You may know that you can use Facebook and Twitter to your advantage. However, don’t stop with the basics. You can use plenty of social media and Web 2.0 tools to help increase your search rankings. Consider two other options: Facebook Places and Google Places. While setting up a social media account can help to establish your domain name, the Places option can really help improve your local web presence.

Not only can you create additional links for your company, but you can also benefit from local, targeted traffic. These websites allow you to list your company for inclusion in locally based searches. It’s the new “phone book” for the modern age, though it is a far more interactive feature than you remember from the old Yellow Pages.

When you use these site tools, you can expect great SEO benefits in the way of profiling data, a large database of existing traffic (who are looking up terms on the Places option), as well as easy viral sharing features and unique advertising potential. In addition, you can also benefit from the newness of these Places pages, as they are not being as widely used as general SEO. Local targeting is truly the way of the future. Now, the latest mobile devices are allowing users to search locations that are nearest in proximity to their SmartPhone.

This is customization at its finest. Best of all, listing your business on sites such as Google Maps, Google Places, Facebook Places and even Yelp or FourSquare is free! When you focus on an Internet campaign it’s so easy to get lost in all the national possibilities. Remember though, that local advertising is one of the most cost-efficient and time-efficient ways to find new clients. Talk to an SEO consultant about how to incorporate social media marketing into your SEO campaign!