How to Market IT Services on the Internet Locally

Building up a local presence is key to growing your new business. It’s not too difficult to get started in person offline by getting involved in local business groups, community groups, and by using traditional marketing methods. But how to market IT services locally on the Internet can be a little trickier.

Here are three actions that you need to start taking and continue to work on in order to build up your local reputation and presence online.

• Website Content – You need to make sure that the content on your website reflects that you’re a local business. Keep building quality content that has a local flavor and local references. Don’t be spammy about it, but as a local business engaging with your local community, you should find that you have plenty of natural content available!

• Business Pages – Set up your local business pages on Google, Bing, and Facebook. Google and Bing provide you with the opportunity to appear on their map listings as well as through the usual search engine results.
  
  
  

• Online Directories – This is what I love about SEO advice, Google makes a change to its algorithm, and suddenly a vast generalization is made by the masses that online directories should not be used. This is not the case. You should never have listed your website or business in spammy backlinking directories, but you should always get yourself included in the directories that your audience sees in the search results. You can use these handy tools: WhiteSpark or GetListed. Use your judgment to weed out anything that might be spammy!

Those actions alone should be enough to start getting you some attention in the local search results for your area. As is the case with any type of SEO campaign, you’ll need to do these slowly and naturally.

Do you participate in local search marketing? If so, do you have any tips on how to market IT services locally via the Internet? Share what’s worked for you and what hasn’t in the Comments section.  

And to follow-through on the tips introduced in this short article, be sure to download your free copy of the special report on the Top 10 IT Marketing Strategies For Consistently Attracting New Business Clients to Your Small IT Business. 

Creative Commons Image Source: flickr davecito