Our SEO and Marketing firm is based out of San Francisco’s Inner Sunset District.  Around The Forge ‘HQ’  is a plethora of tasty restaurants (Bistro 9, Park Chow, La Fonda), welcoming bars (Yancy’s Saloon), Dentists, Gyms, Hair Salons, Supplement Shops, Magic Stores  – you name it, the Inner Sunset has it.



Lately, walking around the neighborhood, I’ve seen many local business owners placing ads on buses, billboards, benches, newspapers, and magazines.   On the local TV stations I often find myself watching an infomercial or ‘paid-for’ segment to advertise for a local business.



Most of these local businesses have a web presences to some extent. They also have Yelp reviews that they have almost no control over which often appear higher in the search results than their own website (which they do have control over).



These small businesses need to realize that if they put a small portion of their local advertising budgets into basic SEO for their websites, it would be well worth the while.  Especially in a web-savvy city like San Francisco, where many potential customers are Googling terms like ‘Inner Sunset Bakery’ or ‘San Francisco Magic Store,’ the benefit to the business would be visible and immediate.



Going forward, I’d like to continue to analyze the cost/benefit ratio of traditional forms of ‘real-world’ local advertising vs.  local SEO projects.