One good way to move from traditional ads in the yellow pages over to online
advertising is local online display. We have a firm that specializes in
making this work for small businesses. Also, we have just published an eBook
that acts as a primer on how to get started using display advertising to
market your local business. Download it for free at our blog:
http://www.vantagelocal.com/blog/introducing-our-new-ebook/

Wishing you all the best for a prosperous new year!

Dear m2521447,

To get leads from your website, you will need good SEO and PPC. At voxmetrics
we set that up for free for small businesses. Please contact us if you need
help. There is no catch.

If you have a small budget for online marketing I would recommend leveraging social media sites like Google+, Facebook and Twitter. You absolutely have to lead with your website! It's very easy to set up a WordPress blog and begin publishing content. The key is to focus on quality. What answers are your customers searching for? Covering these topics in your blog can be a great way for potential customers to find you online. I second what Matt said above - build profiles on all of the popular social networking sites and network with people in your industry. Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and Twitter can all be leveraged together to get your message out. The most important thing to remember when it comes to online marketing is that people use the internet for essentially two things: 1) Information and 2) Entertainment. That's boiling it all the way down, but if you become a source of either one of those to your customers you'll be well on your way to success.   This comment was edited to remove a link. Please review our Community Best Practices for more information about how best to participate in our online discussions. Thank you.

Try to write a few valuable articles about your industry and publish them on
the website.

It is depends on your market, target and products/services. Local SEO, Social
Media, PPC, Organic SEO and Of course Great Website with good call actions
and Good Contents, Contents...

Local business can utilize Local Business Listing services such as Google
Places, Yahoo local, bing local, then other sites like Yelp, YP.com, etc..

Also communicate in Linkedin, Here and other your niche forums and start
posting, build relationship..

It takes time and works..but I am sure you will have great ROI..

Are you hosting your own site from a dial up connection? That could be an
issue! If you are paying a host to serve your pages then your internet
connection affects your site about as much as the price of rice in China, not
at all in any way. Location Location Location. Online it is a variable but
has the same effect as a brick and mortar, where can your site be found? SEO
for your keyword matrix may be out of reach due to budgeting and that is OK,
it is 80% of online business but remaining 20% can be millions of dollars
with much less competition. Act like you are shopping for your product or
better yet, get a friend who knows nothing about your product past general
knowledge and set them down at a computer and tell them to. I started an
internet-mobile-SEO-social marketing company on demand as I lost my job
3-28-12, with $1500 in cash and $2500 in bills due. In 8 months I have 6
employees, over 150 clients and we serve 3 countries. We did not do this by
traditional means, we find niches with small pockets of business owners with
unique challenges and find ways to fix them. I do not need 80% or even 99.95%
of the business that is out there. I had to find free ways (at first) to
market to my target and it takes man hours, but there are a million ways to
find customers online. We have done over $200K in business from a weekly ad
on craigslist for example.

First and foremost - You need an online property/website. After checking your
profile, the link to your site no longer works, which means that you have let
it fall off for some reason. I would get that back up and running ASAP.
Hosting should only cost you $6-10/month from a reputable source.

After that, it's about building reputation and authority within your business
niche online. These days this requires a multi-prong effort.

CONTENT - CONTENT - CONTENT
Keep adding good relevant content to your site. This is easily accomplished
with a blog. Post images of your products in use and people having fun at
party installations. Include in the post the city/community that the
installation was used and any positive reviews from customers. Post ideas on
how to use your products, how certain products are perfect for what
occasions, etc. DO NOT start inserting KEYWORDS for the sake on inserting
keywords. Write for your customers.

Setup social media profiles IE. Facebook, Google+, Pinterest, and Twitter,
and maintain these sites. Post links back to YOUR PROPERTY/Website blog posts
and news articles, images of party products that you offer for rental, with a
link back to your site, and general tidbits of fun knowledge that people may
find interesting. Yes, it takes work. It's a perfect job for the person
working the counter waiting on phone calls or people to walk in, etc.

When people turn in equipment after rental, ask them if they would mind
providing a review, written or remind them about your Facebook page, and ask
them to like and share, then to post a review to your wall, etc. Use your
imagination.

DO NOT attempt to use some out-of-box SEO or link creation software. Google
is REALLY cracking down on these types of unnatural link profiles.

DO get active in party planning communities, party planning blogs, etc.
Occasionally drop a link out there when it's relative to the conversation.

RECOMMENDED - Stop paying the yellow pages for a link and profile on their
site/s and possible use those monies to pay a local professional to help you
build your site's reputation and authority online. Don't go for the cheapest
guy, but interview and ask questions about what tactics and services they
will provide to help grow your internet presence. If they start talking and
only talk about link building and have nothing to say about your site
content, social signals coming from social sites, etc. Move on to the next
guy.

I'm not expert on SEO, but I have been reading a lot on the topic. You should
identify some industry key words and make sure that those words appear at
least once on each page of your web site.

I read your profile and see that you are in equipment rental, which is
probably a pretty tough market right now given the economy.

Maybe you could write a letter about your business and why you are running
it. Focus on the expertise that you and your employees have, on great
customer service if that is what you provide or great rates if that is your
thing.

Sign the letter personally and mail it along with a business card or brochure
to local contractors (or your client base if not contractors).

Creat an online survey (http://www.surveymonkey.com/) and ask what kinds of
equipment they would be most likely to rent and at what price, consider using
that feedback to make decisions about what you make available for rental.

That is what I can think of. Best of luck to you!
--Mike
http://mladams.com
http://blog.mladams.com

I wouldn't use software to manipulate the search engines; that goes
specifically against Google and Bing's guidelines. If you don't have the
money to hire an SEO service, I would build social media profiles and connect
with people in your industry in order to build your reputation--just to start
with.