If you’re a business in Pittsburgh and your products or services are really just geared to a local market – you’re a plumber or a real estate agent, for example – you may be wondering if you should do a little web marketing. After all, you say to yourself, the Internet reaches people worldwide. You don’t need to find people in New Delhi who need a plumber, you tell yourself. You’re not looking for home buyers hoping to purchase a house in Seattle.

But don’t rule out a web marketing campaign just yet – it can be extremely cost effective to market and advertise online, even if your target market truly is Pittsburgh only.

Because a good search engine optimization (SEO) company can help you craft an Internet campaign that will specifically target a Pittsburgh audience.

How? One simple way is to sprinkle within any keyword rich pages or articles on your site words that are Pittsburgh-focused.

For example, I run a web marketing company in Pittsburgh, PA. I’m targeting businesses within this region who are looking to enhance their business and sales locally. So what do I do, web-wise?

I just did.

In the paragraph above, note the sentence “I run a web marketing company in Pittsburgh, PA.” That sentence is a fine example of localized SEO. Through research I discovered that a great keyword search term – the keywords people use when they search for something in a search engine – is “web marketing.” “Business” also is a good keyword to use. And then I added “Pittsburgh, PA” because businesses here who are looking to go online will more than likely search with the term “web marketing Pittsburgh, PA.” Or “web company Pittsburgh.”

Other keywords to use include ZIP codes, county names, city names, street names. A nifty trick is to add these keywords to the header and/or footer of your pages, rather than just on your home or landing page.

Ask other Pittsburgh business owners of companies not in direct competition with you if they will mention you/provide a link to your site on their site. And you’ll do the same for them. However, if you can get a popular site to give you a link from their site, without having a link to them on your site, all the better. This is called a one-way inbound link and this is stronger than having reciprocal links as I described above. But even a “I’ll link to your page if you link to mine” will help.

You also can launch a pay-per-click campaign for localized keywords. You’ll find that the search engines charge a whole lot less for a local campaign – after all, you don’t everyone to find you. Just everyone in Pittsburgh!

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