It's a fact that numerous small businesses have been let down by expensive website designers who have promised the world and created beautiful sites, but with limited functionality. This is because when it comes to finding your website, no-one is going to visit it when it is at position 1065 on Google! Some dubious practices by marketing companies have meant that many small businesses have become "scared" of using the internet to market. This is unfortunate as it is an excellent tool for any local company.

You need to be ranked high, as people are turning to the internet to search for local businesses instead of using Yellow Pages, or directory enquiries as it is cheaper and more convenient. As long as your company is not registering on Google's first few pages, you can rest assured that any higher ranked competition will get your prospects first.

Now I know that you'd like to have these prospects to yourself and through small business search marketing you can. What it boils down to is that you have to make sure that these potential customers find your website first. Your aim should be to get onto the first page of Google for keywords that you think your potential customers would type onto Google to find a business such as yours.

The real secret here is to target local keywords like 'Liverpool locksmith', rather than the more general term 'locksmith', as it will be easier to get onto the first page of Google with various small business internet marketing techniques.

There are a lot of different avenues of internet marketing for small business, so I will only touch on a few basics that I consider essential for you. Most importantly, as described in the previous paragraph, are your keywords. Scatter these through your website, but don't over do it - a 1% - 3% ratio is considered normal. This is called on page search engine optimization and will help search engines pull up your website when people search for these terms.

Next, you will want to ensure that the content on your website is enticing to your customer. You want to make sure that they stay on your website and read about what you can offer them. Always remember that these visitors are not interested in you talking about your business, but rather what your business can do for them. You will also want to have a system in place to capture your visitors' emails so you can contact them in the future. Some kind of incentive will be required like a free informative email course, to get them to sign up. As a result you'll be able to contact your web visitors regularly through email and generate more repeat business - an essential online marketing for small business tip.

Lastly you will want to get as many back links as you can to your website to make sure that you stay on top of the search engines. There are many ways of doing this like writing articles to submitting them to article directories, blogging about your business, writing and distributing press releases, social bookmarking your content, to name a few. This is called off page search engine optimization and should also be a part of your small business internet marketing plan.