Matt McGee, of Small Business SEM, as assembled a guide for small businesses wanting to replace costly yellow pages ads with local search engine marketing:
Just as many small business owners want to stop spending so much money on the yellow pages and move their marketing dollars to the web, I also believe shoppers and information seekers will choose the web over the yellow pages in greater frequency in coming years. With that in mind, I believe local search offers a great opportunity for small businesses (especially) to reach customers on the web. And those of you who take advantage of this opportunity sooner, rather than later, have the best chance to win in the end.
The purpose of this guide is to introduce small business owners to the different Local Search products and marketing opportunities offered by each of thee main search engines. I’ll do my best to keep the material up-to-date, and I invite you to help me stay informed by emailing matt [at] smallbusinesssem.com with any new discoveries or corrections you find appropriate. You can also use that email for questions you may have!
Full article at http://www.smallbusinesssem.com/local-search-marketing-guide/.
Local business now have more opportunities to advertise locally on the Local Internet. There is a tremendous amount more ad inventory available in a form where you can control the visibility down to the zip code level.
While most merchants may never have a need for a website, there is still a great opportunity to advertise on the web. At http://www.merchantcircle.com, most of our advertisers don’t have a website but are still able to advertise on Google, Yahoo, and even MySpace or thier local newspaper’s website.