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According to a new Juniper Research report, 1.3 billion mobile users are expected to use local mobile search services by 2013. While the trends bode well for for the mobile search industry (agencies and marketers alike) the report goes on to caution that these numbers are based on good a user experience.

Mobile devices however appear to be catching up to user expectations with the iPhone getting 50 times the amount of searches than the other leading handsets! “Apple couldn’t believe the scale of the searches, neither could Yahoo. Clearly, going down the line a good proportion of those searches will not be for content, they will be for local searches, they will be location-based searches. That will increase searches as a whole,” said Windsor Holden, principal analyst with Juniper. In fact, Google, Yahoo! and AOL recently all announced plans tied to mobile applications and development.

The Juniper report goes on to say:

• Local search is expected to account for 43% of cumulative mobile search advertising revenues between 2008 and 2013, reaching total revenues of $4.8 billion by 2013.
• User response rates to advertising which supports mobile local search are expected to be significantly higher than for advertising on general mobile web search.
• Western Europe currently accounts for the greatest volume of mobile search enquiries, but that will soon change as they will be overtaken by the Far East and China region.
• The so called “advertising overload” might act as a disincentive to consumers and might ultimately limit adoption. Other factor to worry about is the continuing public concern over search engine usage of personal data.

Another interesting fact is that research firm Strategy Analytics predicts 290 million mobile handsets will be sold this quarter, an increase of 12 percent compared to Q2 2007 and forecasts total mobile search revenues to reach $4.8 billion by 2013.

Recognizing the trends, its no wonder advertisers are beginning to take notice and look towards taking advantage of mobile marketing opportunities. One such company is Keller Williams Realty, North Americas fourth largest franchise real estate company, where today they announced a campaign aimed at individuals who are looking for a home, to instantly receive details on the property they are interested in on their mobile phone.

It certainly appears as though local and mobile search has passed the tipping point and will become part of the strategic discussions with clients.

Tom Tsinas - Prior to joining SEP, I spent 10 years with Canada’s original search engine, the Yellow Pages Group. I worked in several key Departments including Marketing, Business Development, eProducts, Local and National Sales.

Tags: Advertising, local search

Roughly a year ago, local search engine optimization was all the rage - the new frontier in search engine marketing.  For a while, it seemed that everyone was interested in the local search angle - even multi-national companies.  However, for many companies selling products or services to the entire United States, or even globally, it seemed like a non-starter. Companies that counted on people looking for certain products or services that did not require close proximity to the company’s location were unaffected. As far as local search engine optimization goes, things have changed a bit since then - at least for some.

Some time ago, Google introduced a “geographic box” at the top of its search results.  This is tied in to its mapping feature, and, when it was first introduced, the engine would display three results at the top of its search results whenever somebody entered a geographic modifier into the search box (”Atlanta widgets,” for example).  The Google algorithm then has the intelligence to determine whether the query calls for results that are primarily local in scope.

Since that initial trial, Google has obviously found that its users appreciate the feature.  The engine now displays ten local search results at the top of the listings for certain queries, provided that they have a geographic modifier attached.  For example, if you type in “Atlanta gyms” in Google, you will see ten results alongside a map that shows the location of ten gyms in Atlanta.

It should be noted that you will not see local search results for all queries that contain a local modifier.  In certain instances, it almost seems as if Google somehow “knows” when a geographic modifier really means that you only offer services in a particular area.  Yeah, those guys are pretty good.

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Tags: local search, local search engine optimization, Website Promotion

Recently I was reading an article about the trouble in Zimbabwe and how it affected South Africa. I was surprised to find that many people didn’t realize that South Africa was a country in its own right, but most thought that Zimbabwe was a country in South Africa. While I find this amusing (as both South Africa and Zimbabwe are very much individual independent countries) I did realise that not everybody is 100% clued up on their geography.

Okay so what does this have to do with search? As many small businesses are unable to supply the entire world with their product or service many try to localise their client base. This is carried over into their website. It’s not easy for a plumber in London to be making callouts to China. While this is an extreme example I think you get the point.

When it comes to optimising websites for local searches it is important to always include the area name in your key phrases. So instead of optimising your website for say “experienced plumber after hours” you might optimise it for “experienced plumber after hours in London”. But as you may have guessed that while the tail grows longer you are expected to have fewer visitors. Don’t forget that long tail keywords do convert better though. However at this point you may also have noticed that you could start to shorten your key phrase. Now it would be easier to obtain top rakings for the phrase “experienced plumber in London” or even at a push simply “plumber in London”.

However remember that while local search is intended for localised visitors not all qualified visitors will be locals. Okay, so that sounds a little confusing but consider the fact that not everyone searching for your services will be in the same town while doing the searching. Sometimes people need to do a search of a location and services that they may need while away on holiday, business or even for someone else. Imagine a chronic diabetes sufferer needing to know of the nearest doctor while on vacation or someone needing to know where the nearest laundromat is while on vacation in a small seaside town. Both of these searches may be done with only a little information on the actual location of where they may be.

I have often gone on vacation to small towns where many of the nearest services were in the next town. Often people won’t even know which suburb of a town your business may be located in. I think of Johannesburg and while I know that there are literally thousands of tiny suburbs, many people (and yes, even I am guilty of this) simply lump them all together as Johannesburg.

So what does this all mean for localised search?

Never assume that the visitors know exactly where you are. If your town only has a population of 75 and has never been a hot spot of any kind, then chances are nobody will know your town off hand. In these instances go bigger, optimise for the larger geographical area or town as well as the suburb. I know that this certainly has worked for smaller estate agent websites we have worked on based in a small suburb of a major South African city. While they rank highly for variations of their keywords for their specific town and suburb, the bulk of all traffic comes from the very broad searches as this makes a great starting point. While this traffic doesn’t convert as well, it certainly means that you won’t be missing a potential lead.

Always include area info. Once again as many visitors may not know the area very well it may prove very useful to supply a map of the greater area with a breakdown town by town. As mentioned earlier with many of the small towns that dot the map, many of the service providers may supply more than a single town due to supply and demand. This should help with two things. Firstly, it will help put distance and location of your business into some perspective in relation to where they will be. Secondly, this certainly won’t hurt in the search engines. Always remember relevant information is always welcome; just don’t cram it full of useless information.

Going back to the opening paragraph we must remember that not everyone knows their geography that well, and fewer still are masters of localised geography. Keep this in mind when optimising your website. Always try to think like an out-of-towner. Keep it specific, going broad when you must but always make sure that you have your bases covered for your local searches (although if you’ve done your offline marketing well this shouldn’t be a problem).

Robert Cerff is a search engine analyst and marketing consultant in South Africa for Prop Data Internet Solutions. He has ten years experience in e-commerce, online marketing and web development. http://www.propdata.co.za

Tags: local search, optimisation, optimization

Gone are the days of running an ad in the yellow pages or local newspaper and crossing your fingers that the right eyes would pass over it. Your customers look to the instant gratification of online search, sometimes even through their mobile phones, when they’re ready to make a purchase. Implementing local search best practices will ensure that these qualified customers find you.

In a 2007 Nielsen and WebVisible, Inc. survey of people who had searched for a local service vendor in the last 90 days, 6% reported they would visit a vendor in-person, 11% would make contact through a website form, 16% would write to an email address and 68% use a phone number posted on a website to contact the vendor. Make your phone number and contact information highly visible on your website, and assign trackable URLs and phone numbers to each advertising referrer that you use. Keep track of what’s working and what isn’t in an analytics program. This allows you to keep your program measurable and to continually optimize for leads and conversions.

Here are the tactics (and measurement methods) that turn a local marketing effort into a lead generation machine:

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Tags: local search, Marketing