Local Search Engine Marketing

Is a small business web site now a necessity for local small business proprietors, or can they continue to rely on traditional media like TV and the papers?  A recent report suggest that businesses should - and are - shifting their advertising focus online to capture Britain’s growing search engine traffic and new customers.

While newspapers are still relied on as Britain’s most favoured advertising platform, companies - particularly small business - should be looking beyond traditional advertising sources to the Internet as the importance of online advertising and marketing continues to grow.  A recent report from Britain’s office of Communications revealed a 40% increase in online advertising, to the point where £2.8 billion was spent in online advertising in 2007.

While a large part of online spending was spent on paid advertising (or “pay-per-click”) on search engines like Google, natural or organic advertising via company websites has emerged as a major marketing component for companies large and small, driven by the deep penetration of internet usage and mobile phone usage into the U.K. market. Proportionally, the U.K. has embraced the Internet and online advertising more tightly than many of its closest neighbours.  OfCom describes the Internet as “a particularly UK-focused phenomenon; accounting for a higher proportion (18.9%) of total 2007 advertising spend than in the USA, France, Germany or Italy”.

Meanwhile, the time that Britons spent on PCs and lap-tops has grown fourfold between 2002 and 2007 - from 6 minutes to 24 minutes per person every day.  As consumers in the U.K. continue to embrace the Internet - and particularly Internet-capable mobile phone technology - having a small business web site that Internet users can access from their desktop, laptop or mobile -will become incresaingly imperative for local, small business proprietors.

The Office of Cmmunications reports that 511,000 new mobile broadband connections were established in the UK between February and June 2008.  Moreover, mobile access to the Internet is increasing rapidly.  Ofcom reports that, “more than one in ten mobile phone users have accessed the internet on their mobile phone with the number of 3G mobile connections growing by 60 per cent in 2007 to reach 12.5 million subscribers – an increase of 4.7 million in 12 months.”

Sesimi.co.ok offers local small business owners a unique and affordable small business web site for their shop or firm.  Sesimi.co.uk builds, optimizes and hosts affordable single-page, small business web sites on its subscription-based small business web domain that allow local shops and establishments to be effectively fournd and ranked by Google and the other search engines when customers are looking for local products and service online - whether from a traditional laptop or a mobile device.

Having a small business web site that customers and potential customers can find online is an important tool for local business owners in Britain.  Particularly with the rapid growth of Internet users searching for local products and services from their mobile phones, a small business web site that potential customers can access on line from their mobile phone or hand held device is fast becoming a business critical issue for local, small business owners.

The rapidly expanding mobile Internet is poised to grow even more rapidly once the telecom companies in the U.K. become more open with their customers about the pricing for mobile search, suggests a recent article in the Times.  Research from the Mobile Data Association, an industry funded not-for-profit data collection agency indicates that “while 25 per cent more people are using the internet on their mobiles than they were two years ago, growth would have been a lot greater if operators had been more open with consumers” about pricing.

“We are calling for greater price transparency on the costs associated with using the mobile internet,” says Mobile Data Association chairman, Steve Reynolds. “The findings of this report suggest a real consumer appetite, but confusion and fear over costs may be holding back growth.”  According to the Mobile Data Association latest survey, “there were signs that mobile internet access would challenge or even supersede that from a traditional PC” reports the Times.  In May 2008, 16.4 million users in the U.K. accessed the Internet via their mobiles, a number that the Mobile Data Association feels is restricted by the lack of transparency amongst telecom service providers.

As pressure mounts for greater transparency and the British telecoms move to capture a wider audience,  it can be expected that the number of Britons tapping into the Internet via their mobile rather than their PC will rise dramatically.  Local business owners who want to tap into that growing market are encouraged to visit the Sesimi.co.uk website.  Sesimi designs, builds and hosts small business web sites for local businesses on a unique web hosting domain.  Using the latest search engine optimization techniques, Sesimi.co.uk clients who choose a Sesimi-built and hosted Web page can be assured their small business will be found and ranked online by search engines like Google and Yahoo!  Each local business profile on Sesimi.co.uk’s small business website is capable of being upgraded to permit mobile search from your customers mobile phone.

As mobile search rises in importance for businesses of all size - large and small - it is becoming clear that mobile search is an ‘emerged’, not an ‘emerging’ marketing trend. The New York Times reports that mobile search is not limited to the new class of “smart” mobile devices, such as the new Apple 3G iPhone that was rolled out in the U.K. this month, or the next-generation of RIM Blackberrys. According to industry-leading mobile advertising agency AdMob, less expensive phones like those from Motorola and Samsung are leading the consumer switch from laptop and desktop to mobile search.

“Nearly 36 percent of all mobile ads served up by AdMob were sent to a Motorola phone,” according to the NYT, while “Samsung phones came in second at 14.1 percent.” According to AdMob, says the NYT, “Worldwide, Nokia and Motorola phones are commonly used, with the Razr and Krzr again the most popular devices for viewing mobile ads.”

Mobile ads increased 19.7 percent for the month of June compared to May, according to AdMob’s numbers. “Going forward,” the NYT reports, “mobile usage is expected to grow faster as consumers swap older, simpler phones for fancier, faster models.”

“While it’s great that the iPhone and BlackBerry are the devices of the future,” says AdMob’s vice president of marketing, Jason Spero, “right now the everyman and -woman are using the mobile Web in a big way, even on less sophisticated phones.”

Sesimi.co.uk offers small businesses a one-stop solution to meet their online marketing needs, by building, optimizing and hosting unique small business web pages designed to capture local search engine traffic. Each Sesimi.co.uk web page is fully customizable for mobile search.

The importance of online marketing and Internet advertising to business in Great Britain was underscored by the recent release of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising’s “Bellwether Report”. The Belwether Report showed that businesses across the UK have been cutting advertising and marketing budgets in response to the recent economic downturn, rising costs and lower than forecast sales. The one bright spot, however, was in spending for online advertising. Of the company’s surveyed for the Belwhether Report, 19% reported that their online marketing budget had increased from the start of 2008, despite declining markets.

“Internet spending will continue to grow as more clients see the importance of this form of communication and the ability to use (the Internet), like PR, in a tactical context,” Belwhether Report author, Chris Williamson, told the Guardian in a recent interview.

That spending on Internet advertising and online marketing continues to grow when overall advertising and marketing budgets are being slashed is a testament to how profound the shift of consumers to the Internet has been for UK businesses. The small and medium-sized business who take advantage of the current economic downturn to increase their online marketing efforts and create an effective online marketing presence are going to be those businesses who best survive the current economic difficulties as well as the businesses best poised to take advantage of returning economic growth. Online marketing has a particularly pronounced “long-tail effect”, so that efforts and expenditures put in now when there is an economic downturn are apt to pay larger dividends in the future when overall marketing budgets rebound.

New research from Internet registry dotMobi, and AKQA Mobile, the mobile division of international creative advertising AKQA, highlights the growing importance of having a local business profile on a web page that can be found by consumers using mobile search technology from the new generation of Internet-capable smart phones and mobile devices.

The following summarizes some of the key findings from dotMobi/AKQA’s survey of U.K. and U.S. consumers

• 50% of respondents were unaware that there are web sites that are accessible by mobile phone.
• 86% of the respondents “said they were interested in knowing which sites are easily accessible on a mobile phone.”
• Approximately 90% of respondents are “interested in learning about the mobile Web, demonstrating a need for brands to make their mobile properties findable via mobile search, marketing and advertising.”

Overall, the dotMobi/AKQA polling indicates “a strong consumer desire for practical mobile content on cell phones. Having a web page is one thing, but having a web page that can be read and used from a mobile device is another. 

Ultimately, your web page needs to be optimized both for regular Internet search and for mobile search if it is it to be used by customers accessing the site from a mobile device.  Nearly fifty percent of the survey respondents who said they had a poor experience the first time they used the mobile Internet reported that a “poor experience” made them “reluctant to access” that site, or the Internet, again from their mobile phone or device, according to dotMobi. 

“The enormous popularity of mobile devices has had a profound effect on the lifestyle of the consumer, unleashing new levels of connectivity and personal mobility,” says Daniel Rosen, AKQA Mobile’s managing director.

The dotMobi/AKQA research indicates that mobile search is becoming a critical issue for small businesses who wish to tap into the emerging pool of consumers searching for local goods and services, as well as for large, international companies marketing large consumer brands.

Sesimi.co.uk builds and hosts web pages with optimized local business profiles that search engines like Google and Yahoo! find our clients when they are searching for local products and services online.  Each web page is configured so that it will easily be found and ranked by search engines when potential customers and clients enter local search queries – whether from their laptops, desktops or, increasingly, their mobile phones – to look for products and services available in their city or municipality.

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.