"If you're not in the Yellow Pages, you're not in business"

- American - traditional

What you read above is something which used to be wholly true; but things change fast in this sector of ours, especially since the introduction of the World Wide Web. More precisely, things have changed dramatically for small businesses since Google came on the scene in the late 1990s. Local search engine marketing is now a better means of reaching target consumers right in your own yard.

While it is correct that for many companies the net has enabled them to in effect become worldwide companies. Dependent on what your company does, you may now be able to do business with purchasers and vendors in any part of the world, the nature of your company may not lend itself to this enterprize model.

Let's imagine that you're the owner of an automobile car repair shop. It isn't precisely a good candidate for e-commerce; due to this, you could think that creating an internet presence isn't all that important, let alone Local Search Engine Marketing. That is's where you're inaccurate. Let's look at another proverb which is relevant to the modern small business environment :

'If you are not online, you don't exist'

- American, modern

Now of course, any advertising space salesman for your local phone directory will tell you you have got it backwards, but the simple truth is the Yellow Pages are a moribund location for local business marketing. If you've got an web connection in your house or workplace ( and if you're reading this, it's safe to claim that you do ), ask this ' when you want to look up a local business, what do you do? Do you reach for the Yellow Pages and flip- thru it or just type the object of your search into Google, Yahoo! Or MSN?

If you are like most people, including your possible customers you probably employ a search engine instead of a phone book. It's less complicated and certainly quicker to look up local companies this way, including yours ; if your business is using local search engine marketing methods, that is.
a lot of customers have dispensed with the phone book entirely in favor of search engines and younger generations raised online frequently do not use the yellow pages at all! Increasingly, if you are not online where your clients can find you using local search, you may as well not be in business.

82% of North American customers already use search engines for local searches. Translated, this means that the future expansion of your business, if not its very survival rely on being available to consumers where they're ' online . You'll love or loathe the web personally, but as far as your business is concerned it behooves you to be taught how to love local search engine marketing.

It's a fast moving world out there and one thing you can safely foretell for the future is that companies who fail to seat themselves online will also fail to prosper. Let me leave you with this one simple fact : if you're not using local search engine marketing to gain an edge over competitors, you can be certain that they're using it to get an edge over you.