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Local search marketing tactics need to consider the needs of the desired customer base, and where they might go to satisfy those needs.

SES London: Touching Your Local Customers

WebProNews guest correspondent Debbie Harrison has been providing us with a look back at the proceedings at Search Engine Strategies in London. ComScore tells marketers that 40 percent of all online searches have to do with local information. People want to find something in or near where they live on a regular basis. Touch Local's Grant Muckle emphasized that search engines like Google and Yahoo are not the only places to play with local ads online. Yellow pages type directories and smaller, local search engines get attention too. That may be hard to believe considering Google's always-impressive share of search engine click-throughs, 64 percent by Nielsen//NetRatings January 2006 figures. Google is where local advertisers need to be, plain and simple. Not just on the relatively lightly-used Maps and Local niches, but the main Google search that Internet users know so well. The rationale for focusing on Google comes from Google's increasing attention paid to local search. On Google's search pages as Muckle demonstrated, a search for a particular business in a location may bring up a One Box of local results. If the local business appears there, it's going to get a lot more attention from searchers. The higher in the organic search results a website appears, the more likely it will get someone to click through to it. Getting a higher organic result can take time, and a business may want to get faster results. That's where PPC advertising comes in, and why Google has a US share price in the $470 range – pay for performance. A high PPC listing in the paid search results can be the key to fast results. But advertisers should take care that they offer the visitor a quality experience on landing at their websites. Google has been looking closer at this and is charging accordingly for lower-quality results. Potential customers will think of ways to look for a website that the webmaster never considered. Don't try to out think the customer. Look at how referrals have been coming to the site and make sure the right quality content is in place to greet them. Those yellow pages mentioned earlier have their place in online promotion, even if the business is purely offline. Directories allow local targeting without needing a website, and Muckle said a third of directory advertisers registered with his Touch Local firm do not have one. The various yellow pages have partnerships with the local efforts of major search engines. Google and Yell, Yahoo and BT, and MSN and Thomson cover a lot of what consumers are already familiar with and may be using to influence their online searches. Tracking success means more than just increased site traffic. Customers may start their research online, but comScore said in a report that 64 percent of the purchases resulting from an online search finished up offline. Understanding how visitors convert will make search marketing and optimization efforts all the more valuable, according to Muckle. --- Add to Del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit | Furl Bookmark WebProNews: