I had a call from an owner of a dry cleaning business who wanted to increase his business. He offers dry cleaning and laundering that includes a pick up and delivery service for the local area. He is well established and but he does have competition. He has a small website that is ranked #1 for the major search terms.

I told him I would come up with some ideas. We set a time to discuss my recommendations. So what did I recommend?

Blog: Add a blog to his current website. Blogs work differently than websites. They actively broadcast their content. Adding a blog to the website will regularly add keyword rich content to the website. We needed to choose topics that would interest prospective clients.

Keyword research showed that people regularly search for ways of removing specific stains from specific garments. The shop owner confirmed that customers regularly asked these types of questions. We decided to use these questions as ideas for writing blog posts. We decided to use community names in each posting to help with local searches.

Google Local Listings: We looked at his local business listing which is a free service from Google. We saw that he had two very positive reviews. The other search engines offer similar listing services. There are a number of popular social review sites such as Yelp.com. We decided to periodically as customers to write online reviews about what they thought of the service.

Other ideas: We discussed adding a page for his business on Facebook. Creating a profile on LinkedIn. Adding a Lens on Squidoo.com. But at this point he wanted to implement the first two ideas.