CelTrust Blog

Marketing locally

Everyday companies across the country are finding new avenues to advertise. Just a few years ago, we started seeing the evolution of online yellow pages, and the ability to book your ad via email instead of fax. We started to see new services from different hosting companies and local ISPs that allowed companies and personal users to make a simplistic website to get their name out there. Shortly after that, companies like GoDaddy and Yahoo! started offering .com and .net hosting for as low as $9.95/month. All these new avenues offered great expansion efforts for companies of all size. But one dilemma still existed: to be #1, you had to hire a professional designer, programming crew, and entire marketing staff just to make a good image. Still, to this day, big companies are beating out small companies in search rankings.

Things are changing

Nielsen//NetRatings and Webvisible recently released some research showing that Search is the top resource for local information. Approximately 2000 U.S. consumers were randomly selected from the Nielsen//NetRatings MegaPanel to participate in the survey. The breakdown showed that search engine was 74% resource, print yellow pages 65%, internet yellow pages 50%, and traditional newspaper ads were as low as 44%. In the last rankings, consumer review websites only pulled 18% of the weight.

Who is scoring at the top for local searches?

It’s a clear breakdown when this marketing data comes out who will be ranking in the top. Big companies who may have local stores know how to optimize content to appear in the top rankings, and have the added ability to pull out more attractive websites because of budget. So what’s the solution for our local companies? With the internet evolving more and more, do small companies have a chance? Of course they do! New services like Google Local, and basic CelTrust SEO optimization are able to get local companies into the top ranks.

How do small companies get listed

Google local offers a free listing service that allows for local businesses to be featured on the top results for an area in Google search results, and google’s local search. This is great for businesses, because users (like myself) who have either an iPhone, blackberry, palm, or text messaging can get access to the google local results. Even tho this isn’t enough to outbeat a company like bestbuy, it’s certainly the first step to having an inclusion in comparison to olden-day yellow page phone books.

I have a company, can CelTrust Help?

Of course! CelTrust has put together a set of services for local businesses to be able to reach all the different avenues of listing. We can build your website, get you on google, put you over the radio, have the local newspapers list an ad, and make sure you are known around the community (whew, take a breath joe..) To find out more, just visit our services page.

Tags: Amherst, Business Services, CelTrust, Google, Local Search, Lorain, Nielsen//Netratings, Ohio, SEO, Vermillion, Webvisible