Search engine optimization (SEO) is seen as the top online marketing tool and the best way to generate search engine traffic and generate online customer leads according to new study results released by online marketing researchers, E-consultancy and Clash-Media.  Their report, “Online Lead Generation 2008”, details how natural search, paid advertising (pay-per-click, or PPC) and e-mail marketing are viewed by businesses in the UK, United States and Europe as the best ways of generating consumer leads online. 

Interestingly, however, less business resources are being spent on natural search, the methods by which business websites are optimized to ensure that a company’s web pages show up in consumers’ organic search results on search engines such as Google, than are being spent on paid advertising through PPC.

The E-consultancy/Clash-Media results demonstrate just how important Internet marketing is seen to be by the business community in the UK. (Businesses polled for the E-consultancy/Clash-media report were primarily based in the UK, but with significant representation from U.S. and European businesses.)  94% of respondents surveyed indicated that generating consumer leads online is viewed as a “growth area”, as compared to 82% who viewed online lead generation as an emerging growth area last year.

The near unanimous view that online marketing and Internet advertising is a growth area underscores how important it is for businesses to have an effective online marketing presence.  This is particularly so for small, local businesses for which the rapid growth in consumers using local search and mobile search to find products and services in their locale represents both a challenge and a growth opportunity to be exploited. 

Sesimi.co.uk offers a solution for small businesses seeking to generate local search engine traffic, with its ability to build and host small businesses web pages featuring optimized local business profiles using the most advanced SEO techniques.

Local search, and particularly mobile search, is fast becoming a must-have technology for consumers.  Times correspondent, Bernhard Warner tracked the rise of mobile search (or LBS, the acronym for location-based services) in a recent column entitled “Know on the Go”, noting that, “location-based services technology has come a long way.”  Increasingly, the Internet market in the U.K. is fast becoming as sophisticated and mobile as it already is in Japan and the United States.

Increasing sophistication and the inclusion of GPS (or, global positioning systems) technology in cell phones and other mobile devices allows users to search for products and services in real-time and have the location of the nearest business offering such service mapped out to the precise street corner they made the search from.

A new generation of smart phones with GPS capabilities, and the local business directories and search engine capabilities to make mobile search a user-friendly method of finding not only local products and services, but also other pertinent information such as customer reviews and ratings is changing the way that consumers will shop for goods and services. 

The big evolution in LBS is with locating nearby services,” Warner writes. “Need a dentist or doctor in a pinch? A host of LBS services now allow users to pull up detailed local business directories to find not only the nearest doctor, but one who comes highly rated.”

For small businesses, having a local business profile online in the form of a web page that is capable of being found by the search engines used by increasingly techno-savvy consumers is fast becoming a critical business tool.  For small business local search, and particularly mobile search, is becoming the means by which customers and potential customers access their products and services.

For small businesses that are tracking the emerging importance of local search and its increasingly important companion, mobile search, and realize how important these technological leaps will be to their bottom line, June 18th’s Financial Times ran an insightful analysis of how “Mobile Search Is Taking Off”. 

While the Financial Times article focuses primarily on how emerging mobile internet technologies and applications are going to shape how companies do business in the next few years  - giving businesses that are geared up with new mobile technologies “increased employee productivity and increased employee availability” – the article does paint a picture of how mobile search will effect commerce.

The article discusses how the world’s telecommunications leaders are introducing what is termed “4G wireless broadband services”, such as WiMax, that will vastly improve the ability of mobile handhelds (or PDAs) to stream information from the Internet.  The move to 4G wireless technologies, the Times says is “ushering in what some have described as the mobile internet.”

And how will this new, emerging “mobile internet” shape how small business entrepreneurs market their products and services to their customers,  Increasingly, it seems there will be a significant shift in customer preference to mobile and local search.  Accordingly, there will be increasing pressure on small businesses to shift to online marketing to advertise their wares even in their local neighbourhood or marketplace. 

“Real time location-based information will turn 4G mobiles and PDAs into a “concierge” service,” writes the Financial Times’ Paul Taylor. “One could foresee directory services and search engines using the location-based information to enable a list of Michelin-starred restaurants within a mile of the user to be downloaded on request.”

. . . Or a concierge service for local bakeries, florists, insurance brokers, fish and chip shops . . .  or virtually any other product or service that is offered for sale in one’s local marketplace or neighbourhood.

Search engine optimisation was the focus of a short piece in The Guardian on Monday, June 9th, illustrating the importance of search engine optimisation (or SEO) in driving local search engine traffic to business sites. Touching just the surface of what can be the seemingly arcane ‘art and science’ of getting a web page to the top of Google’s or one of ‘ the other’ search engine’s (Yahoo!, MSN Live, Ask.com etc.) search results page - and keeping it there - the Guardian article should have brought SEO at least onto the radar screen for small businesses and medium or growth businesses alike - if it was not already there.Search engine optimisation and the related field of search engine marketing  (or SEM) have been  areas of growing prominence for large companies as online advertising has caught and begun to outstrip traditional advertising outlets - such as TV, radio and print media - as a vehicle for advertising campaigns. Look no further than the recent U.S. Democratic primary race for the impact the internet has had on how products - in that instance, Mr. Obama and Ms. Clinton - are marketed.

SEO has been a core concern for large companies and their marketing and advertising firms for several yeras now. The Guardian reports that ad agency, Media Contacts, has seen a significant uptick in its SEO work for large clients who have “begun to seriously get to grips with SEO in the past two years.” According to Therien Pieterse, Media Contacts’ head of search, “(SEO) is the center of all media activity, because most (media) channels drive people to search for (the) brands, catchphrases and promotions.” And that search is being done over the internet. More and more consumers are turning to the internet, via computer and increasingly via their mobile phones, to do their window and comparison shopping before making purchases. Those numbers are only forecast to rise as the population in the U.K. becomes evermore comfortable with internet technology.These trends and the publicity that the formerly unheralded art and science of SEO has garnered should drive home the need for small and medium-sized to focus attention on their company’s online ‘digital footprint’. Local business enterprises, as well as the large players, increasingly need to have a digital storefront for “Windows” shopping, as well as the traditional “bricks-and-mortar” storefronts that have long been the attraction for window shoppers. Recent stats show that 86% of internet users use the local search abilities of Google and the other search engines to find goods and services online, and yet 90% of these transactions that increasingly tech-savvy shoppers initiate online are completed offline, presumably at a local business establishment. SEO is an equalizer for small, local business. It is the process which drives local search engine traffic to a small enterprise’s web site and allows a small business to have its products and services googled and ogled alongside the products and services of large players with large marketing budgets.

IOnline advertising is poised to surpass television as Great Britain’s premier advertising vehicle this year. According to an Enders Analysis forecast reviewed in this weeks Sunday Times, “online advertising spending will increase 26% this year to £3.56 billion” compared to a 2.5% decrease in television advertising revenue which is forecast to fall to £3.39 billion.

Analysts had expected Internet advertising to outstrip television advertising - but not until next year. According to Ian Maude, head of Internet for Enders Anaysis’, as reported in the Sunday Times, “The TV market is flat at best if not weakening, whereas online advertising has continued to grow much more strongly than expected.” In fact, increasingly techno-savvy Britons are turning from television and radio to the Internet as their media of choice. The Times quotes figures from Deloitte’s Digital Index which indicate “that 19% of households regularly watch online video, up 8% from August 2007. It believes that figure could rise to more than 50% in five years’ time.” It is expected that 50% of Britons will beonline video users in the next five years.

As Britons have made (and continue to make) the move from TV and radio to the Internet for entertainment and lifestyle purposes in addition to their business and information gathering needs, the necessity of having an optimized “digital footprint” in order to conduct online advertising and online marketing has become a business critical issue for small business and large companies alike. Even for the small local shop a web page that can be found online is the minimum business requirement these days. If Britons cannot find a small establishment online when conducting a local search for the products or services they need, their business is likely to go to a competitor who has tapped into the growing potential for marketing to disaffected TV viewers who are increasingly spending their time online.