No matter what the size of your business, how many employees you have, or how small your town is, if you ever need people to walk in your front door… you need to be found online.

Marketing master, John Jantsch (he of Duct Tape Marketing fame), wrote a great article for American Express Open Forum called 5 Ways To Get Found Online in Your Town where he lays out some easy-to-implement suggestions for small businesses looking to be easy to find.

I’ll let you read the article for all of the details. In typical Jantsch style, they are easy to understand and simple to start. I admire Jantsch’s way of breaking things down in the marketing process to make it less intimidating. Have I convinced you, yet, to buy (affiliate link) The Referral Engine: Teaching Your Business to Market Itself? I LOVE that book.

His suggestions:

• Optimize your webpage for local
• Optimize local search profiles (ie Google Places)
• Get proactive in ratings and reviews
• Get listings and mentions
• Spread the local social love

There is one suggestion I’d like to draw your attention to: Optimize your web page for local

Businesses with a store-front location should make sure that every page of your website includes your address (in the footer, at least) so that your address gets strongly associated with your business in Google.

It will also be helpful if you can get a local blogger to write about your business. Why not trade? You write about her business and she writes about yours.

**Secret Google Places Tip

Adding your business to Google Places is so important these days. You need people to be able to find you easily and you know that they are going to use maps.google.ca to look you up. Google _may_ automatically add you to their map but it is best to use the Google Places method to make sure that your details are right: correct street address and unit number, proper open and closing times and a good description of what you do.

John Jantsch’s Tip:

When you create your profile you can add up to five categories of business. The first must match a suggested one on Google’s list, but you get add four more as you like. So, instead of “plumbing contractor” use “your city name plumbing contractor” and do that three more times for other terms with local add on and watch what happens to the listing in Google Local.