Another site almost any local business could get listed in is Yelp. Yelp is recommendation engine. People add their comments and rank various local services. You might even be so bold as to ask your satisfied customers to take a few minutes to add a positive comment and rank your profile on Yelp. For a list of other online directories check out Frank Fuchs's list of local search directories.
Here's another idea for building links. These days many of your customers have blogs of their own. Perhaps some of your better customers would be willing to add a blog post with a few kind words about your company. They may be happy to recommend you this way--especially if you ask them!
Online Search Advertising
Since we wrote about online advertising recently in Online Advertising Redux I won't go into details on how local companies can pursue even more aggressive online marketing. Suffice to say that in the same way that search engine AdWords can be geo-targeted, that is, only displayed when searchers are from the geographic area you assign to your ads, the same holds true for local search ads. As a result, this form of advertising is open for small local businesses to pursue.
Content and Links--simple as that
With every post, every article, every picture and video you create one more opportunity for link building and search engines traffic. The more content, the more opportunity, and the better the impression your site will make on a potential new client.
So, the bread and butter of any internet marketing plan is regularly creating compelling content on your website and building links to the content. What are you waiting for? Go write some compelling content and get it up on your site. When you do let me know, maybe I'll give you a link ;-).
you are very right , all small business needs a website presence. Customers expect to see you on the Internet. Many people (that's customers and potential customers) prefer to search for a company on the Internet rather than search their local Yellow Pages or newspaper. To many, a business that is not on the Internet, for all intents and purposes, simply doesn't exist.