Mobile + Local Search = Small Business Future

Mobile is the future. Period. If your a small business and have no mobile (local search) presence on the web, you need to "get in the game". Some new staggering trends are emerging that should be a wake up call to all businesses.

• The Mobile revolution is revolutionizing commerce via location-based services (Foursquare), discounted offers (Groupon), Instant local and online price comparison sites are driving online and walk-in purchases. Huge Android (615% year/year & iPhone (86% year/year) Growth (Source: Canalys estimates).
• Mobile Growth (Smartphone, iPad, Tablet) fueled by better processing power, improved user interface, smaller form factor and low prices.
• Networks (4G) getting faster.
• Fun to use Twitter, Facebook, Yelp, Foursquare, etc. 50% of all total Twitter active users are on smartphones. 200M Facebook active users are mobile.
• Mobile now real-time connectivity 24x7 in palm of your hand.
• Global Mobile data (internet) traffic will grow 26x over next 5 years (Source: Cisco VNI data Forecast).

Most retail, small business, and commerce websites need to be mobile optimized. When a user is pulling up your website, all the menus pages must be viewable on the screen immediately. Highlight the address and driving directions. If you can afford it, differentiate yourself from your competitors and develop an iPhone and/or Android app that has value-add. Sign up for local search listings (Google Places, Bing Local, Yahoo mobile, YP.com) and get a Social media presence. Today's mobile phones offer a smart way for small business owners to engage their customers whether its in real time (social networks) or pushed (via online coupons/discounts).

Google adds Social Media Data to Search Rankings

Most SEO's know this bit of information already... but for the rest of you, Google uses social media data in its search engine rankings. The question is WHAT TYPE OF DATA? For any corporation or small company it is ESSENTIAL that you add social media to your marketing strategy.

Why? Precisely because Google uses these social media feeds in its SERPs. Google is constantly changing the way it evaluates social media. Most social media spam is filtered out. They use Twitter & Facebook quality links in ranking = normal useful  links.They also try to find the "reputation" of the author and only the social media profiles that can be crawled and that are public are taken into account. So if your promoting your business via social media, do not change your profile to "private". Trending items or "social buzz" are used as a quality signal. So if your "tweet" makes it in the Google real times results, your doing great! Getting reciprocal followers or adding lots of followers do not help much so dont go overboard and add everyone on the planet.

Social media links can help you speed up your website’s indexing and they are taken into account by search engines such as Google. In short, Google evaluates the quality of the post and the authority of the author. With Facebook, the shared links from Fan pages are treated similarly to Twitter links. No links from personal walls are used in rankings. Social media has become more important in the contribution of search engine rankings and it is crucial that you use it appropriately.

Bing to Index Facebook Data

Last week, Microsoft Bing (search engine) and Facebook announced a partnereship that will give search results a social media flavor. This new partnership will allow people who use Facebook to see Bing search results that incorporate information from their friends.  Bing will now be able to search your friends (likes/dislikes) and deliver you a more custom search result. This will also help you find people (using facebook data) as well as recommendations on products and services.

This could be good or bad. Good if you want a more personalized social media result. Bad is you want to be found or your personal Facebook information out in the public domain.

This new social search integration has numerous SEO opportunities for small and large businesses. This integration can also be a good tool in reputation management. Bottom line: This deal symbolized the importance of social media in search results. This is just a first step, in the future most all social media platforms (data) will be indexed by some or all of the search engines. That's why online marketing tools such as corporate twitter accounts, Facebook fan pages, etc., will become a crucial part of any online marketing strategy.