Get online. Get found. Get results!

This post is by Mark Adams, director of Verizon's small business marketing team.

We want to extend our sincere thanks to Gary Kaber, product specialist at Intuit, for leading an information-packed webinar, “Get the Internet Presence Your Business Needs.” Gary’s valuable insights are too numerous to include here, so please check out the webinar recording to learn from this online master who knows how to get traffic to your website.

Gary shared that 92% of Internet users research products or services online. Also, 82% of users search specifically for local businesses. If you’re a small business owner, you need a website. It truly is the 21^st century business card.

According to Gary, best practices for managing your site include:

Keeping content fresh and relevant
Displaying contact information on each page
Securing an intuitive, descriptive domain name
Updating the site content roughly twice per month
Keeping the site simple for ease of use

Verizon Websites powered by Intuit offers a variety of customizable templates, click-and-drag functionality for quick and easy set up, and an extensive library of free images to add color and flavor to your site. What’s best about a do-it-yourself website is that you are in control – able to change and update your website when it needs to be done… for instance update daily or weekly specials or seasonal ones.

Whether you have a website or not, Gary explains in detail the importance of getting your business listed as well as numerous tactics for improving your ranking in search results for sites like Google Maps, the online Yellow Pages, Bing, and Yahoo! Local.

Intuit Weblistings is a monthly service available to any business for getting listed on more than 120 major search engines. Simply fill out a form with your company’s information, a photo (is best!), contact details, and relevant keywords – updating the form as often as you like – and Intuit Weblistings will update these popular search engines once per month.

Now through November 3, you can sign up for the Gold or Platinum website plans from Verizon at 50% off! Take a look at the many solutions Verizon has for your business at www.Verizon.com/HighSpeedforBiz or call 1-888-743-0166 to get started today.

If you found this post helpful, check out this guest post on how to capture sales with local online marketing. While the book promotion is over, the tips are still invaluable (go to http://bit.ly/PZm05l)!