One of the most efficient forms of online marketing is Paid Search. It generates one of the highest ROIs across digital channels and is an effective tool for both brand awareness and customer acquisition. While paid search can prove to be costly for small business owners, a cheaper option is optimizing their webpages for organic search. However, this space has become more and more saturated and harder to obtain the valuable top real estate.
With all this competition, how can a small business break through the clutter? Some say that optimizing for local search is now the low hanging fruit. A recent article in iMedia Connection depicts this situation in the following excerpt:
"Take a look at a search query for "gift shops San Diego," which shows results for Google Places above the routine 10-pack of web page results (an evolution from a phase when several local results would take up 30 to 40 percent of the 10-pack). Because of the convenience, many searchers click here first. This means that no matter how well organically optimized you are, and even if you're sitting on the top organic search spot, you might receive fewer and fewer visits from searchers who seem to favor local results. That's why it's important for local businesses to be optimized for both local and organic search results."
It will be interesting to see what Google will do to change the landscape of search as mobile search becomes increasingly popular. Perhaps local search may become so large that it will have its own sub-segment similar to Google images. In any case, if you own your small business, don't forget to optimize locally.
For steps on how to optimize your website for local search : http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/30056.asp
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