I gave short presentation recently to a group of about 18 local business people. I asked two questions:
1. “If you need to find the phone number of a business in town that you know, do you grab the yellow pages or do a search on Google?”
2. “If you need to find a plumber/lawyer/Realtor or other kind of business in town, do you grab the yellow pages or search on Google?”
In both cases, 14 or 15 of the 18 people in the room went with Google. What ensued was a conversation about how expensive it is to advertise in the the yellow pages and how ineffective it has become. It wasn’t a positive conversation!
The upshot of it all is that we are now building small websites for companies that want to use their website to replace their yellow pages ads. For around $500 we can build a simple 1-3 page website, optimize it for local searches, and get it listed in Google Maps, Google Places, and Google Local so that people will find your business at the top of Google when they search locally for your kind of business. For less than the cost of a year’s ad in the yellow pages, they have a website that will live on for years.
If you already have a website, getting it listed in Google Maps, Google Places, and Google Local is pretty simple. You should do it right away!
Olin Robie
North Star Internet Marketing
