To see who is marketing locally with Web do this search

Williamstown + directory

The plus sign means that bot terms will be present. Of course put in 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 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.

For foreseeable future search engines will be using text as means of analysing what web pages are about. Having appropriate text based content is most powerful on-page way that webmasters can attract visitors to a page.

The quickest way to increase text content of a site is to use web articles, either as pages on site, or as content for ezines. This is especially true for small and home-based businesses who wish to enhance their visibility on web.

From search engine point of view, having more keyword-rich on your site is a big plus.

But don't forget you have human readers as well. If you fill your site with irrelevant rubbish then bang goes your credibility, and any chance you have had of making a sale or otherwise engaging your reader. You need well written and informative content.

There are huge numbers of free articles on web, but very few have an Australian voice.

The web is a huge competitive marketplace. You need every edge you can get. Using Australian-written material to market to Australian consumers could just make difference between success and failure.