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Home_Business_and_the_Suburb_Wide_Web
| Home Business and the Suburb Wide Web
Many small and home businesses feel daunted at first by the
global reach of the World Wide Web. They (wrongly) conclude that
the web has little to offer them because they are only serving
the local area.
This mode of thinking is probably costing them the opportunity
of extending their customer base and cutting their advertising
bill.
More and more Australians are using the Web as the first place
they turn to when looking for information about products and
services. This is a rapidly changing trend. A growing minority
of the people who seek information on the Web are also buying
directly from the Web.
The use of the Internet in Australia is growing rapidly. One
measure is the number of Broadband connections which rose from
under 600,000 to over 1.7million in the past eighteen months.
That's more than 2000 new connections every day. Many of them
are household who are only just starting with the Web, but there
are plenty of them. As they become more comfortable with the Web
many will evolve from information seekers to online shoppers.
If you are marketing locally based products or services you can
still use the Web. You can be sure that your competitors will
soon be doing so, if they haven't already started.
To see who is marketing locally with the Web do this search
Williamstown + directory
The plus sign means that bot terms will be present. Of course
put in the name of your own suburb!
For many suburbs you will find some sort of directory or local
portal, maybe even several.
The first and obvious thing to do is to make sure your business
is in that directory. But you can do a bit more as well. Check
out your competitors.
Look out for possible partners for link exchanges.
For example if you have an accommodation business you can swap
links with nearby attractions or restaurants. If you have a
limousine service you could link up with florists or others
serving the wedding industry.
The search engines are starting to introduce technology to
facilitate local searches, but people are starting to do this
already. You can localise your search by using something like
'Williamstown + florists' as your search term. But soon we will
all be using Google like an online Yellow Pages.
About the author:
Darby Higgs is editor of OzArticles which is dedicated to
increasing the use of Australian written content on the
Internet. It does this by encouraging Australian writers,
providing a clearinghouse of articles for republishing on the
web, and by encouraging webmasters and ezine editors to use
Australian articles. See http://www.ozarticles.com
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