Many contractors do not know that you can get some free advertising on Google.  The service is called Google Places and it's a fantastic way to get your local business listed on Google in no time.  The process is simple and free to setup.  What more can you ask for? To get started, you'll need the following pieces of information:

Social media, like it or not, is here to stay.  Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn now have nearly 1 billion users combined.  Adding to it, social profiles can rank highly in the search engines.  As a contractor and business owner, you cannot ignore the impact social media can play in marketing your company and generating leads.

We've discussed how important Search Engine Optimization is in promoting your website, but how do you tell if it's working?  The answer is analytics.  In a nutshell, website analytics allows us to gauge where visitors are coming from and what pages they check out the most. There are many website analytics packages, but the most popular and widely used is Google Analytics.  Google Analytics is a free package that can gauge just about every aspect of your site. In this discussion, we'll examine some areas where analytics can help analyze your site.

Market your business - Every little thing you do to market your business helps.  Update your website, start a blog, whatever, it all counts.  Don't sit around and hope someone calls you, do something about it!