If you are a small or medium sized business it is important that you prepare your company to leverage online reviews to help increase your holiday sales and to start advertising online.

Consumers use the the internet and search engines to do their shopping research and if your company does not come up near the top of those searches on sites like Google or worse, has bad reviews associated with it then you could be losing out on new sales.

To get your company up to date and ready for this holiday shopping season here are some resources you should look into right away to help you with your marketing and search engine results.

They cost little or nothing and require nothing more then some time on your part.

In no particular order:

Get a Facebook page for your business.  Its free.  Go to www.Facebook.com

Contact Groupon and see if advertising with them makes sense for your business. www.Groupon.com

Claim your free business page at MeasuredUp and help your customer service and online reputation. www.MeasuredUp.com

If you have a website, buy some keywords for your marketing at Google. It costs some money but you only pay for consumers clicks. www.Adwords.google.com

Write a review about your business on Yelp. www.Yelp.com

Create a twitter page for your business. www.Twitter.com

These are just a few easy and effective marketing suggestions.  Start with these and then lets give some others a try.

More online tools and resources then ever exist to help you with your business marketing.  They are easy to use and most are free.  You have no excuse not to use these tools and if you dont you can be sure your competitors are.