I am seeing an increasing number of location specific web portals springing up across the internet. For many years people have focused on a broad geographic range, but as the market has become more saturated, people are starting to look to the local market. It makes a lot of sense. If you want ot receive 10,000 hits to your website each day, then maybe it is easier to get 10,000 hits from your local geographic community, rather than 10,000 hits to your already saturated keyword dense market. Go local, look for smaller clients, but aim to get regular returning customers, and also find a niche that is on your doorstep. A recent example of such an ambition is Essex Portal. A traditional web portal in the making, with plans to build local business directory and visitor information for Essex.
It will be interesting to see how this approach fares against the global, generic, web portals and directories.
