It’s clear that local search is powerful when it comes to reaching customers, but many businesses fail to take advantage of it. To help out, we’re sharing three expert tips for improving your local SEO on mobile.

Follow this advice, and you’ll soon see an increase in your local leads.

1. Create a Google My Business Page

Creating a Google My Business page is one of the quickest, easiest and most effective ways to boost your local mobile SEO.

You’ll fill in some basic details about your business, including name, address, services and website, and these details will be displayed prominently any time a customer searches for a business like yours on mobile.

Your business will be shown on a local map, and customers will be given the option to get directions, contact you or see more information — without ever having to leave Google. This puts your business right in front of customers at the exact moment they need you.

2. Design Ads That Sound Local

Are you currently taking advantage of paid search ads?

That’s a smart move — but you need to ensure that your ads are location-specific. If they’re not, searchers might assume that you’re a national company, and you could lose customers to other local businesses.

Show that you’re the real deal by referencing local places, using local slang and making references to local events. For example, if you own a clothes shop close to a big festival location, you could create an ad with text like, “Get your last-minute festival look.” Or if you’re close to a beach, you could say something like, “Visiting X beach this weekend? Shop discount swimsuits here first.”

3. Target the Right Search Terms

Are you optimizing your website for search terms that make sense when typed but sound strange out loud? If you want to optimize for mobile, that’s a bad move. Voice searches are growing all the time, and Google reports that 20 percent of mobile queries are voice searches.

That means you need to target terms that make sense when spoken. So, instead of a keyword like, “local plumber Texas,” you might optimize for a phrase like, “Where’s the nearest plumber in Texas?”

Writing website content in a natural, conversational tone makes it easy to incorporate this kind of term and also helps you to move away from old-fashioned keyword-stuffing tactics.

Optimizing for local search is a great way to drive leads and connect with local customers. Get started by creating a Google My Business page, designing location-specific ads and targeting keywords that work during voice searches.

Wrapping Up

These are simply starting points to improve your local online presence. If you’ve been nodding your head as you read these, congratulations! Take a few moments to revisit each of these items and make sure that they are up to date and performing at the level you’d expect. That means, updating or adding to the photos on your Google business page, review your search and display ads to make sure that you’re incorporating seasonal changes and events. This is also an excellent time to compare the performance of your existing ads to determine what’s working best and create variations of that creative.

Marketing is never a set it and forget it exercise, and re-examining your processes and efforts needs to become part of your regular routine to find areas for improvement. This is just one area to review, and any successful marketer should have a weekly schedule of marketing initiatives to review for both cost per lead, and more importantly, cost per sale or acquisition.

As we examine the history of SEO, it’s important to keep in mind that both search engines and the Internet have evolved over time and didn’t always exist in their current form. For example, the first search engines began to surface back in 1990 with the appearance of Gopher, the first search engine, which relied heavily on the hypertext paradigm for relevance, but Google, the current undisputed champion, which today incorporates 199 additional factors into a page’s rank did not appear until 1998. Each year there are countless theories on the future of SEO, but many of these theories declare that the entire practice of SEO will soon become extinct, yet each year these theories are proved wrong as SEO continues to evolve. As the age old saying goes, “The best predictor of the future is the past.” This rings especially true when it comes to SEO. By examining how far SEO has come since its inception, it becomes clear that the practice will always find a way to remain relevant.

The History

SEO, unlike other practices, does not have a specific date of creation. It slowly evolved over time after the first public search engines began to develop and increase in popularity in the early ’90s. By 1993, these search platforms began to utilize keywords to sort information found on websites in order to provide users with more accurate search results. It was shortly after the introduction of this method that marketers discovered that they could influence these results and increase traffic to particular websites by stuffing keywords into website content. The outcome was search engine results that were packed full of spam. These black-hat techniques, as they are now known, were prominent in the world of SEO until search engines altered their algorithms in efforts to eliminate spam and provider users with helpful results.

The Evolution

After search engine creators became wise to SEO techniques, keyword stuffing and other unethical practices no longer worked. With the risk of being banned from search engines for using these tactics, SEO evolved to work with search engines instead of attempting to outsmart them. This meant that the entire way that SEO was conducted had to be altered to fit the rules laid forth by search engines. This continues to remain a priority in the industry as search engines upgrade and make changes throughout the years. Today, SEO is a booming industry that focuses on white-hat tactics in efforts to provide users with the most informative content through the Search Engine Results Page (SERP).

By examining a brief history and the evolution of SEO, it is clear that it will continue to be a valuable asset for many years to come.

Sources:

https://moz.com/ugc/the-brief-history-of-seo

http://searchengineland.com/evolution-seo-trends-25-years-223424/

http://www.thehistoryofseo.com/

TVision software, which is a combination of Xbox Kinect and its own #technology, reports more specific numbers to its clients so they can better target #advertising and create content that keeps viewers more attentive.

This is another example of what we discussed earlier this year when I brought you the “Television Retargeting“, but it is the first time that we are seeing the technology piggy back on 3rd party hardware such as Microsoft’s Xbox. Going forward expect to see the number of articles regarding the retargeting of consumers from digital to television and from television to #online advertising continue to increase, especially with the recent announcement of mobile advertising’s growth by 2018.

If you’d like to read the entire article regarding TVision Insights, you can see it here.

These figures place mobile at nearly 90% of all NEW advertising money in the global market. This accelerated growth places mobile advertising as the second largest advertising media format behind television, which is expected to generate $206 billion in revenue in 2015. This meteoric rise in digital advertising spend is also helped by a diminishing global growth for TV in developed markets. In fact, according to Vincent Letang from Magna Global, television growth in some developed markets is actually stagnate.

The prospect that digital advertising would capture more dollars than television has become an inevitably in recent years as the number of mobile devices currently used by consumers continues to increase at a mind blowing rate and advertisers slowly shifted their dollars from their print budgets to their digital ad purchases. The prediction by ZenithOptimedia is reinforced by recent data collected from Counselor’s State of the Industry study which found that over 54% of all businesses currently have a “mobile friendly” version of their site indicating that the the global economy as a whole has already created a significant platform for the proliferation of these new online ads. An important fact to consider with this trend is that the bulk of the format for these new digital ads are skewed toward online video, such as pre-rolls and social media platforms rather than conventional search and display ads. Savvy marketers will have their work cut out for them as they decide where and how this massive increase in digital ad budgets should be spent.

Odds are your home is one of the 90 million homes that has at least one DVR or set top box in a living room or bedroom recording your favorite shows, which is incredibly convenient.  What you may not have realized is that some of these same boxes also allow the cable and satellite providers to record what shows air on the TVs in your home as well.  Marketers can then combine that information with other publicly available demographic data and segment their target audiences with laser like precision.  Companies like Simulmedia aggregate the set top box data from millions of Americans to help companies target consumers watching “long tail” cable inventory, or shows that are generally cheaper than prime time hits but have an almost cult like following.  For example, a 30 second spot on a “The Today Show” or “Good Morning America” might go for around $43,000, compare that to a “long tail” like “Big Cat Diaries” which also runs mornings for around $650.  The difference is not just the price point, it’s the information about the viewer.  The “Good Morning America” buy offers mass reach, but the “Big Cat Diaries” buy has precision.  In short,  you end up paying less and you know the right person is watching.  It’s king of like choosing between a shotgun or a rifle.

Up until now, the television industry has been in the stone age when it comes to ad-targeting compared to online services.  We can place online ads and segment customers not just based on age, and gender.  We can identify age, gender, geographic location, shopping habits, websites visited, social media habits, and the list goes on.  That kind of precision is one of the reasons that digital ad spends are expected to reach $82 billion by 21018 according to eMarketer.

Companies like Simulmedia began springing up a few years ago as set top box makers began licensing out their data and the result so far has taken place in the background where an advertiser has swapped out the Cheez-It  commercial for Special K.  However, now that Pandora’s box has been opened on your television sets, the next generation of set top boxes may very well begin allowing advertisers to show specific commercials by individual box in the house.  Combine that with the recent announcement of Verizon’s “supercookie” tracking program in January of this past year and it’s not hard to imagine that Zappos display ad following you from your computer to your phone to your tv.

Instead, we would likely target all households with an income between $100,000 and $250,000 within 30 miles of the store with an emphasis on registered owners driving our brand.  An even better solution would be to analyse our previous sales to pinpoint the top producing zip codes and determine how far out from the store we needed to travel to reach 80% of our previous sales.  Next, we could suppress our existing customers from the list to ensure conquest sales and tailor a message to that audience.  Meanwhile, a parallel campaign could be run to identify opportunities from within the store’s customer database who had purchased more than 24 months ago and may be re-entering the market.  Although the general campaign to both segments would be some form of “Buy Now”, the delivery of this message should be drastically different given the context of each relationship.

Next week we’ll discuss Reach vs Frequency – The inverse curves

The stage is set when the principal at the local elementary school informs the editor that he can no longer distribute the paper at school until the content is approved.  Jimmy, the editor, refuses and instead begins to deliver it door to door much to the delight of parents who are not accustomed to receiving news without it being obstructed by ads.

“There’s no ads, no sponsored content, no links to click on,” says one parent before he spirals into a rant about the insanity of reading content online:

“Do you know how long it’s been since I was just able to sit back and read the news? I got so used to getting news off the internet, but I feel like I’m always trying to chase the news somehow. It’s like I’m in a black void trying to reach the news story, but then the next thing I know, I’m reading an ad for Geico. So I click out of that and try to read the news story, but it’s not a news story, it’s a slide show. And I’m looking at the worst celebrity plastic surgery jobs ever. So of course I want to see the next slide of plastic surgery gone wrong, so I hit the arrow. But then the arrow wasn’t the arrow for the next slide, it was to take me for an ad for face cream. I wanted to get a new story, but I’m reading about face cream, and I try to click out of it but the ad is following me. It’s following me all over the screen! No! So I click on the close button, but it wasn’t a close button, it was another slide show! And I just want to know what’s happening in the Middle East, but instead I’m looking at the ‘Top 10 scariest movies of all time’! And that’s not the arrow for the next slide, it’s for another ad. Ahhh! But this, this is just news, and I don’t get lost in all the bullshit.”

Here’s the clip of his rant.

https://youtu.be/IVfslRsNXUc

The episode ends on a cliffhanger, and there are still 2 more episodes left so I’m sure that they will wrap it up nicely, but the most important thing for us to learn as advertisers and marketers is that we must deliver quality content and not interrupt what someone is interested in, but instead BE what someone is interested in.

Shorter Ads win!
Consumers actually ranked the length of a video over the quality of the video ad experience.  Make sure that you are 30 seconds or less.

Be Flexible – Be Everywhere!
Mobile doesn’t just mean phone.  Make sure that your content is running cross platform and most importantly segmenting audiences.

When people are viewing the same message across multiple devices through retargeting and audience segmentation, the message has a much greater potential to stick.  Today, it is all about translating your brand story across multiple devices, platforms, and mediums and video should be a staple in any campaign.

To read more about the impact of mobile video consumption by millennials check out Andrew Snyder’s recent article on AdWeek.

Earlier this week the ad tech company AppNexus announced what it described as a major innovation: It would allow advertisers to pay only for those digital ads that are actually seen by people. To those uninitiated in the ways of programmatic advertising, this might seem like table stakes. Given all the talk about sophisticated tracking and targeting associated with digital ads, finding out which ones get viewed should be simple. But most industry studies estimate that only about half of digital ads are seen by real people.
AppNexus is not the only company trying to change that. Last month Google said advertisers using the Google Display Network wouldn’t be charged if their ads weren’t seen by people, and this week it began allowing third-party auditors to double-check Google’s own claims about the viewability of ads on YouTube. Facebook recently made a similar move. With the ad tech companies getting in line, it would seem the days of paying for digital ads no one sees are almost over.  Read More

Online marketing often focuses on one area of attraction, and that is new visitors. While that’s an obvious and essential approach, and one that you should never lose focus on, there is one market segment that is passing many marketers by: the in-market buyers segment.

In-market buyers are those prospects who are visiting a website frequently because they are actively considering the purchase of a product or service. These are among the hottest leads you can hope to attract, and it’s important that you hit them with the right marketing before they go to a competitor, or change their mind.

Every good marketing plan should include a section dedicated to “in-market” or “now” customers. But how do you know that you have an in-market audience to play to, and what can you do to convert these visitors into customers?

Retarget With Google

Tools like Google’s in-market audiences feature can help you get closer to your goals. This feature allows you to create display campaigns so that you can reach prospects further up the sales funnel. By tailoring your ads for this specific subset of visitors, you have a better chance of optimizing your conversions. Retargeting, or remarketing in this way, helps to remind interested consumers about your brand by connecting them to your ads.

Let’s say a potential car buyer visits the same car website over a matter of a few hours, or a couple of days. The same prospect has also been looking at car reviews and car comparison sites. That’s a hot lead right there. Google collects this data, making it easier for marketers to tailor their ads and display frequency for this subset of in-market buyers.

The Direct Approach

In-market data can also help you to define precise direct marketing campaigns that make growing or building a brand that much easier. For example, when you know who your in-market buyers are, whether through data collection or sign-ups to your website, you can target them with marketing that is designed for prospects further up the sales funnel. If we use the car buyer analogy above, examples might include an exclusive discount on the exact model they are looking for, technical information about the model, or an email inviting them for a free test drive. When you know who to play to and when, the remarketing possibilities are endless.

Final Thoughts

Improving your reach to potential customers who are actively researching and browsing the products or services you sell is one of the most powerful search marketing strategies you can use. By identifying and targeting those visitors who have demonstrated their intent to purchase, you raise your chances of conversion exponentially.