Websites are one of the most overlooked vehicles of advertising for local, owner-operated businesses.

Yes, every cleaning professional needs one, even if you aren't yet interested in capturing e-mail addresses to really capitalize on your internet investment.

The suggestion is not that all cleaning professionals need to actually transact business online. The suggestion is that everyone who has ever had a listing in the Yellow Pages needs to also be available on the internet today. It's where your customers expect to find you. It's where today's consumers look first!

If you're thinking you might not be able to afford putting up a website, think again. For a simple website, a budget of $500 to $1,000 for construction and $75 to $100 for monthly maintenance and updates should cover it. Robust sites with streaming video, opt-in subscriber functions and other, more complicated features can run between $2,500 and $3,500 for construction and $400 to $2,500 for monthly maintenance and updates, but these are not really needed for your purposes.

Properly constructed, a website allows your prospects to gather the information they need from the privacy of their own homes or offices. What are the questions you or your people answer every day? And how, exactly, would you phrase those answers on your best day? This is the information that needs to be available 24/7 on your site.

In addition, your site should be linked to industry trade association sites or to www.IICRC.org and every other organization that can supply valuable consumer information to your customers. This lends credibility to your business and maximizes the benefits of your belonging to these associations.

Think of your site as a relationship builder, a bridge between your advertising and your front door. This is the easiest way to convince potential customers to at least, call for additional information from you personally, if it's offered.

The internet is heaven on earth for the modern consumer. That's because most people prefer to gather information anonymously. They prefer not to call and identify themselves in order to get the information they need. Most people aren't necessarily shy, they simply like to gather all the facts before they put themselves in a position where they'll likely be asked to answer questions.

Forty-nine percent of your customers strongly prefer to know that you offer the services they need before they call you. And even the other 51 percent of your target market will appreciate an informative site that functions as an expert during all those hours you're not open for business. You must realize by now that most of your customers & prospects are on line.

Additionally, you'll want a website builder who understands search engine optimization. A website is relatively useless if it's not among the first three choices that appear when a prospective customer is looking for a good cleaning professional in their area.

Search engine optimization is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a website via "organic" or "algorithmic" search results for targeted keywords.

Usually, the earlier a site is presented in the search results, the more searchers will visit that site. It is now possible to use search engine optimization to target local searches.

Eye tracking studies have shown that searchers scan a search results page from top to bottom and left to right, looking for a relevant result. Placement at or near the top of the rankings therefore increases the number of searchers who will visit a site.

As a marketing strategy for increasing a site's relevance, a knowledgeable site-builder considers how search algorithms work and what people search for. Their efforts may involve a site's coding, presentation, and structure, as well as fixing problems that could prevent search engine indexing programs from fully spidering a site.

Other, more noticeable efforts may include adding unique content to a site, ensuring that content is easily indexed by search engine robots, and making the site more appealing to users.