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.

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?

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.

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.

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?

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.

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?

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.

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?

“Given the continuing growth in the smartphone market, mobile phones are poised to become the first source people turn to when searching for local business information.”

The article reports that;

“two-thirds (64%) of Americans say they generally turn to online resources for local search, while 33% turn to print, and 3% go to their phones. However, mobile phone users outnumber computer users by 39 million [and] the market for mobile search is growing faster than expected.”

The increasing popularity of mobile internet is backed up by the latest stats in the UK too.

“From Q2 to Q3 2008, the number of Britons using mobile Internet increased by 25% (from 5.8 to 7.3 million) compared to 3% for PC-based Internet (34.3 to 35.3 million Britons)” [Nielsen Online]

The Nielsen Online article also goes on to outline which websites perform well on mobile internet, as well as giving the usual demographic breakdown. We still think user experience will shape the popularity of mobile internet - at the moment, it’s often frustrating compared to PC-based searching - but with improvements emerging on an almost daily basis, surely it will only be a matter of time?

Here are a couple of points worth highlighting from their latest release about what to watch out for in local media this year:

The Online-Only Yellow Pages Publisher?

…look for organizations that are clearly disinvesting in print by shifting all or most marketing and product development funding and energy to the online product.

Is this finally the push that small businesses need to recognise that print directories are a thing of the past? (You can read more about the growth of online directories here)

SMB Video Ads

…within a few years half of SMBs that have Websites will have a video advertisement. That’s approximately 3 million small-business ads in the next few years in the United States alone.

Are video ads something you have ever considered? An interesting trend to keep your eye on for 2009 - what would you look to feature on yours if you were to commission one?

Jumping on the Social Bandwagon

Many sites will implement other social features on their own, such as ratings and reviews, photos, videos and bulletin boards.

Another increasingly popular pastime, reflecting the trend towards creating a more dynamic experience for the consumer. Even for the smallest of businesses, reviews can make-or-break sales so why not take a little time out now to see if anything is being said about you?

Use of Traditional Media

The role of traditional media has been beaten down by the arrival of new media channels and search… Look for cross-media bundles bringing together newspapers, TV, radio and online services.

We’ve already commented in the past about how online marketing is going from strength to strength compared to traditional methods (for example, see how online advertising has topped mainstream TV), but our top tip for 2009 is take action now to capitalise on the move away from traditional media. As more and more businesses shift their focus to online and the industry gathers momentum, its crucial no-one gets left behind this year.

Fascinating stuff, it’s basically insights into consumer behaviour and advertising from numerous sources (Google included).

It’s particularly good for going back to basics and breaking down all the technical jargon about online marketing, but it is also reaffirms the power of the internet in helping drive business. For example, I was reading Speeding Up in the Slowdown (Google, Nov 08);

“The slowdown will fuel online growth. Consumers value the information and opinions they can find online. As household budgets get squeezed it is likely that consumers’ use of the Internet to find the best deal will accelerate.”

It’s a good reminder that people shop around; they bargain hunt, compare products, look for special offers, read reviews… in other words, your online presence and reputation is getting more and more important.

The key message is that people use search engines to find this information. In fact, Google report that 73% of users find search engines an important resource when researching a product, ahead of personal recommendations (63%).

So, are there any reviews of your product when you run a search? Do you have special offers that consumers can find easily?

Make sure there’s no slowdown in your business plan for 2009 by having a quick read through Speeding Up in the Slowdown to pick up some handy hints - and on that note - Happy New Year!

In my mind, they are becoming more and more popular, especially for smaller businesses, for two very simple reasons.

Firstly - for the consumer - they provide the results quickly (when was the last time you dug out a Yellow Pages, lugged it onto your lap and leafed through to find the right section?) and they offer so much more information - links to websites, maps and directions for starters.

Secondly - and here’s the crucial bit for SMEs - they frequently appear on the first page of search results. This means that for businesses who would normally struggle to have such a high natural ranking, they have a very cost effective way of reaching target audiences.

Run a search on a business and look at the results - how many of them online directories?

Don’t forget that as well as general directories, there are also more specialist online directories emerging that feature well on local searches. These are dedicated to a certain type of business, ranging from accountancies through veterinary care practices, and offer a great opportunity for SMEs in a specific industry sector to be found online.

There are also opportunities for enhanced listings within any directory, so it’s worth shopping around. You can check out some of the single industry sites here, or hunt around on Google or Yahoo!Local to see what may work best for you in your local area.

“Search is the most popular online activity”

New research has shown that using a search engine is the main reason we log on to the internet across the country.

So if 80% of us are logging on to use a search engine to track down what we’re looking for, making sure you can be easily found online becomes crucial if you need to reach these people.

There are a whole range of strategies out there - here are just a few - but whether it’s through optimising your website, taking advantage of paid-for search advertising, or getting a listing on a directory that ranks well on searches, don’t miss out on someone who may be looking for your product or service. They may even be looking right now…. Why not do a search for your business and see how easy you are to find?

“The number of small businesses who have their own website has grown over the past two years, which indicates that small firms are becoming increasingly internet-savvy. Despite the onset of an economic downturn, all small firms should look to the internet to maximise their sales and increase efficiency.”

 There you have it; straight from the small business’ horses mouth – make sure you have an online presence.

The survey they carried out found that 70% of small businesses now have their own website, which is an increase of 25% from 2006. I still think all businesses need one – no matter what size you are. It is, after all, your shop window these days as the internet is part of life for customers now.

Even if you don’t have an all-singing, all-dancing website, you could always set up a splash page to tell people where you are and what services and goods you are selling. It’s worth remembering that the web is not just a tool for marketing, it is a business tool as well, and even the smallest business can benefit from having an online presence.

Who is it looking at your website?

There are some good recent stats from 2008; according to the Internet Advertising Bureau, there are now 32m people online, which accounts for 65% of the total adults in Great Britain, and 76% of internet users are now going online every day or most days.

The most popular online activities are as follows:

• Using email - 29.9m
• Sourcing info on activity/interest - 24.5m
• Site of a particular brand or product - 22.6m
• Compare prices - 20.8m
• Travel plans - 17.8

Other than email, you could argue that the four remaining activities all drive online spending. 21.3m people now shop online in the UK and spent an average of £661 each in the six months before August 08.

All very interesting information, but how does it relate to you?

Don’t forget that you can target your online ads to try and get a share of this market. For instance, research shows that women aged 25-34 spend more time online than men of the same group and even back in 2007, the over 50’s account for nearly 30% of time spent online.

You can turn consumer behaviour to your advantage. For example, why not try and find out if your target audience searches at a particular time of the day and gear your adverts towards them?

There have been mixed reports about the growth of online shopping. In general, all the new figures show the stats are higher than the same period last year, but overall, it hasn’t increased the rate it did in 2007. No surprise there, given the economic climate, but what all the figures do show is that more people are turning online.

One of the many new reports on consumer behaviour has once again shown that using search engines has become the number one choice for finding local businesses, over and above using printed directories. What’s more, the findings suggest that a large majority of local searches then result in action - either a phone call, a shop visit or people contacting the business online.

The argument is there for all to see – make sure you have an online presence and see how it can help drive business your way.

Is this going to be the future for promoting yourself online? For SMEs only just catching on to the idea of having a website, yet again it may seem impossible to keep ahead of it all. What exactly does Web 2.0 mean and how does it affect you?

Web 2.0 describes the changing nature of the internet and how we are now sharing, developing and evolving the ways we interact – or put simply, it’s like a new version of the web.

The ways businesses are building their online presence is changing; they are interacting with consumers via social networking sites and sharing ideas rather than simply advertising their product to a blanket audience. What’s more, they’re doing this with an amazing number of people at the same time and generating conversations amongst consumers from across the world.

This blog has already begun to offer its opinions on all the changes, and no doubt will do so in the future, but advice for now is not to panic if Web 2.0 seems incomprehensible to you. You’re not alone. We’ll help break it down and its worth remembering that you shouldn’t forget the basics – the importance of local search, having a website, looking at the already proven and measurable ways of getting your message across - so make sure this is in place first before you take on the next hurdle.

Do a search on Google for a business or service and you would expect to find websites that link to these search terms.

In actual fact, the websites often appear towards the bottom of the first page and instead, your eye line is drawn towards maps showing the locations of local businesses, sponsored links and advertisement, and business listings from the local area.

So if you’re a business looking to target these potential customers, what this means is that SEO will only get you so far in drawing people to your website. When internet users today are demanding immediate and relevant results, they won’t spend long looking for the information, so appearing on Google maps or being one of the sponsored ads presents a priceless opportunity.

Ah, but is this expensive, I hear you cry? As we’re always telling SMEs with tight budgets, online advertising has one key advantage over others; you can find out exactly what gives you the best return on investment and measure its effectiveness, so even in these tough economic times, you’ll be amazed at how online marketing can help generate cost effective leads for you.

And without the backing of big marketing budgets, any online advertising campaign should take advantage of this to exploit your strengths and weaknesses.

Unfortunately, running your own campaign on Google or Yahoo! can be quite time consuming and complicated to monitor. To maximise effectiveness and get the best return on your advertising spend, you need to have the ad-creatives that attract the consumer to click on the ad and then to phone or visit your business, and you need to ensure that your campaign covers all the various goods and services that you offer where you make most of the profit.

Most SMEs are great at running their own businesses but do not have the time or necessary skills to set up and run their campaigns but there are some great resellers of these campaigns who can help you through this potential minefield for a fairly low fee.

Consider:

• Time: Set your ads to run at specific times to suit you

If you run a typical 9am – 5pm type business, you may find you are wasting money by running ads that appear after work hours and missing any calls that come through.

Similarly, think about when your target market will be searching; for example, if you’re a recruitment agency, you would expect people to be searching outside of work hours

• Locality: Through IP settings, set up your ad campaigns to target people searching in a certain area

With 9 out of 10 people searching for businesses or service in a certain area, make sure your ads reach the people who are looking for you at that exact same time they are searching. You can read all about local search here.

To make sure you get the best attention try and find the Authorised Resellers of both Google and Yahoo! as the search engines themselves have picked them specifically for their honesty, integrity, and transparency of charges as well as their skills.

With traditional marketing – such as advertising in the Yellow Pages or in a magazine - it’s always been difficult to judge which particular advert has been effective or whether it’s actually generated any tangible leads.

But that’s the beauty of online marketing and web analytics; you can evaluate exactly what works, and more importantly, what doesn’t.

It’s certainly nothing new, but free packages like Google Analytics are incredible simple to use and are helping more and more SMEs with tight budgets spend their money wisely. They can show you exactly what a customer does once they get on to your site, where your visitors came from and which pages are attracting the most attention.

As Google AdWords provide a good way to advertise specific goods and services you offer to people searching, you can also quickly evaluate and optimise your online Adword spend to work out which keywords are drawing in the crowds and what makes the most money for you.

So take some time out to make sure you are getting value for money – it’s easy to forget that you can always counteract a lack of budget through spending wisely.

Google has certainly shaped the way we search for information in the last decade; it has dominated the market, Google Adwords advertising has transformed how businesses can target their consumers and now Google Maps will be a huge source of information for users and business owners alike.

Can anyone envisage anything that will have such a big an influence on shaping our search patterns in the next 10 years? Various predictions have been circulating:

• - will social networking sites increasingly shape how people search for information about people and organisations?
• - can rival search engines, such as Yahoo! or even the new kid on the block, Cuil, challenge Google?
• - will comparison sites be used more and more to help us drill down on how products and services compare across the board, not only in terms of price but also consumers’ reviews?
• - finally, one of our predictions: will local search dominate our thinking? (particularly that of mobile local search, which you can read all about here.)

For SMEs, it’s a fast paced environment to keep up-to-date with and will be even more so in the coming years as technology improves. It’s important to think ahead about how your consumers may be searching for you in the future, so take that time out now to consider how best to market your business.

We’ve found that hotels have topped the charts, with over twice as many searches as any other category. Rather surprisingly February proved to be the most popular time to look for hotels, with 10 of the 14 towns and cities being swamped in this month. Perhaps we can speculate whether our nation has been sweeping their Valentines off their feet despite the doom and gloom of the credit crunch?

The rest of the top ten searches can be found below:

A survey carried out last year suggested 62% of us already conduct research on the Internet before booking a restaurant and online reviews are increasingly shaping our decisions. This may come as no surprise, but what about being able to go online to book a table at your favourite restaurant?

Livebookings’ reservation service could transform the way we search for and find restaurants. Although the concept is not a new one, it can only be a matter of time before consumers catch on and real-time restaurant booking becomes the natural next step in a search. Gone would be the days when you can only ring to book at certain times of the day to suit the restaurant in order to check availability.

Some of the restaurants listed on our website, eatsomewhere.co.uk, are already offering this service (see Thai Edge) and it’s not difficult to envisage more and more making the transition to an online system. So will it take off? Surely you only have to look at how popular booking a hotel room or a flight online has become to realise the potential. Soon, our nights out at our favourite eatery will begin with just another simple online experience.