According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) report, display advertising online is increasing. In fact, online advertising in general is improving despite recessionary concerns.

Display advertising is up 34% according to the report. Classified advertising is up 16%. All other statistics don’t look too bad either.

This is a good sign for all of us. It means that online advertising is growing, which means online business must be growing. And I think rising oil prices might have something to do with this. People are driving less. That means they are spending more time online and that means more online business in general. This could very well continue for a good many years down the road. What small business owners - locally as well as global - need to think about doing at this juncture, is learning how to make the most of their online advertising opportunities.

If you are a local business that is trying to optimize your website locally to gain the most traffic from people in your area or because you do a lot of off line business locally and you want to have a website that reaches your local target market, should you put your advertising banners on other websites within your area? Generally, I’d say yes, but that’s not always the case. Some times when you might NOT want to put your banner on other local websites are:

• When the website is your competition
• When the website is out of your niche
• If it serves a different demographic than you serve (for instance, you sell women’s clothes for ladies of size, but another website sells clothes for teen age boys)
• There is nothing to be gained from the added exposure

If you run a local travel website then you probably want to look at every opportunity you can to have your banner on other travel sites within your area. The local chamber of commerce may be a good place to get a banner link. The local visitor’s center and city hall may also be good places for links.

It all starts with the proper research. Is your target market local prospects or visitors from out of town? Whichever is the case, you probably want your banner on other local sites that cater to the same market, but not the other.

Specific keywords may not be as important for a local business as for other businesses, unless the keyword is a geographic place name. If your primary keyword is your local home town, for instance, then you might gain from having a banner link on another website outside of your niche whose primary keyword is the same place name, but if your keyword is “motorcycle sales” and you just happen to be located where you are but do business over long distances then geographical place names won’t matter as much.

When it comes to placing banner ads on other local websites online, you have to weigh the advantages to you and to your target market. Will it pay?

Greg Howlett stepped on some toes with his post about SEO being a dying industry. Of course, he was just repeating what Shoemoney said a day earlier. Nevertheless, I like what Howlett said in this paragraph:

I think, however, that you would be better served by largely forgetting about SEO and focusing instead on building your brand.

That’s essentially what Shoemoney said too. Here’s a sentence buried within the meat of his post:

I don’t think anyone can argue that core SEO has gotten less valuable over the years and I see that trend continuing.

The overarching question is, are they right? And if so, what will this do for local search engine optimization?

Well, I do think that Shoemoney’s observation on SEO declining in value over the years is partially correct. It isn’t that it has declined in value per se, but that it has gotten more difficult to achieve for the average business. It is now more important to hire a professional SEO to help you rank better, but both Shoemoney and Howlett may have a point in that the current trend of hiring an SEO who strictly does technical SEO is going to fall by the wayside. If your SEO is not proficient in branding and marketing strategies then you might as well ditch him for someone who is because that is the future of SEO in general and local SEO in particular.

Branding has always been a core aspect of business marketing, whether we are talking local business or global business. Online, it’s even more important because people do not want to do business with someone they don’t know. You can have the best SEO in the world, but if you can’t built trust with your target market then your business will die. That’s where branding comes in. This principle is no less true if you operate a local business, but with local branding you have the added advantage of being able to draw your customers to your physical location to meet you face to face. Still, you’ll need to rely on branding to make that happen.

The future of local advertising online lies in your ability to create a brand that people will trust. SEO will just be a part of that branding process, though I don’t think that SEO will necessarily die out. It will simply be incorporated into the branding process. I think that’s what Greg Howlett meant with his follow-up post, and I can see the same the trending as well.

I found this to be rather interesting: Off line advertising giant Live Nation is partnering with online pay per click up-and-comer AdBrite to distribute local advertising online. The good news about this arrangement is webmasters no longer have to rely on Google and Yahoo! as revenue sources.

The idea is to advertising music venues through geo-targeting efforts. It makes a lot of sense because concert promoters plan a schedule for bands on tour, scheduling those bands to play in major cities around the world. If they can advertise their concerts through geo-targeted efforts online then they can be very effective in reaching their target market through local websites. Local website owners win because they can earn additional revenue through their websites.

Another encouraging thing about this arrangement is that AdBrite is successful in this endeavor, and I see nor reason why they shouldn’t be, then local advertising opportunities for webmasters who want to expand their PPC offerings could be developed through AdBrite. Currently, AdBrite is somewhat limited, but growing. I’m anxious to see what happens in the future.

Debra Mastaler asked a great question on her blog, Link Spiel:

what’s better at giving us the quick qualifying factor like the PageRank toolbar?

In other words, she wants to know if there is a resource that webmasters can turn to in order to find information on authority - a kind of one-size-fits-all way to determine which sites are the greatest authorities within their niche. Then she recommends Myriad Search.

I hadn’t heard of Myriad Search until I read Link Spiel’s post on it. Then I tried it out. It seems a bit limited, but it does do what it promises to do and deliver results from the four top search engines for a particular key phrase. It looks like a good tool for competitive research.

Just for giggles, I performed a search for “Gettysburg Pennsylvania.” I wanted to try the local angle to see what would happen. You can see the results of that search here.

If I were truly interested in building a website to search the local market of Gettysburg Pennsylvania and wanted to use that place name as my primary keyword then this search for that key phrase is very telling. Here’s what I see:

• The most authoritative site for that key phrase is www.gettysburg.com. Not surprising.
• The most authoritative site for my key phrase is No. 1 on 3 of the top 4 search engines.
• It is also No. 2 on the fourth search engine (Yahoo!).
• The second most authoritative site for the local place name I’m interested in is a government website (the National Park Service) - very important to know that for competitive analysis!
• The Gettysburg Welcome Center’s website is the the third most authoritative site on the local key phrase.
• Also, GWCs website has only half the authority as the No. 1 most authoritative site - great information!
• Coming in below GWC are Gettysburg College, Wikipedia (who’d have thunk?), the local newspaper, and various nonprofits, tourism websites, and local businesses.

Now I know what the competitive landscape is for my key search term. But what if I wanted to compete locally for the key phrase “auto mechanic?”

Well, I tried using my first key phrase along with “auto mechanic,” putting both key phrases in quotes and all I got back was a bunch of useless websites. So let’s try it without the quotes. Here are the results of that search.

I can see who the most authoritative site in Gettysburg for the term “auto mechanic.” It truly is a competitor and I know where he ranks in each of the search engines. It doesn’t look like any of my other competitors are even close. After Mike’s Towing and Recovery, it’s government websites and the Chamber of Commerce of Gettysburg. The next real competitor is an About Us page for Eagle Software, which makes software for auto shops. It looks like I have an in here if I was an auto mechanic in Gettysburg.

So you can see how useful this tool is for doing competitive research at the local level. I hope you get some use of it.

A major staple in the world of local online advertising these days is the 125 x 125 image ad. You see it everywhere, from blogs to websites and there is a good reason this type of ad has gained popularity in the past couple of years.

First of all, if you have a blog, there simply isn´t a lot of space for advertising and the 125 x 125 image ad fits perfectly in the narrower columns.

For local online advertising, there is another advantage to these square ads. They are far more eye-catching than a text link, yet don´t cost much. Some sites don´t even raise the rate for a 125 x 125 ad, it costs the same as a text link. These smaller ads also offer great impact for far less than a big banner ad.

If you are doing local online advertising, it is well worth your while to look at picking up some local 125 x 125 ads.

There are so many options for local online advertising, but often the most effective method is to simply use more than one method for maximum results. One great way to go about local online advertising is to just find local community websites and find out if they offer advertising.

Local community websites have a huge advantage in that they often have a lot of repeat visitors. Most of them will simply charge a per month fee for placing an ad, so there´s no stress about payment or anything like that.

With local online advertising, you will find that community sites are often the best for gaining a large local audience. You will find the prices are usually very reasonable, as well. If a site doesn´t offer an advertising page, contact them and make an offer. The worst that can happen is that you´ll be turned down, but most sites will either accept your deal or will make a counter offer.

Local online advertising is often done on a fairly small budget, but that doesn´t have to be an issue. If you don´t have a lot of cash to spend on local online advertising, you simply need to shop around. Here are a few ways to boosting your advertising without spending a fortune.

• Look for local sites. Contact the local bloggers adn website owners that you find and ask if they would be interested in letting you place an ad.

• Place free ads. There isn´t really any reason not to take people up on free offers! Sites like Craigslist can help you get your advertising off to a good start without spending any money.

• Experiment with sizes. There´s no rule saying that you have to set up a banner ad. In fact, you can and should try different types and sizes of ads to find out which works best for your site.

Local online advertising doesn´t have to cost a fortune and the diversity of trying new methods of marketing can end up being very good for your business in the long run.

Local online advertising isn´t all pay per click and SEO. In fact, you can do quite well by simply advertising on a local website. Depending on the size of your town or city, you´ll have at least a couple of blogs or websites that focus on your area.

By offering to pay for advertising by the month, you can get an ad on these sites or blogs and do some very effective local online advertising. It´s a great way to get started, too, if you aren´t interested in pay per click or anything like that.

Even if the website or blog doesn´t have an advertising page, you can ask them about the possibility of doing a little local online advertising on their site. Some will turn you down, while others will accept your offer and you´ll have a brand new venue. It´s definitely worth a try.

The world in general is showing a definite trend, leaning away from print resources and moving toward online searches. And of all the searches done online, about 25% of those are local searches, meaning that local online advertising is an extremely effective method of reaching people who are looking for what you have. Some other reasons that online advertising is so useful:

• Local searchers are ready to buy. In general, people use broad searches to find out more about a product and look locally when they are interested in buying. That means that local online advertising can be just the thing to bring in more sales.

• People are more likely to buy if they can pick the product up. Human beings like instant gratification, so being able to have the product in their hands the day they decide to buy is a huge plus.

• 46% of internet users have searched for a local store in the past 3 months. People are using the internet to search for locations to buy items in their own towns now and 46% is a pretty decent number!

These are some excellent reasons to try local online advertising if you haven´t yet started. People are very responsive these days to local online advertising and it can be a great way to reach new clients.

When you are planning and researching local online advertising, you´ll see plenty of free offers. These may be ads or blog posts, but they are literally everywhere, offering free local online advertising and hundreds or thousands of leads for absolutely nothing. It can be very tempting to go with one of these spectacular offers, but that is not necessarily a good idea.

You´ve heard the saying, “If it seems too good to be true, it probably is?” Well, that fits right in here. When you see an amazing offer to give you thousands of leads for nothing, you have to wonder what the company is getting out of it. It all depends, but there are plenty of scams out there and you really need to be careful.

Many of these free local online advertising schemes give you nothing more than the information of other suckers who have signed up for free advertising. Others will send you dozens of ads a day once you have signed up and in the end, you get nothing for nothing!

Most of the time, you are far better off just paying the extra amount to get real leads for your local online advertising. That way you can be sure you are getting legit leads that will have far more likelihood of responding to your campaigns.

Everyone knows that local online advertising is the new wave, but did you realize that video has a huge impact on how people respond to you? With Google starting to include videos in their search results, video marketing could become even more useful to local advertisers!

At the moment, it would seem that Google is taking things slowly. According to Search Engine Land, the first few videos have been spotted just recently, despite reports of this back in February.

These were announced back in February but only now appear to have really gone live.

Searches that triggered this result for me included cell phone or smart phones or phones. It seems like BlackBerry and AT&T are testing the new AdWords video ads.

Like other new Google features, we can expect to see this one growing. So, at some point in the near future, local online advertising might be done almost entirely through videos that are actually included in the results as ads. At the moment, it´s mostly the bigger companies that are using this new technology, but it could be a great leap for a small business, too!

Local online advertising is apparently good for business . . . so good, in fact, that national advertisers are starting to break their campaigns down and are advertising locally these days to pick up extra customers. In fact, this technique is so useful that more national advertisers are flocking to the local scene.

What does this mean for the little guys who are just getting started in local online advertising? We can probably expect to see them triumph since most people are going to recognize the national brands fairly easily. While they may gain some extra clients (all odds indicate that this would be the case, or they simply wouldn´t invest in local online advertising!), smaller, local businesses still stand to profit greatly from local online advertising.

Local online advertising works with those who are looking for local places of business and if national advertisers keep jumping in, it´s likely that people will get tired of what they will see as spam and new regulations will have to be made. OR new websites will pop up with only real local businesses being permitted to advertise. Whatever the future of local online advertising, it is a constantly changing world and you need to make your move fast if you want to stay on top!

Local online advertising is a key technique in gaining publicity to your website and business. When it comes down to it, local online advertising could really be the best way for you to draw in new clients and many directories are the ideal place to be doing your local online advertising.

Directories are usually free to get listed and that is just fine. Except that your listing can easily get lost with all the rest of the chaff. In order to make your local online advertising really work, you´ll need to invest a bit of money and get a premium listing.

Boosting your listing by paying a fee is very common and most directories offer this option for local online advertising. You may even be able to choose from several different levels of advertising, which makes it easy to find something that fits your budget.

Premium listings in directories will put you at the top of the list and there may be other features as well. Depending on the directory, you could end up with your ad in a box, or with bold lettering. Some featured listings even include logos or photos of your product. Check out all the options and go with the one that is closest to what you can afford and will give you plenty of publicity.

Local online advertising can get expensive pretty quickly if you aren´t careful. Perhaps one of the best options is to simply look for advertising opportunities on local websites. You will find that any town or city has at least a few smaller websites and these can be excellent places for local online advertising.

Do a few searches on Google and see which websites come up. You can then contact the owners of each website or check their advertising pages and find out how to advertise with them. Most small websites won´t have many offers for local online advertising, so they should be happy to give you some space, or a text link.

Local online advertising via websites in your town is a great way to get fairly economical publicity. These websites will already be locally geared and you know where they appear on the major search engines, so all you have to do is write them. Your ads will be appearing on very targeted websites that people are checking out locally. Don´t forget to include blogs in your search, since there will be even more of these than there are websites.