I live in a fairly small town, about 20,000 people in the city limits. Suffice to say, most of the small businesses in town don’t have a website. Forget search engine marketing, heck some are still on dialup.

But such is life (not) in the big city. If for some odd reason, a local business actually decides that they need a website, they still have no idea the few purchases (domain, hosting & web designer) that they need to make just to get that site up and running. Web hosting is the most foreign of the three to the average business owner.

So today I’m going to help Mister Joe Average out there who’s running a business selling appliance parts or running a local drywall company.

Web Hosting Defined: A service that allows users to post web pages to the Internet. A web host, which is also called hosting service provider (HSP), is a business that provides the technologies and services needed for websites to be viewed on the web.

Basically, web hosting is the virtual real-estate that you lease which you build your website upon. You rent out a portion of a hard drive on a server that is connected to the Internet.

So how do you go about picking out a web host? There are tons of them out there. Some are professionally driven, and some are run by a 15 year old high-schooler. Here are some quick and easy ways to pick out a good host.

Pre-tips Tip: This may be a personal bias, but if you’re planning on marketing your site, I suggest you stay away from Windows-based hosting. The options with Linux servers are much better, and there are plenty of them out there, don’t be at a disadvantage right from the get-go.

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The folks over at Search Engine Guide are going to be hosting a new seminar for small businesses that are wanting to get into search marketing. The event is in mid-April and the early registration is $850. It’s called Small Business Marketing Unleashed.

There will be some good speakers there (not me, but still some good ones) speaking on a nice variety of marketing topics. The seminar looks to be geared towards small businesses who have little/no online marketing but would like to get started in that arena. It also may be a good seminar for those just starting out in SEM/SEO.

Plus, Texas in April? How can you go wrong?

Link: http://unleashed.smallbusinessanswers.com/

Lastly, for those of you already into SEM/SEO - there are some nice sponsorship opportunities as well

Disclaimer: This is not a paid post. I did this on my own free will and am not receiving any compensation for posting this information. Have fun and come back and tell me how it was.

I’ve finally launched a website that has been in my mind for some time now. The site is pretty self-explanatory (I hope) and will hopefully increase my client base.

WhereIsMyBusiness.com

So how will I market a site that’s already got a saturated and very competitive market? Easy. I’ll start local. For those that read my site often, you probably know that I love local SEO. It’s easy to do, and the competition isn’t usually fierce.

In particular, I intend on purchasing two vinyl stickers for my two vehicles. These will simply say something like

Why Can’t I Find Your Business on Google?
WhereIsMyBusiness.com

I think that will get the attention of the right people, and non-business owners will probably ignore it. It’s intriguing enough that the business owners that are currently paying AT&T or Yellow Pages a ton of money will hopefully check it out.

Next, I’ll purchase some postcards (and get a bunch free) with the same or nearly the same slogan. I’ll send them to all the businesses in my town (approximately 700) and see who bites. I’ve already gone down to city hall and purchased a business listing, which lists all businesses registered in my city limits. It cost me $3.20.

I’ll purchase a box at the local UPS store, which will give me a real street address. I can then add that street address to Yahoo Local and a bunch of other sites as well (for free!).

I’ll start (actually, I already have) a link building campaign, adding my URL to directories around the ‘Net. I’ll get my writer buddy to write me up a quick 500 word article that I can post to a few bazillion article websites for backlinks, mostly targeted to the St. Louis area (that’s the largest metropolitan area near my business).

Last, I’ll advertise on some other local community sites. There are a few out there for my town, and I’m sure I can get some of those ads really cheap.

Got some more ideas? I’d love to hear them.

There’s a nice writeup today on Yahoo Finance about Search Engine Reputation Management (SERM). While the article is written primarily for those seeking jobs, it still gives a solid foundation on how to start towards getting rid of those search results you don’t want showing when your name is Googled.

Probably the only thing I’d add to their article is that if you own a business, don’t forget about checking into SERM for your business name and all common misspellings thereof.