More people search for businesses online than anywhere else. According to the Kelsey group, nearly all consumers, 97 percent, now use online media when researching products or services under their local area. Local searches are growing by 70 percent. Search engines are currently taking into account the location of customers looking for products and services in your market and matching them to the local businesses.Search engines are giving preferential treatment to roofing marketing campaignsby allowing roofing and other home service companies to appear on the first page of search results for relevant keywords making your roofing marketing more effective.There are three ways your roofing marketing efforts can have your business show up on the first page of Google; Google Places (Formerly Google Maps), Geo pay per click advertising, local organic SEO.Google Places- What Is Google Places? It has been referred to it as Google Maps, Google Places and Google local. Perhaps you have seen the Maps showing up on Google, with similar technology on MSN and Yahoo. During a local search, Google will display a map in the right hand of the search engine results page and Google Place Pages to the left. Essentially you can get on the first page of Google without incurring paid advertising costs or the time and effort needed for Local Organic Search Engine Optimization. It is the best advertising option available on the Internet. Google places allows you to enter a great deal of information about your company including photos, videos, service descriptions, business categories, coupons, and QPR Codes.Geo pay per click advertising – Pay-Per-Click (PPC) marketing is just about the most widely used variety of roofing marketing on the internet currently. The primary reason for this along with the innovative notion driving Paid advertising is its cost-effective method of promotion.Here’s the way it operates. With traditional types of advertising such as television, print, and coupon mailers and banner advertising your rates are calculated based on how many thousands of men and women might see your advertising, regardless if they call you for your offer. But with PPC you only pay if someone clicks takes action on ones internet advertising and is directed to ones chosen web page.Geo Location Pay Per Click makes it even more cost effective to local roofing marketing initiatives since their internet ads are shown only to audiences in a specific location. For example, a roofer in New York can create an Internet Ad and only have it shown to Internet Users within a 10 mile radius of their business. This ensures only real prospects will see the ad and greatly reduces the costs of the advertising campaign as the rest of the world does not see the Internet Ad and therefore unnecessary and undesirable clicks on the Internet AD are avoided!Local Organic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – Search engines save user’s time by presenting the most relevant sites that satisfy their search terms. Relevancy is calculated by examining on page and off page factors. No one knows for sure how search engines work but there is a general consensus the most important factors are unique content, keyword density and back links to the site.Local Organic SEO is the creation of unique content that aligns with the search terms used in your roofing marketing target location, correctly tagged with metadata (Data about your information) so search engines can recognize it and creating associations with other relevant sites though back links (web sites that point to your site).Local Organic SEO takes into account the above factors and also includes local geographic terms. Local roofing marketing campaigns can create unique and valuable content with geographic keywords to ensure their website is being found when users are searching for your service.ConclusionToday there are more options for roofing marketing efforts to generate new leads from the internet. However roofing marketing on the internet has challenges.With the high value of benefits of Google places, many local businesses in highly competitive markets find it a challenge to get on the first page in Google Places in their roofing marketing locations. There are proactive activities they can carry out to optimize their Google Places.Roofing marketing initiatives that use Geo Pay Per Click campaigns but fail to execute it properly can be unprofitable. Roofing marketing programs using this method should adopt industry best practices to help avoid this. The roofing marketing programs which include geo pay per click should plan for several months of testing and optimization and manage stakeholder expectations accordingly.Local Organic SEO is a close second to Google Places for return on roofing marketing investments. There are two challenges; patience and dwindling first page available positions.Patience is required because organic search engine optimization efforts help improve websites ranking. But roof marketing success is archived when the website is showing up on page of Google for multiple keywords. The amount of time it takes to succeed directly correlates to the level of competition in the specific roofing marketing area and keywords.