If your business services clients within a tightly defined geographic region, then a global search engine optimisation campaign will be overkill for you.  If you are an osteopath, a restaurant, a shoe shop, or a psychologist (amongst many others), your online marketing needs to take geography into account.

How you approach your online marketing campaign depends on your web site - do you have one?  If so, then your aim should be to promote it - after all, what's the point of investing in a web site if it is practically invisible?  If you don't have a web site, then there are a number of service providers (including the yellow pages ) that can help market your business online without one.

Here's a few tips to help promote your own web site:

1. Content.  There is an over-used expression on the web that says "content is king" and it's true.  If your web site only contains what I call "tombstone" information (name, location, when you were started, etc), then you are wasting your hosting provider's disk space.  You should really try to put as much information as possible on your web site as you never know what might meet the needs of a potential new client's search.  Its not just about quantity, however, each page should be tailored to make sure that it is "on topic" for your business and that it sells.  Think of your web site as a virtual salesperson and not simply as document storage.

2. Location.  If your customers all come from within certain geographical locations - make sure that you reference these on your website.  There's a whole list of things to do to optimise your site for local search, but here's a few quick tips.   

1. You should provide your address on each page.

2. You should add some of the locations to the titles of your web site.  For example, as an SEO company with an office in Portsmouth, we might use the following title: "SEO Company Portsmouth" on one of our pages.

3. Make sure that you add a location / contact page that also contains a map and possibly directions (these directions offer an additional opportunity to plug some local town/landmarks that could be used in a search).

3. Promote.  What you say about yourself on your web site is important but the search engines also place a high level of importance on what other people say about you.  You need to make sure that you are listed in as many local directories and local search engines (e.g. Google Maps, Yell.co.uk, etc) as possible. 

There is also a new breed of site that is creating a lot of opportunity for promotion - social media/review sites.  These are basically directories that provide the opportunity to rate and review businesses and services.  You should spend a bit of time researching the ones that are relevant to your business, but a good general example can be found in TouchLocal.com.

So that's a very brief introduction to the types of activities that you need to consider when promoting your business website locally:

1. Make sure that you have enough content and that the content is relevant to your business (keywords, related topics, etc).

2. Make sure that you actually state where you are located and what areas you service on your site.

3. Promote your site to local engines and social media sites to make sure that you are correctly categorised by business type and geographic location.

If you don't think you have the time - why not let Vertical Leap run the whole process for you.  Our new "Local Leap" service is all about building your online profile with a local business in mind.