The most popular way for someone to find a website is by going through a search engine. Google is the most popular, so it’s important to target their results more than other search engines. Here are some incredible stats about search engines that you may not know:
- 75% of Americans use search engines on a regular basis.
- 56% of all Americans using one every single day.
- 40% of all search engine searches are for local businesses and services.
- 54% of Americans regularly use the Internet instead of the phone book to find local services
- 92% of all local searches will eventually convert into a sale
The whole search engine industry used to be about very short “keywords” that would lead people to finding the website they were looking for. Everyone used to simply type things like “New York Real Estate” into a search engine, check out the first few results and then make a decision.
However, these days consumers are becoming much better at searching with Google, so keywords have progressively become longer in order to return more relevant results. For example, instead of just “New York Real Estate” which may give us some good websites for that keyword, we might be looking for something a little more specific.
Therefore, we might type “New York Low Price Apartments”. The reason we would do this is because we’re fed up searching through websites that don’t offer us the chance to see any low price housing, so we’re searching using Google rather than simply clicking on various websites.
This sort of mentality has revitalized the world of small businesses online. Instead of just searching for a product or service, people now search for a niche product or service in a particular area. This means that, instead of massive chains dominating the search results, small business websites are flourishing.
Local Internet Marketing is something that requires a great deal of experience and expertise. Without it, you simply aren’t going to know how to get your found on the front page of Google when local customers search for your product or service. The competition won’t be that fierce considering you will be competing for more specific keywords, but you’ll still need to be able to be found by those local consumers in order to succeed.
With more people moving towards local searches, you’re going to need to target your Internet Marketing to specific keywords and areas. If you fail to do this, you’ll be competing with the major players in your industry nationally, and it’s a battle you almost certainly won’t win.