Small, local businesses have a new weapon to battle against obscurity. Local internet marketing has opened new opportunities to target potential, qualified customers by city, or even zip code. At this moment, there are many people looking locally for your products or services online. In these tough economic times can you afford not to utilize all resources made available to broaden your customer base? There are many ways to address local internet marketing for your business:

Attract larger traffic volume by optimizing your website. When your potential customers are searching online for local information, they add specific geographic keywords to their searches, like; 'phoenix arizona nurseries' or 'mesa az attorney'. If you depend on local clients or customers, to gain more local traffic you must optimize your website. If you don't, you are giving these local customers away to your competition.

Optimizing your website also includes making sure the content is relevant to your local customers. Your content should match your meta tags and be rich with the best local keywords. Use correct linking to help your site feel more important to the search engines, and in turn they will trust you as a good information resource. This will allow you to be found better in the organic listings - where your local customers are searching you out.

Utilize your local directories. There are numerous local website directories and blog directories devoted to specific cities or regions that you can get found under. Submitting to these indexes can help you increase online visibility to attract your local customers, and can help you build links.

Use the Internet Yellow Pages, Google Local, Yahoo! Local, Windows Live Local Search, and more to boost traffic. These popular sites are used often by consumers looking for local businesses like yours; and can be a crucial part of your local internet marketing solution.

Local internet marketing can be somewhat of an overwhelming task if you are not experienced in this field. Many small businesses choose to hire a company already experienced in local internet marketing. These services can offer solutions to drive customers to your website or phone, give you the tools needed to close sales in your local area and free more time for you to focus on the other needs of your business.

Whether you choose to design your own local internet marketing angle or hire a small business internet marketing professional, the most important thing is that you get it done. During these tight times local internet marketing could be just what your business needs to be successful