Online Local Search Trends 2010

Why Optimize Your Business for Online Local Search?

Example of How Local Search Optimization Can Rank Local Businesses

Google, Yahoo, MSN/Bing and the other search engines have revolutionized the way we learn, how we collaborate, how we shop, and in general have helped billions of people around the world harness the full power of
the internet, video and mobile phones in past 10 years.

Today we see well over 10 billion unique searches are done each month, and that’s only counting searches in the USA!
Of those US based searches, 40% of queries have Local intent :

• 5% of the searchers use the city and/or state name
• 2% use informal terms, like neighborhoods when they search
• 0.5% use zip codes On Yahoo alone
• 100 Million unique visitors per month search with “local intent” .

We can permit an estimate that there are HALF A BILLION unique Local searches per month on Google, based on Yahoo’s ~15% market share (though Google has not released “hard numbers” about its average Local Search volume).

We’ve seen both Google and Yahoo make dramatic changes in the way they return search-results in 2008, and all the trends point to Local, with Google Wave on the way.

On top of that data, mobile search has taken off in 2009 and will increase in 2010.
Mobile searches are primarily going to pull their results from Local Search Engines.

The potential to attract new customers via Local Search is enormous.

Already now local search results show users different SERP results depending upon their IP address location. With mobile phones it is much easier for Google to know the exact location of the user and serve him or her very targeted local search results.

This is a huge opportunity for fast moving small businesses and local businesses such as hair stylists, doctors, lawyers, electricians, restaurants etc.

It is important to get lots of inlinks and content rich links pointing to your website with the right keywords, to boost your rankings and better compete in tough economy times for each customer.

Below is an example of some keyword variations you can use on your website and homepage content to better score for local search listing:

For example, if you sell organic food in Boston…

1. Organic Food Boston
2. OrganicFood Boston ma
3. OrganicFood in Boston
4. OrganicFood Cambridge (the neighbourhood it is in) Boston
5. OrganicFood 02109 (zip code)
6. OrganicFood Cambridge St. (the street it is on) Boston
7. Organic Health Food Boston
8. Local Organic Food Boston
9. Address of your shop
10. Phone number of your shop, in-case they search for it.

Let Us Optimize Your Business Online For Local Search >>