Where do your customers and prospects look for information about a city or area that they're already in or moving to? Where do they look for a list of local businesses, such as yours? Where should you list your site or place its ad? One answer to all these questions may be the many city, county (or parish) and state sites. Almost every North American city of any size today has one or more “city” Web sites. Most of them have business sections that list categories of firms.

City Web Sites

Visit some community sites yourself to get an idea of content and advertising. This page at Google.com provides a comprehensive directory of city sites, organized by state. Check here for city sites in your area. You'll find examples at:

Enid.com

Omaha.com

Bennington.com

Some city sites operated by city governments do not allow commercial advertising or links. However, some chambers of commerce have Web sites, which often do offer links, usually to their members, although often they will allow nonmembers to be included for a price somewhat higher than the low member price.

In cities, local individuals or firms usually operate the community sites to earn a profit. These sites contain categories for different types of businesses, including manufacturing, home and garden, home improvement, retail, wholesalers, distributors, dining, lodging, travel, automotive, shopping, professional services, real estate and others.

Find the Web sites for your city and look for a business category most closely related to real estate if there is no real estate category per se. If specific categories are not shown on the first page, check the site's directory, index, or site map to see if a real estate or home-related section is somewhere inside. Go there. This is where you want your link or ad to appear.

If no real estate section is included in the site for your particular city (or cities), contact the owner or Webmaster of the site and suggest that the site could make more money by offering such a section. Be magnanimous—offer to be the guinea pig, the first business of your type to be located there. Tell the owner that your being there will be an incentive for your peers to follow you, lest you will (they fear) get all their business from people visiting the site.

The community site owners want to earn money from having many firms in the directory, so maybe you can negotiate “top billing” in the new section of the site. Maybe you can be there forever, if you are first, no matter how many other firms sign on later. This is just another example of how a big part of positioning yourself well on the Web has to do with being first.

If the local community-information Web site lacks a real estate or home-related or similar section and the owner does not plan to add one, all is not lost. Ask the owner the best place in the site for your link. The owner may propose something tailor made for you.

If possible, meet the owner in person, so that you can discuss the advantages and importance of adding a directory to the site that is more detailed or specific than the one he has. If he agrees, you may well be the only firm listed in your category for a very long time. Once again, good positioning is at play when you use this tactic.

To find out how to advertise in a given community Web site, look for a link on the site called “advertising,” “how to be listed in this site,” or something similar. That page will give details, an e-mail address, and sometimes a phone number.

County Web Sites

County Web sites that serve your local geographic marketing area are among the most promising of sites in which to have a presence. County Web sites are popping up fast, and well-funded cable and other communications firms operate many of them. In rural areas, entrepreneurs who may even work out of their homes, also operate such sites.

County sites often include individual pages for each city in the county, so consider placing your link or banner on the page for the city or cities you serve most.

County and state sites sometimes tie their local industry and company search functions to a nationwide industry and company search site or a national business exchange site or request for proposal (RFP) site. As such, you should be represented in one or more of these so that people can find you both locally and nationally.

Homebuyers and sellers cannot do business with you or e-mail you until they find your site. Thus, it is worthwhile for you to spend a bit of money advertising online so that your site is there waiting for your target audience members when they show up!

Published: February 4, 2002

Use of this article without permission is a violation of federal copyright laws.

Bill Koelzer is a Web marketing consultant to web-proficient agents nationwide. He is co-author, with Barbara Cox, Ph.D., of the Prentice-Hall books, Internet Marketing in Real Estate and Internet Marketing. Bill is also webmaster of Orange County Real Estate, among the most-awarded known Realtor® sites. Visit his website, Koelzer.com or e-mail him at .