Many small, local businesses have very limited dollars to budget towards Pay-Per-Click advertising online, but still want their website to show up in the search engines when a potential customer is looking online for the products and services they offer. One of the ways to accomplish this is through the natural listings on the major search engines (Google, Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, Ask).

The natural listings are the free listings (also called "organic listings") and appear on the search engine results along with the sponsored (PPC paid) listing. Of course, everyone who has a web site wants to be there too, especially for the most popular used search terms. To makes matters worse, there are only 10 natural lisitings per page and 80% of those searching never go beyond the first page of the search results. So what can we do to help reach our targeted online audience?

This is where search engine optimization (SEO) along with geographic keyword modifiers can really help. Many web users today are narrowing their search results by adding keyword modifiers to their online searches. This helps them find what they are looking for much faster. For example: rather than just searching for "plumber" do a search for "Milwaukee WI plumber" or "plumbing supplies green bay wi". Adding "geographic keyword modifiers" helps narrow the search to the area you really want to find websites that are most relevant to your specific search. This is how many online users are conducting searches for local businesses today.

The problem becomes most small business websites have done a poor job optimizing their website. Plus, they haven't implemented landing pages designed around the targeted, geographic keyword phrases that are used by many local online consumers. The best thing to do is get with a web design company that can help you define the best local, geographic keyword phrase combinations and than create specialized landing pages based on each phrase with call to actions to help engage the visitors. This doesn't have to cost a fortune to develop these specialized pages and can really help boost your website organic (free) rankings.