Infoserve Group

With all the recent debate about an emerging digital Britain, we use this blog as a means to promote the one area of development that we believe is advancing beyond recognition - that of local search.

Enabling customers to find particular products and services in a specific location is a very powerful tool. As with ambitions of creating universal broadband access however, local search still has an awful long way to go.

It has been summed up recently by Tim Armstrong, AOL’s Chairman and CEO:

“Local remains one of the most disaggregated experiences on the Web today - there’s a lot of information out there but simply no way for consumers to find it quickly and easily.”

We’ve come a long way though, especially in terms of connecting local consumers to local businesses through online directories. Although sometimes criticised for dominating the search rankings, directories do neatly summarise what consumers are searching for and are becoming an increasingly popular way for businesses to reach the first page of Google or Yahoo!

Which means it’s left to local businesses to supplement these kind of listings with optimised websites and adverts of their own to appeal directly to consumers - and it’s precisely these forward-thinking businesses that will drive local search.

Have a think about what particular goods you provide that someone may be searching for now and see if you can help them find it in seconds. That’s local search at its best.

With the vast majority of business searches now made online and the success of paper directory and traditional local newspaper advertising methods in decline, more and more companies are beginning to recognise the importance of search engine optimisation (SEO) to help them improve the natural ranking of their website within the major search engines’ results pages (SERP’s).

In 2008 the number of local searches for goods and services performed online increased by 58%, reaching a total of 15.7 billion searches for the year, whilst total online searches for 2008 reached 137 billion and today that figure is higher still.

The search engines list over one billion websites, the majority of them fighting for the top positions in their industry sector. This makes it vital for online companies to employ the services of a search marketing expert to help potential customers find them on the internet. Very few searchers go beyond the first two pages in the results, often not even to page 2, and the need to rank prominently on page 1 has driven this demand.

The constant review of multiple websites ranking positions is incredibly labour intensive and so many companies choose to automate their search queries. This can - if done abusively - impose stress upon a search engines resources and result in a ban being imposed upon the IP address of the user.

Infoserve’s SEO strategy combines the use of search engine friendly querying tools, techniques used to make a website more accessible to the search engines and users and the constant review of a website’s performance in the SERP’s (Search Engine Results Pages) in order to increase the visibility of a website in major search engines.

One such tool is the Ranking Report Software by Caphyon, which has been developed to emulate a manual search, therefore saving the user the inconvienience of incurring a search engine’s wrath and being denied the service.

With the help of the Advanced Web Ranking Tool you can choose to track the ranking of multiple websites through over 1000 search engines and generate monthly reports making it easy to get a quick overview of the evolution of a particular website. The Advanced Web Ranking Tool’s project management system can manage hundreds of different site results at once, using scheduled updates to avoid the task of manually updating each individual project.

The Advanced Web Ranking Tool can also help with the all important task of keyword research, helping you to find the most used keywords that people use on a daily basis to find the products and services you are hoping to market. It helps you to research and analyse new keyword ideas, identify search trends and get more information on finding niche market related keywords, by bringing multiple keyword research tools together in order to make your research much easier and more accurate.

Another important aspect of a successful SEO campaign is link building. The search engines view good quality inbound links to your site from sites with related content as a recommendation of your website. The more relevant and authoritative inbound links your site has from other successful sites within your industry sector, the more relevant and authoritative the search engines will deem your site to be. Successful link building strategies are based on establishing your competitive position in the online marketplace that already exists around your specific industry sector.

So monitoring these links on a regular basis is crucial, and the Link Popularity Software by Caphyon is a great tool to help you keep track of your websites inbound links. You can utilise this tool to find out who is linking to your website and which keywords they are using to link to you, you can also check on your competitors websites and find out who is linking to them.

Being able to keep a tab of paid for links can also save you money, if a link is broken or has been taken down the Advanced Link Manager Tool will notify you, it can also tell if the page rank of a linking page has dropped giving you the opportunity to renegociate the cost of your link. The Advanced Link Manager Tool can also help with the difficult task of finding new link partners, the Potential Refferers Wizard allows you to search all of the available search engines, using advanced search criteria to look for future partners who you may wish to exchange links with, listing them in order of page rank. So you can choose to eliminate any low ranking websites from your list of potential link referrers.

Infoserve’s SEO capabilities have expanded rapidly with the help of such tools, giving their SEO experts more time to spend on the one aspect of SEO they have not yet developed a tool for - good, old fashioned, human analysis.

Whilst many have tried to break down the complexities of Google and explain the power of search engine rankings, this is one of the most interesting articles I have read recently.

In essence, it’s an article about the dominance of Google but it breaks down the nature of search well.

Its fault (as I would always argue) is that it doesn’t reference the influence that local search has cast upon our day-to-day lives, although it does underline the complete dependence we have on search engines and how influential the page rankings can be.

I also love it when someone points something out that is undeniably true:

“Taking wrong turnings on the net can lead us to information that we didn’t even know we were looking for.”

How many times have you been sidetracked recently? The distraction has even been officially termed:

“In April 2007, a survey concluded that two-thirds of British internet users spent time ‘wilfing’ (”what was I looking for?”) while hopping around on the internet.”

Wilfing. Perhaps the modern day equivalent of reaching the top of the stairs and forgetting what you were looking for, as you become increasingly distracted by numerous other jobs you have to do?

Having touched on mobile advertising before on this blog, it’s worth keeping you updated with its progress.

The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) has revealed that UK mobile advertising spending exceeded the predictions of 2008 and reached a total of £28.6 million

Paid-for-search advertising on mobile topped the charts, accounting for 50.2% of all spend, while mobile display advertising (banners, text links) covered 49.8%

So what does this all mean? This quote, from Guy Phillipson, chief executive of the IAB, sums it up well:

“Over the past 12 months the marketplace has been buzzing with anticipation about this exciting new channel. Now is the perfect time for brands to dip their toes in the water, to see for themselves how effective and complementary mobile advertising can be.”

Read my earlier scepticism here for a more slightly cautious approach, although it does look as though mobile advertising may become a pretty powerful strategy in future years.

My colleague came across an article in Marketing Magazine about how paid-for search is suffering as brands reduce online spend.

This is despite paid-for search being “hailed by the IAB as ‘the advertising recession-buster’, with more customers searching online for cheaper goods and services.”

We left a comment (how could we be expected to resist?) about how Infoserve disagrees. We wrote how we are

“…experiencing record levels of new customers who are turning to the internet to market themselves. Within the SME sector, paid for search obviously presents a huge opportunity to target local searchers looking for specific goods and services, and businesses are finding the ROI that online advertising can provide incredibly useful when budgets are tight.”

It’s also worth reading the last couple of paragraphs of the Marketing Magazine article about social networking sites and advertising, which pretty much reiterates what I wrote about last week.

Whilst Twitter is taking the world by storm, and is the hottest topic on most people’s lips at the moment, whether - and how - we can ever “successfully monetise” social networking sites is the million dollar question. Literally.

I think this is one of the best explanations I’ve read recently about how powerful Twitter could be:

“Over the last couple months we have heard many different ideas on how Twitter can successfully monetise their surge in popularity, growing user base, and overall traffic. The ideas range from charging for an account, charging for premium accounts, simply adding Adsense, and the list goes on. What we haven’t heard is how Twitter could add local search into their business model, monetise it successfully, and create more user generated content.” [local search news]

What do you think? It seems wherever I turn at the moment, it’s Twitter this and Facebook that, but how can businesses ever judge the real effectiveness of an online presence?

Increased sales? Maybe. The usual indicator of a successful online campaign - measurable results from advertising - seems to fall a long way short on social network sites.

I’ve posted before about how effective social networking can be for businesses and I still not convinced how far it can go. After all, we aren’t there to search for something but be sociable, aren’t we? Will we ever find a way to engage with businesses and measure success via Twitter and Facebook the way we do through search engine advertising?

Yet again Hitwise has come up trumps with some excellent stats demonstrating the power of search engine optimisation and advertising.

The new evidence shows that search engines drive almost half of all traffic to websites. It found search traffic rose from 37.1% of total traffic in January 2008 to 40.5% in January 2009.

For businesses, this is worth its weight in gold for anyone contemplating either the first, or the next, step of their online marketing campaign. It’s simple - reap the rewards by making sure you can be found easily on search engine results.

It’s also interesting to read this evaluation here, which begins to make the comparison with the social media phenomenon. There’s still a long way to go before social networks dominate the way we look for services and information, so despite the flurry of expectation, one thing remains clear: search engines continue to reign supreme.

Connecting businesses with consumers searching online is the driving force behind Infoserve.

For businesses that are on board with us, they are seeing very real and tangible results - increased visibility online, increased leads and increased sales. Our aim is to convince every business that it can happen for them, too. The internet is a big piece of pie and everyone can have a slice.

The latest research from Webvisible/Nielsen online is a reminder that there is still plenty of work to be done.

They identify a massive gap between online consumer behaviour and small business marketing, and it goes something like this:

There is a “significant difference between the way Internet users search for local products and services and the manner in which small businesses market themselves”

and

“Because of this ‘Great Divide’, local businesses miss a significant opportunity.”

Here are the stats:

• Consumers use search engines 72% more often than they did two years ago
• Search engines are the No. 1 choice of consumers and small business owners alike when looking for a local product or service.

Yet, only 44% of small businesses have a website and half spend less than 10% of their marketing budget on Internet advertising.

So there you have it, the majority of businesses are failing to connect with their consumers. Are you?

Online searches for “credit crunch” related terms have rocketed in the past six months - we’ve recorded a rise of nearly 300% in the number of online searches for debt recovery services alone since August 2008.

It comes as no surprise following the recent report from the Insolvency Service, which announced there were 2,428 corporate insolvencies in the last quarter of 2008, a rise of 220% since the same period last year.

We’ve also noted a 15% rise in job searches and a 56% rise in the number of people looking for recruitment agencies, just as UK unemployment figures released this week suggest the number of people out of work is set to exceed 2 million this year.

It just goes to show that the key terms that people are searching for offers a valuable insight into the impact of the current downturn - we are finding more and more people hunting for jobs and looking for financial help online.

What’s more, the dramatic rise also shows how it has become second nature for us to turn to search engines and business directories to find what we need. Those financial advisors or debt recovery agencies that are currently prioritizing online marketing will no doubt be seeing a massive return on investment. Search engine advertising really is worth considering if you have something which you know people will be searching for in the coming months, whether that’s special offers, bargain deals or help and advice.

It’s a big question that is floating around; after an amazing growth spurt, how will the economic slowdown affect online advertising?

Whilst there are still predictions of growth for 2009, online advertising is still seen as a relatively new phenomenon and hasn’t yet been “tested” by a recession.

Yet we can only go by our own experience and it’s clear to us that more and more businesses are switching to online search marketing. Rather than merely “surviving”, we believe online advertising is going from strength to strength.

Why? It offers precisely what stretched budgets need at the moment - crystal clear results that can be measured - and we have no doubt it will continue to grow. We’re even bucking the current trend of job losses by embarking on a major recruitment drive for our sales team based in Darlington to help keep up with demand.

What the recession does present for businesses still in the game, however, is an opportunity to take advantage of the shift online, as consumers begin the search for bargains, promotions and special offers. They may be online right now searching for you - why not meet them half way, or better still, be the first one they see when they flick through their results?