m betting it will.

Pay per click has become one of the best advertising vehicles on the Web. Local pay per click will prove to be even better.

When you set up your local pay per click campaign, be sure to take a real close look at where your ads appear. There are two ways to set up your pay per click advertising campaigns when you use the most popular pay per click system online - Google AdWords. You can set it up so that your ads appear only on SERPs related to your keywords or you can use the content network.

If you use the pay per click content network, take a good look at where your ads appear. Your success could very well depend on that. If you have a daily budget of $5 and you exhaust that budget with ads that appear on websites not likely to send you traffic then you will just be wasting your money. You can tell Google not to place your ads on certain websites. Give this some thought and make sure that you tweak your content network settings often to keep your ads rotating most effectively.

Local mobile marketing has a lot of potential. One of the latest and greatest online marketing tools is something called pay per call. Like PPC (pay per click), pay per call allows advertisers to place an ad on a website and pay only when a user clicks the ad to make a phone call.

Obviously, we’re talking about mobile marketing (have you ever seen anyone log online from a land line and be able to call using their dial up?).

Today’s mobile phones come with browsers and users can log onto the internet and do a great many things that they can do on a laptop or PC. One of the many unique features of mobile browsing, however, is that the mobile user can click and link and a phone call will be made automatically using Internet-based technologies. This is the advent of a growing new segment called pay per call.

If you are interested in pay per call options, here is a list of online advertising companies that offer pay per call services:

• Superpages (www.superpages.com)
• Ingenio (www.ingenio.com)
• Perfect Storm Media (www.perfectstormmedia.com)
• U Pay Per Call (www.upaypercall.com)

There are likely more pay per call companies out there and you can find them just by typing in “pay per call” or “pay per call service” in any search engine.

There are more than one way to advertise your local business online. You can submit to directories, submit to Google and Yahoo Local, and of course you can’t forget local search engine optimization. There is also a growing new trend in local mobile marketing. One of the more powerful ways to advertise your business online is through the Yellow Pages sites like Citysearch and Superpages.

But there is one other way to promote your business online and it’s a way that many local business owners don’t consider right off, but it is very effective if you do it the right way. I’m talking about pay-per-click.

Yes, pay-per-click can be used for local online advertising. It can be used to drive traffic to your website and to qualify your prospects. Pay-per-click, of course, is not your only option, but it is an option worth considering and you should give it serious consideration. To learn more about pay-per-click advertising and how you can make it work for your local business, head on over to Brick Marketing for a free custom quote.

Citysearch is more than just a directory. It’s a great place to advertise your business and they have a lot of different advertising options for a business just like yours. The display advertising options are plentiful. Besides setting up a business profile, which looks a lot like a professional recommendation, you can also purchase featured listings, create special offers, display what are called “edge ads,” and you can geotarget your advertising too.

The edge ads on Citysearch will display on profile pages related to your business, which means you can appear side by side next to your competition on their profile pages. How cool is that?

This is an age-old proven tactic in advertising. Put your ad right next to your competition’s ad and if you do a better job of attracting attention then you will get the response before they will. I use the strategy all the time and it works. You can do it on Citysearch in addition to your profile. That’s the beauty of Citysearch. Now what are you waiting for?

One very important part of Yahoo!, the search portal, is its news vertical search feature. Don’t confuse Yahoo! News with Yahoo! Local. They’re two different things. But when you think about promoting your local business through Yahoo!, you should also think about how you can keep your name in the local news. The reason is very simple.

Yahoo! News has a local news search feature that is in beta right now. If you go to the Yahoo! home page, you should see, right in the center of the page above the fold, a box with some headlines in it and four tabs above them. The tabs read “In The News,” “World,” “Local,” and “Finance.” Click on the Local tab.

You should see some local news headlines now. If not, you’ll have to enter a local zip code or city and state so that you can read your local news. But that’s another post. Right now I’d like you to imagine your business mentioned in one of those headlines. Can you see it?

That is possible. Click on the city and state name on that local tab. It should take you to a page where you can see the specific news sources those headlines are taken from. If you can get your news published in those publications - and some of them are likely radio and television stations - then you could end up on Yahoo! News. When people your city search for the local headlines on Yahoo! and see your business in the news then they’ll be able to read all about the latest thing you have going in your business. It’s a powerful tool and you can make it happen just by building a relationship with the local media in your home town.

(Source) The age of the door-to-door salesperson has returned. This one isn’t bearing cosmetics or kitchen knives, however, but online advertising instead.

Why try new methods of advertising when the old methods work just fine?

I think this is a great business model for local small businesses. If you sell local advertising online then send a sales rep out to call on businesses - or consumers - to purchase ads. Even telemarketing could be a viable way to get new business. You won’t have to pay today’s exorbitant gas prices.

If you can’t devote the man hours to sending someone outside the store to sell your advertising, services like ReachLocal can do it for you. You pay them a commission and they sell your advertising. Whatever it takes, that’s the motto, whatever it takes to make your business work. Even while running your brick and mortar business, you can turn an Internet income by selling ads online to local businesses in your area. Sign me up!

Ring-To-Number looks like an interesting service:

Bear in mind that I haven’t used the service. It’s fairly new. But it does look like it might have some useful application for local businesses.

There are two service levels. One is free and the other costs $4.99 per month. I’m not sure why they’ve priced it that way, but it’s interesting.

If you do business over long distance or think you might attract customers from outside your local area then you can use the free service. You get an anonymous phone number to place on your website and site visitors can call you at any phone number you specify. It’s essentially a phone transfer service utilizing Internet technology.

The second level of service is the paid one. You get a local phone number. I’m not sure why this one costs $5 and the other one is free. It seems like it would be the other way around. Nevertheless, that’s the way it’s priced. If you want a local anonymous phone number then you can have people in your local area call your anonymous number and ring to you anywhere. This looks like a great service to maintain your privacy.

I can see at least one practical use for this technology beyond the blindingly obvious. If you want to test your Internet marketing campaigns then you can set up more than one number - one for each website or online ad. You can promote one product or service in two different ways, assign each one of them an anonymous number and see how many people call based on those two ads. It’s the old-fashioned split-testing model.

Ring-To-Number has a pretty good list of FAQs, but the one I didn’t see was, “Can I have more than one number?” If this is a service you might be interested in then feel free to send them a message and ask.

Does your local community have a business directory? Many communities do and if you live in such a community then you should seriously consider listing your company or small business in that local business directory. Here’s why:

If the local business directory website is optimized correctly then the mere mention of place names in your local community will make that website rise to the top of the search engine rankings. That means any time someone looks for a business in your area then they will find the directory. Chances are, if someone is looking for your type of business in your area then they will find the directory as well, and if your business is listed in that business directory, guess who searchers will find? That’s right, they will find you.

But I wouldn’t list only in the local business directory. You should also list your business at Google Local, Yahoo! Local, and in several Yellow Pages type websites. But you should start locally.

Matt McGee at Small Business SEM had an interesting post on the challenges of local search for small businesses. In essence, he said the problem is more than SEO. The issue is really geo-targeting. And I’d like to add that it isn’t all on the shoulders of the small business owner. A part of the solution to the problem will have to come from the way the search engines program their algorithms for local search.

In the past, it has been suggested that zip codes be used, but Brick Marketing’s sister blog at Search Engine Optimization Journal this morning gave an interesting analysis on the difficulties of zip code searches for urban businesses and rural businesses. These challenges cannot be denied.

The question is, how can rural businesses ensure they end up in the search engine results page for the keywords they want to target? It’s a good question. Here are a few suggestions:

• Make sure each page of your website targets a specific keyword phrase AND a local geographic area
• Be as specific as possible in your geographic place names
• Try to use the geographic terms that are used by the people in your area
• Don’t be afraid to use other nearby geographic locations and well-known landmarks in your area
• Put your address and phone number in the footer, header, or somewhere on every page of your website

To elaborate a little on No. 3 above, if your business faces a creek that is named Cripple Creek, but that particular section of the creek right in front of your business is better known by the local people in your area as Crip Neck Hollow then be sure to use the phrase “Crip Neck Hollow” often on your website. You might describe the location of your business, for instance, as “facing Cripple Creek at Crip Neck Hollow,” or use a general description like “two miles east of Crip Neck Hollow.” These kinds of phrases are phrases that people might use when searching for businesses in your area.

Now for the danger in this approach: You could pigeon hole yourself if you get too specific. Be sure to include as many place names on your website within your service area. If you serve an area that is 20 miles in radius and there are about 50 small towns in that area then have a “service area” page on your website and list every one of those towns on that page. You might even have specific web pages to address the unique needs of people living in each of those areas.

(Source) Most of the online advertising growth will be in video and local search. They say these will drove 30 percent growth in internet ad expenditures in 2007 – which is nine times faster than the rest of the ad market.

These are not surprising statistics. Internet marketing professionals have been saying for some time that video and local search will be the two fastest growing segments of Internet marketing. It’s almost a no-brainer.

Since it is so easy and inexpensive these days to make your own video and upload it to your website, video marketing will grow - and it will get better. Local marketing, of course, will grow because, well, because all marketing is local. It just makes sense. And you can’t deny that people are still somewhat leery of Internet purchasing, but they still love doing research online. The Internet is a research medium. So when people get ready to buy they just go online, do some research, find the product they want, and drive to a local merchant to make the purchase. No matter how you try to entice them to buy online, most people won’t do it. Therefore, local search marketing and advertising is a fast growing segment of Internet marketing.

Since that is true, the most important thing you can do for your local small business website is to optimize it for local search. It is an absolutely essential task for local businesses wanting a piece of the local market share. Why fight it?

Local retailers who want to increase their customer bases are beginning to look to local mobile marketing. Supposedly, it’s the next big thing in local online marketing.

There are reasons to believe that local mobile marketing will get BIG. It believe it will be a huge business, if for no other reason, because it allows consumers to find a business while in their cars and drive directly to it while on the road. This will be a major time saver. How many times have you been on the road, wanted to go somewhere and couldn’t remember its location so you went home to look it up in the phone book before heading over? Plus, as GPS systems get more popular, allowing drivers to chart courses while in their cars, there are some great opportunities to mix technologies and allow drivers to search for retail businesses by keywords then find them on the map while in their cars.

Obvious safety issues aside, I think there is a market for this technology, which means companies have already begun advertising. Soon, you’ll be getting advertising messages on your cell phone - if you haven’t already. Just be sure to pull over and park before you do any searching, or shopping.

Looking for a great way to get some free publicity in your community? Google Maps has the way. It’s called International Cleanup Weekend.

For the first time in history, local businesses can go international and stay local at the same time. The dates are October 13 and 14. All you do is find a park, roadside, beach, historical landmark, or other natural landscape in your area and volunteer to clean that area. You can sign up at Google Maps.

Why would you do this? Besides being a good citizen, you can get some free publicity. Just like those adopt-a-highway programs (you know, with the big blue signs), this is an opportunity for you to sponsor a clean up in your area using your business name as a sponsor. You can recruit other people in your area to help you and use it as a networking opportunity.