The following is a post by Tim Biden. Tim runs an SEO firm based in Los Angeles, California.  His contact info is at the end of today’s post – make sure you check out his website and follow him on the Twitter!

So you have a website but you’re not seeing the business roll in like you keep hearing that it should. There could be a number of reasons for that but today we’re simply going to focus on being found by your prospective clients. This part of the equation is simple enough… If they go to Google, Bing, or Yahoo and your website doesn’t come up in the first page of the results, you’re not going to get their business.

Your website is not a farm in the middle of nowhere and the Internet is not the “Field of Dreams”. You need build it, and apply the principles of SEO, before they will come.

With that being said, please allow me to ask you a few questions. Write down the answers on a piece of paper. We’ll be wrapping everything up at the end.

What is your website address?

That is the thing that looks like http://www.localbusiness.com. If there is an @ symbol in it, it’s an email address and not what you’re looking for.

What is your business?

What do you make, sell or provide? Do you sell cow bells to rock drummers? Do you sell shoes to old ladies? You know your business so you know what you do.  Write down 20 things that you sell and who you sell them to. Order them by either how profitable they are or which are the most popular.

How do people describe the products or services you provide?

Do they call them comfort shoes or orthopedic shoes? I don’t give a damn what the real name or technical term is. You aren’t selling your products to professionals in your own industry, you’re selling to the general public and you have to sell to them on their level so start by using the same terms that they use. Write down 20 terms that you hear people use to describe your products and services.

What city or cities do you do business in?

Do you work in St Louis, Los Angeles or somewhere in between? Write down the names of all the areas that your clients come from. If you are a mobile service, write down the areas that you are willing to travel to.

What other businesses in your list of cities have websites?

Do your friends have business websites? Do your kids have their own blogs? Write down any website owner that you can think of that you’re friendly with or if they’re in a similar industry. That will help a bit down the road.

What professional or civic organizations do you belong to?

Again, write them down, each and every one of them. If you don’t belong to any, you’d better join some. We’ll talk about that shortly.

How many links are there coming into your website?

If you’re asking what a link is, don’t worry. Many business owners don’t know and very few know how many links they have coming into their site. So let’s get educated. A link is the picture or text on a web page that you click on to move to another page. You need as many of those links as you can get. They should be coming from other websites and linking to yours. In case you’re wondering why you need links, links are power and currency in the popularity contest that is the Internet. The more incoming links you have, the more important Google thinks you are, therefore the higher they are going to rank you. If you have no links, you’re just like the fat kid in gym class. Got it?

Now that we have the major questions out of the way, let’s put it all together.

1.      Your website address is the address that they need to link to you. Memorize it!

2.      Now look at the list of items that you sell. Pick the 3 most important ones and number them. These are what people search for and what makes you the most money.

3.      Look over the words that people use to describe your products or services and see which ones describe your top 3 items. These are your keywords and you tell people that these are the words that you want them to link to you with. Some people will do it. Others won’t. Don’t worry if they don’t. It’s just an added feather in your cap if they do.

4.      Now for the city or cities that you work in. Those are alternate keywords or additions to your previous list of keywords.

5.      Look at your list of friendly website owners and tell yourself “I am going to call 5 of these people per day and ask them for links from their website to mine”. Then act upon it! Give these people your website address and the keywords that you want them to link to you with.

6.      Find out who the webmasters are for your professional and civic organizations and ask if they will give you a link on their “Members” page.

7.      Keep track of everyone that you ask for a link. You’ll want to check back every month or 2, just to be certain that your links are still there. Some people may want a link back to their site and that is okay. It is better if you get a 1-way link but a reciprocal link is better than none.

With these 7 steps, you are ready to hit the ground running and building links from local businesses. Remember, the Internet is a popularity contest and you want to win it, but you have to do it honestly without buying links. The search engines are smart enough to know when you bought the Prom King/Queen election and they will smack your site back down below where it was before.

Tim Biden is a Los Angeles SEO Professional and the owner of Village Ads. You can follow his nonsensical ramblings on twitter: @villageadsseo.