Here are three easy things you can do to get people to your website this week:

1. Start doing Pay-Per-Click advertising.
   Budget $20-$50/mo to start
   Pay-per-click ads are the sponsored text ads that you see on the major search engines. You can choose which search terms your ad will show up on, and you can limit it by the geography of the search. This doesn’t have to be complicated to be effective. My strong recommendation is to choose one of the big two (Yahoo Search Marketing or Google Adwords)—frankly, it doesn’t much which one you choose. Select ten – fifteen search terms (use the keyword selector if you need some guidance). Then setup a campaign on those terms that’s “geo-targted”—limited to your specific geographic area.
   
   
2. Purchase a Directory Listing.
   Budget $200 – $500/yr.
   For many highly desirable search terms, there are one or more reputable directories that have visibilty on the first page of search results. For example, if you do a google search for home inspector , the fourth result (after the three main associations) is a directory, Home Inspections USA that home inspectors can get listed in for approximately $200/year. This is an indirect way to get leads from google that works because a prospect searching for a generic phrase (like “home inspectors”) is very likely to dig into local listings using a directory.
   
   
3. Join an email list in your neighborhood.
   Free! (But well worth 15 minutes a day)
   In Washington, DC, where I live, the Washington Post reports that there are more than 10 active neighborhood email lists. The list I belong to has over 3,000 members asking advice of one another, posting opinions and gathering at the metaphorical back fence. The majority of these groups are hosted at Yahoo Groups. These are a great place for both immediate benefit and long-term building of your reputation with a new group of prospects. On a list like this, you’ll find leads occassionally drop in your lap, and there are many opportunities for you to offer advice or opinion and build your reputation that will make you top-of-mind when folks are searching for the services you provide. Search Yahoo Groups for one for your area, and spend 15 minutes a day participating in the conversation. It will be well worth your while.

None of these are a silver bullet, but with a little bit of time and a little bit of money, they’ll all generate impressive returns for you and your business.

There are thousands of free directories that you can submit your site to and get listed in.

Unfortunately, many of them are “bad neighborhoods” of link spam that getting listed in will either have no effect or have a negative effect on your own search engine ranking.

Martin Preece from WebSEODesign, however, has started a sort of directory-of-directories called Free Directories that lists and ranks the free online directories.

Check it out for “good directories” to submit your site to.

He also has posted a very handy guide to getting listed in the directories called Free Directory Listing 101 as well as a blog so you can keep up with his current findings.

Angie’s List is a popular and growing service that lets consumers rate contractors and service providers. It’s currently in 20+ cities and growing.

Angie’s List, with its homeowner-friendly format, comes with the added bonus of insider information: the rating system that gives the subscriber the lowdown on the experiences of previous consumers. (from the San Deigo Union Tribune)

They’ve worked to eliminate consumer vendetta’s against a company: consumers can only post once every six months about a company, and Angie’s List reps will sometimes help to mediate disputes between consumers & service providers through their third-party program, Neighbors In Action.

The reports that consumers post (here’s a sample) contain lots of details: