go ahead and contact us today to find out
It’s been happening for some time now. We have been watching the off-shore internet marketing trends with search behaviour and have been following the patterns.
Years ago (before Google Adwords tool), when we started tracking search behaviour and volume around certain keywords, there was hardly a time when a local search in Google – eg ‘Auckland tyres’ would even rate a mention in terms of search volume. That’s changed.
For the sake of convenience and relevance from consumers, local search in search engines is BIG. It’s also a big opportunity for businesses – big and small – assuming your catchment of customers comes from the local regional market.
This means that search engine optimisation is even more important as part of the overal marketing mix than ever. Sure, it’s not the silver bullet (neither is social media or Adwords/PPC) however it IS still an important part.
Internet Marketing SEO Convergence
Marketing integration between offline and online – or what I call ‘convergence’ – will become a growing focus for businesses who want to maintain the edge but who also want to achieve a higher measureable ROI for their marketing dollar.
It starts with local search. This means that if you own a cake shop in Auckland that you need to explore what’s involved in getting your business ranked#1 Google for the keywords ‘cake shop Auckland’. Nutting out the return on investment, the strategy and other factors is step one of the process. There are also other considerations like Google places optimisation and your website conversion optimisation. It’s simple stuff – but not always easy to do.
To me, the performance of Yellow and Localist has been poor when it comes to actual organic SEO performance. Do you see these ‘neighbourhood sites’ ranked in the top 3 (or even page one) in Google? Is it just me, or have they missed something in the internet marketing mix or just chosen to ignore it? Spending a ship-load of money offline (TVC, radio, print) to market the ‘brand’ in order to drive people online smells a bit like the old Ferrit. And we all know what happened there!
Dumb Luck
Most websites winning in Google organic rankings in their regional categories or niches are doing so by ‘dumb luck’. They are vulnerable to their competitors. Especially thos ewho use our services. We have a strategic, low cost, high value offering that takes into account this ‘convergence’ idea I discussed earlier. And, by the same token, businesses who are already accidental winners can strengthen their position by doing the same thing. In fact, they must.
There has never been a better time to create and maintain an online ‘barrier-to-entry’ strategy with local search. I think getting to Google #1 in your local area for what you sell is an unexploited opportunity.
It wont last.
If you need help to understand how your business can benefit from local search, go ahead and contact me for a no-obligation discussion.
