Local Internet Marketing – 5 Tips to Designing a Lead Generating Website

Having a beautifully designed website is a fantastic way to represent your local business’ brand throughout the local internet marketing community, but bold colors, stylish graphics, and interactive design elements will only get your local internet marketing business so far.

As a local internet marketing business, your website is the “home base” of your business throughout the online community, and while it should be eye-catching and professional, the power of online local lead generation lies within your website’s ability to:

• Rank for popular keywords within your local business market in popular search engine results.
• Display valuable content and information to inform visitors about your business and how you can help them.
• Provide a clear Call to Action that encourages website visitors to ‘act quickly’ and allows you to get contact information, such as phone numbers and email addresses, every time.

To ensure your local internet marketing website is an online, lead generating machine that allows you to quickly convert visitors into leads and customers, use the following five strategies.

1. Utilize Social Media Engagement. The goal of social media networking for a local internet marketing business is to engage the target audience in discussion, build quality relationships, and drive followers back to your website. Be sure to utilize FaceBook, Twitter, and LinkedIn at a minimum.
2. Refresh Website Content to Keep it Current. Refresh the body content within the pages of your website on a monthly basis to help boost your search engine rankings. In addition, keep your content fresh with regular, consistent and informative blog posts. We host blogs for our clients to ensure this happens to keep the traffic coming on a consistent and regular basis.
3. Develop a Link Building Strategy. Utilize ‘link bait’ and link building to boost traffic and search engine ranking via article marketing, external blog commenting, etc. on relevant, quality sites. By doing so, you’ll be building your presence throughout the web which keeps sending people back to your sight, because they’re reading your comments and clicking on the links you’ve strategically placed throughout the web.
4. Submit to Online Local Directories. Submit your business’ information to popular online local directories designed for local internet marketing businesses. For example, Google Places, Bing Local, and Yahoo Local are all directories we use as a premium listing for our local business clients.
5. Develop a Strong Keyword Strategy. It’s important to research and understand what keywords are used when searchers are looking for your type of services on the web. We help our clients determine the best keywords to use to optimize their search engine rankings to increase leads and conversions on their websites for continued growth and success.

Websites are typically the “hub” of a local internet marketing business, and though the ‘look and feel’ of the site is extremely important to attract customers, an all-encompassing local lead generating and conversion strategy that includes all the elements described here is important to capture the necessary elements of a successful local marketing web presence.

Chris Marentis

For nearly three decades, Chris Marentis, Founder and CEO of Surefire Social, has been responsible for driving innovation and sales growth for large media and e-commerce brands as well as start-ups. With a long-history of counseling local businesses about their marketing efforts, Marentis provides insight on what it takes for small businesses to succeed and thrive in today’s evolving digital environment. His notable career includes creating the foundational blueprints for online marketing, e-commerce and content branding for AOL’s Interactive Marketing group, where he served as Senior Vice President. While CEO of Clearspring Technologies, Marentis developed one of the most widely adopted venture-backed Web 2.0 technology platforms. Marentis is a frequent speaker at local digital marketing conferences and a contributor to SMB and technology-focused publications.