My husband and I were walking in the downtown area of Rochester, MI yesterday morning. It is a typical little downtown, old buildings from the turn-0f-the-century with little local shops in them.

One of the shops is a locksmith. Outside his store he had a little signboard that said “Ask about our safe sale.” This little sign board made his store stick out from all of the rest of the stores in Rochester. I am sure it didn’t cost him very much to buy the board and stick it out in front of his store.

What it made me think was that sometimes, the simple things make our business stick out from the competition. And for local businesses there is a virtual sign board they can put out on the sidewalk for people “walking” by their store….internet advertising. When someone searches for “restaurants Rochester, mi,” only one of the many good restaurants appears on the first search page for Google. This restaurant has a signboard. All the rest do not. Google has a place for 10 free sign boards on each page (10 organic results show). Why aren’t more companies taking advantage of Google’s free “signboards?” Because they don’t recognize the value of being there. But I believe that just like the locksmith’s signboard, a Google “signboard” will bring in business (and probably a lot more than the one on the sidewalk) – those keywords were searched 100 times last month just on Yahoo!