Infoserve Group

Well there are numerous predictions for 2010 floating around, from continued trends in online advertising through to how significant local search will be this year.

We’ve just pulled together a few salient arguments which will hopefully get your brain cells thinking about the future direction of online marketing

“Local search providers will vie for social”

There are many blogs like this one that believes this will be the ultimate test in 2010; major players competing for ad spending on the top social media sites.

You can see the appeal - online social communities are a relatively untapped source and in theory can provide a perfect platform for local businesses to sell their goods and services. If you’ve already built good online relationships with these communities, surely it will be easier than ever to promote yourself?

On the other hand, have a look at this post here, which predicts that social network advertising will rise and then fall flat. Perhaps you can develop good brand recognition but at the end of the day it’s a social site and preying on this precious space may prove disastrous. Any thoughts?

“Mobile search will capture the imagination of consumers during 2010“

The question is, will mobile search become bigger than desktop search? Local search has been shaping the general search landscape for a long time now, but maybe this is the “year of the mobile” that everyone has been quoting for the past few years.

Most people agree that the stumbling block will be user experience, which we’ve blogged about before, so weigh this argument up too. Websites and technology need to be spot on for this to expand as rapidly as predicted.

Finally, in terms of pay per click trends,

“We should see an even greater focus on display ads in 2010″

Rather than the simple (however effective) text ads there are, a whole new range of ad formats will offer a choice of appealing promotions - which surely will also improve everyone’s search experience as well.

Either way, we believe that SMEs can drive change and this is the year for them to succeed online. Maybe just having a website was enough before, but with local search soaring, and people recommending and reviewing, a whole online conversation seems to be brewing… which means 2010 points towards a range of different strategies needing to be considered.

It’s very interesting watching the recent television programmes reminding us how far gadgetry and IT progressed over the last decade. We can look back with fondness and a bit of a smile at brick-like mobile phones, walkmans, and video recorders?

But one of the greatest advancements has to be the Internet.

When we started Infoserve in the last century (1999 to be precise) the Internet was in its relative infancy. Do you remember having to dial up to get online in those days?

So we can forgive those people who thought we were a little crazy all those years ago when we told them about our prediction that paper directories would gradually be phased out and replaced by people searching for their products and services on the internet.

It was a tough sell. Yellow Pages dominated the market and through brilliant marketing they created a fear factor among SMEs. Businesses were literally scared of not being in the directory in their area.

It’s been a long journey for Infoserve since then. Being the first in the UK to have this vision (we believe), we feel as though we have set the pace and created the agenda for online local search.

Imagine when we set up city-visitor.co.uk. There was nothing like it around, so we had to build it from scratch. Today it is one of the most used business finders on the net with 12 million number one positions and 22 million first page positions on the major search engines!

In the last ten years or so we have invested an enormous amount of money in the business. We have continued to build our technical platform and improve search performance to cater for the huge growth in online marketing by SMEs.

And its growth has been astounding.

Today 38.5 million people (63.8% of the population) use the internet in the UK¹. This has resulted in 86% of all local searches taking place online² with 90% of these searches resulting in offline activity³ and 61% of the offline activity resulting in a purchase⁴.

Some people may say it was a huge leap of faith when we set up in 1999 but we like to think it was extraordinary vision.

So if you are looking for dramatic changes in the next ten years, the way companies advertise themselves has got to be right up there.

It is incredible to think that the Internet has now overtaken TV advertising.

With 90% of consumer purchases made within 20 miles of where people live or work⁵, SMEs are now worried about not being found when people are looking online for and the products and services they provide.

1. Source: Nielsen Ner//Ratings;
2, 3, 5. Source: The Kelsey Group, March 2008;
4. Source: TMP Directional Marketing Source

It’s clear to see that lately Google have been focusing on local search results, there are more and more businesses appearing for local search terms and the features of the Google Local Business Centre are increasing.

Now it appears that Google doesn’t want to stop there, they have been testing out Google Local Ads in San Diego and San Francisco, an example of how these look can be seen below.

It appears to be an extension of the Sponsored results that appear at the top of the Google search results. The impact of this means that organic listings for these types of searches are being pushed down the page, clearly showing Google’s intentions for Local Search.

Google Local Ads work in a similar way to Google Adwords, whereby you pay for the listing itself. The difference however is that you don’t  pay on a Cost Per Click basis, you pay a fee every month. This fee will vary depending on the competition for that keyword and for that area.

Google Local Ads will soon be released in the UK, you can find more information on it at the Google Local Ads page.

Infoserve Marketing Provide a FREE Google Local Guide which can be found here

Follow Infoserve on twitter for alerts on Google Local news.

It may have been a while since we posted on here, but we’d like to keep reminding businesses that we’re here to help when it comes to improving your online presence.

Local search is still proving to be the winner. So many recent surveys are singing and dancing about how consumers are increasingly using local search to find what they want.

This study probably sums it up the best (which although is US -based, is reflected by recent UK surveys too). If you cut out the waffle, it basically advises you to think locally when it comes to marketing your business, and then engage with consumers who follow-up their online research when they look to pop down to the nearest place they can find.

So yet again we’ll beat the drum; businesses need to be found easily in this initial search process, as well as have clear websites to help consumers decide whether - and how - to buy from you.

Dare I say marketing couldn’t be easier? To quote one marketing legend, “simples”!

An interesting study from Borrell Associates, with suggestions that most small-business owners are turning away from local paid search campaigns.

We have long argued that appearing next to search results is the best way for local businesses to reach potential customers, but is support wavering? Is this down to cost? Lack of results? New and better strategies?

For a start, we don’t believe local businesses are turning their back on paid search advertising and our retention figures would back this up. With search engines still being the most popular way for consumers to find local businesses, it simply just makes sense to mirror their movements. Plus online ads produce measurable results, so I don’t think there is a better marketing strategy out there.

That’s not to say that paid search advertising isn’t complex and time consuming though, which is why we would always advise SMEs to employ someone to manage your account for you.

But, that equally doesn’t mean you should sit back either, so make sure you keep them on their toes - find out where your ads will be running to see the results for yourself, make sure you review your key words too (rather than simply rely on your account managers all the time), and use Google Analytics to fine tune your campaign.

Finally, one of the most interesting points I’ve read recently is that paid search advertisement isn’t just a quick-fix solution either. Like optimisation, it helps build your brand, your visibility and recognition too.

You can find some more top tips about Google Adwords here on a previous post

Following on from last week’s post about the drive to improve local search, it’s also worth reiterating the steps that the search engine giant, Google, have specifically taken.

The changes have made a huge difference for small businesses - integrating local business results into Google’s main search results and introducing Google maps which list local companies are two great examples.

I also think it’s admirable that Google Ads have the same format, regardless of a business’s size or success. All this basically means is that smaller, local companies have a chance of running very successful advertising campaigns without getting crowded out by the ‘big boys’ with their larger advertising budgets.

The competition is still fierce though, and whilst the cliché  irritates me, “you’ve got to be in it to win it”

(which translated into local search speak means make sure your business can be found online when people are searching!)

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.