Written by Mike Kalil | 10 March 2010

If you're not already devoting most of your marketing budget to the Internet, now is the time to change your game plan. A new study by BIA/Kelsey indicates that 97 percent of consumers go online to research products and services locally. If they're not finding you during their searches, there's no doubt about it: You're losing business, and probably lots of it.

Consumers are getting their information from a variety of sources, but most of them start with popular search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and Bing. Of those who participated in the study, 90 percent reported using search engines to conduct research. Forty-eight percent use the online Yellow pages, 42 percent use shopping comparison sites and 24 percent use vertical sites.

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22 December 2009

Let's pretend you own a business that sells home furniture, and your mission is to dramatically increase the number of couches you unload. You're looking to generate most of your business promoting your company online. How do you do it? Just a little bit a research will tell you that millions of people type the search query “couch” into Google alone every single month, and presumably most of them are at least starting to think about buying one. If you do the search yourself, you'll also find that the keyword phrase is heavily targeted organically and in paid listings by some of the world's biggest companies and organizations.

Now you could invest a lot of money into showing up prominently for that search and, yes, doing so would probably increase your sales figures provided your website is designed well and your products are worthwhile. But if you're looking for a more affordable and quicker way to go about it, you'll go after the terms that have significantly lower search volumes but, when added up, will account for most of your business. Instead of concentrating on a few big terms like “couch,” “couches” and “leather couch,” you could go after more targeted terms like “green sofa couch,” “couch for living room” and “white couch living room” and see a bigger return on your investment.

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08 October 2009

Google has launched a new advertising platform geared toward businesses targeting consumers in their local areas. The program, which is rolling out in the San Francisco and San Diego areas, differs from Google Adwords in that businesses are charged a flat monthly fee based on their categories and locations rather than having to shell out dollars for every visitor who clicks their ads.
The listings will appear above unpaid local listings when users conduct searches as well as in Google Maps. With the listings, advertisers get a basic ad displaying their company's information, address and contact details, a unique phone number that Google will use to track calls and regular reports on conversion. It's unclear what the pricing will be for businesses in New Hampshire and New England, but it'll likely be based on search volume.

Make no mistake about it. This is clearly a first step toward Google doing what we've expected they would for years: charging local businesses for inclusion in the first page of search results. For now at least, small businesses with tiny marketing budgets can have some visibility in Google by creating and maintaining listings in the Google Local Business section. Now, we suspect, that section of free local results will continually be phased out in favor of paid listings. It might not be tomorrow, but it'll happen. If you're a business owner, it's important to not rely on something that may soon be irrelevant, even if it is free for the time being.

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Written by Administrator | 04 August 2009

The news that Microsoft and Yahoo! plan to join forces to compete with Google makes it clear that SEOs can no longer concentrate on obtaining high rankings on just one search engine. Google has long dominated the search marketplace, but there are still other search engines that, if you properly optimize for them, will drive relevant traffic to your site. And while Google may be on top now, the company is only a decade old and there's no telling what the future holds for it. It probably won't happen tomorrow, but consumers may very well jump ship if Microsoft/Yahoo! develops a superior product.

The latest statistics from Hitwise, an Experian company that tracks Internet traffic, show that Google's marketshare is at 71.42 percent, far ahead of Yahoo!'s 17.18 percent, Bing's 8 percent and Ask's 2.47 percent. When Microsoft's Bing becomes Yahoo!'s default search engine, the two companies will presumably have roughly 25 percent of the marketshare. Obviously, ignoring a quarter of the market is not a wise business decision, especially when there's evidence that its gaining headway. So far, Microsoft has done a good job at piquing the public's curiosity about Bing, and SEOs have praised the relevancy of its results.

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