Let's face it, a startup isn't blessed with an endless marketing budget to be spent on every web marketing tactic in the book. To be effective in your web marketing, you need to ensure that your marketing budget is being spent in the most effective way possible.

Here's a stealth tactic your team should use that you may have been on the receiving end of yourself...

Through working with a lot of small business clients recently, I've realized that getting ranked "near the map" on Google is a pretty big request most of the time. And in most cases, it's something that I do recommend pursuing for the majority of my small business client's as it's generally not too competitive and also a "free" source of traffic (i.e. you don't pay Google anything).

In future posts, I'll go into local seo strategy in depth, but here's a few quick tips to make your website SEO friendly for local rankings.

I recently saw a presentation by David Heinemeier, one of the creators of the hugely successful BaseCamp Project Management software.

David had some very great points in his presentation about the realities of business and his call to "unlearn your MBA", but one of the simplest concepts stood out to me.

I work with Intuit Merchant Processing to handle the credit card processing for my various businesses. I've usually been very happy with their service, but was concerned today re: how they dealt with a rather simple customer service call.

Before going into this, let me be clear that I'm not concerned regarding a mere $25. Instead, I'm concerned with how Intuit Merchant Processing dealt with this customer service issue. At some point in the near future, I may take my $25 (and $1,000's in merchant processing) somewhere else since they seem to be focused on $25 fees instead of long term customer relationships.

This is what $1,000's in YellowPages online advertising in 2009 gets you.

• $1,000's in Advertising Costs
• 21 Website Visitors
• and ZERO new customers

So many non-techie people don't seem to understand how marketing a website on Google works.

Through my marketing consulting gig, I get asked multiple times per week by clients and could-be clients, "how do you get a website onto Google".

Everyone Loves Funny Explanations
I hope the below cartoonish explanation will help you better understand the big picture of how a website gets on Google's first page.