I hear this question a lot when people find out I manage a website. I now say…

Not so much any more. Here’s why…

Google, Yahoo, EBay, YouTube, MSN and several other popular web services are jumping on the geo-targeting bandwagon. This means that now is the best time to be a small business and to get started using the web to market your business. Why?

One piece of data gathered by many websites is your Internet address. This address, also called the IP address, is the number issued to your computer by the server owned by the company who provides your dial-up or high-speed Internet connection.

Once the site knows your IP address they have a general idea of your geographic location. Most of the larger web services (like those listed above) have set up their systems to provide you with content that is more “localized” to your region. So in most cases, search engines will transparently serve more links for websites to businesses and organizations that are in your local geographic location.

This means that if you are smart you will make sure that first you have a website. And second, that every website and blog that you have includes your name, business name, physical address, and phone number. Not sure where to start, you don’t have to spend a lot of money or effort? Check out what one marketing guru and popular author recommends here - Seth Godin

Just one other thing…

The iPhone is also launching June 29th of this month so there is yet another opportunity there. Scroll to the bottom of my January 19th 2007 Newsletter for why the iPhone (and all future phones that copy it) will be important to your local business.