Analyst: Mobile To Overtake PC For Local Search By 2015

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Analyst firm BIA/Kelsey has projected that by 2015 there will be more local searches coming from smartphones than PCs  in the US. It’s a bold prediction and one that has logical merit: smartphone search volumes are growing faster than search on the PC. While local search is at least 20 percent of total queries on the PC (per Google) it’s at least 40 percent of smartphone queries, also according to Google.

Mobile vs. PC Local Search Volumes (BIA/Kelsey Forecast)

Source: BIA/Kelsey (2012)

In some categories such as restaurants and travel, mobile searches represent 15 – 20 percent or more of overall query volumes. There can be no dispute that mobile search is now a huge phenomenon. But will it eclipse PC local search query volume in three years?

Let’s think out loud a bit, shall we?

50 Billion Local Queries on the PC

Using the Google 20 percent figure as a guide we can estimate that in March there were approximately 3.7 billion local searches on the PC in the US. In the absence of significant month over month growth that would translate into roughly 44 billion annual local queries coming through US search engines on the PC. But let’s assume modest local query growth and say there will be something on the order of 50 billion local queries on search engines in the US in 2012. (The number could be higher of course.)

Now, how many local-mobile search queries are there?

Answering that question depends on whether we include app-based local search (e.g., Yelp, Foursquare, yellow pages apps, Urbanspoon, etc.). Data from comScore, Localeze and 15 Miles finds that half of US mobile consumers (survey respondents) say they use apps at least some of the time for local search. However, we don’t know the frequency or the volume of in-app search because no one is really tracking those numbers today.

Let’s limit the definition of “mobile search” to browser based search through one of the major US search engines. However right now Google represents about 95 percent of the total “mobile search” market in the US.

12 Billion Local Queries on Smartphones

If there are roughly 125 million smartphone owners in the US (50 percent of 250 million mobile subscribers) and a large number of smartphone owners do an average 20 mobile searches per month, then there are something like 30 billion mobile searches annually right now in the US. (Let’s leave out tablets of this discussion.) If 40 percent of that overall mobile search volume is local, that would mean roughly 12 billion annual local searches on mobile devices. (This number may be slightly inflated today.)

We can assume growth in smartphone penetration and some growth in per-person mobile search query volume — though this assumption is a wild card for several reasons. It also may be a bit risky to assume that the percentage of overall mobile search that is local will continue to climb significantly, though it could reach 50 percent (which is what Microsoft says it is today on Bing).

Let’s assume smartphone penetration reaches 75 percent (say 187 million people) and each person does 40 mobile searches per month (doubling our per-person monthly query assumption). That translates into 90 billion annual mobile queries. If the local percentage of mobile search volume grows to 50 percent, we’d have 45 billion annual local-mobile search queries.

That event would get us pretty close to PC-mobile local search parity, if there weren’t dramatic PC local search growth. However a number of factual assumptions must come to pass. And the future is not guaranteed to look like the past.

What If the Paradigm Shifts?

The proliferation of mobile apps (whether native or HTML5) combined with the rise of Siri and other voice assistants could mean that browser-based mobile search doesn’t grow much over time. Google has cited figures of 130 percent year over year mobile search growth. But there are reasons to believe that the current PC search model on the smartphone small screen will be supplanted, at least to some degree in the relatively near future.

More than a couple of years out it all starts to get very speculative, since mobile is evolving so rapidly. However, regardless of whether the BIA forecast comes true in three years — I don’t think it can without including in-app search volumes — it’s certainly directionally accurate. And one day in the relatively near future it’s clear that people will be using mobile devices to find local information as much or more than their laptops and desktop PCs.

What does it mean “not set” in Google Analytics reports??

by Poornesh Mishra 

We always getting this question when we look at our Google Analytics keyword traffic and see “not set” or “not provided,” what does it mean?

When you see “not provided” in your keyword reports it tells you that someone was either logged into their Google account when they were searching or that they were using a browser that is specifically keeping their searches hidden (Chrome does this and calls it “incognito” mode).

In an effort to adopt stronger security standards as they move into the realm of personalized search results, in late 2011 Google started encrypting searches. When people are logged into their Google account, the URL changes from http to https and Google Analytics will still capture that your visit came from Google but it no longer tracks each individual query and the associated information.  The reason we have seen more and more “not provided” keyword traffic in our analytics is most likely due to the growth of people using Google accounts both personally as well as professionally.

Google describes the “not set” data as a placeholder when it does not have the information for a particular dimension. Many times, in our experience, it’s found in the Advertising reports. We love this support page created by Google Analytics that describes various items to review in order to get access to the “not set” data in your reports.

It has created quite a headache for many internet marketing professionals who rely on keyword data to understand site traffic and improve organic rankings and paid performance. A blog posted by Kissmetrics has been very helpful in learning new ways to “unlock” the “not provided” data set in your Google Analytics.

One of the most common ways marketers are overcoming this challenge is by utilizing Webmaster Tools and integrating that data with Google Analytics. This way you are able to get a better overview of keywords that are bringing people to the website under the “Search Queries” menu; as well as organic impressions your website receives for particular keywords.

What Are The Characteristics Of Penguin 2.0 & Why Should I Care?

If you’re a big brand owner, then you’ve likely dealt with the impact from Penguin 1.0 and its updates in the past. In particular, you may have discovered that your legacy backlink profile was causing serious ranking issues. If so, you’ve no doubt struggled to replace your old link building strategies with more effective, ethical and content-led ones.

Penguin 2.0 is a “more comprehensive” and “deeper targeting” (Matt Cutts) update that was aimed at explicitly black-hat techniques — so, if you’re still struggling from Penguin 1.0, your woes have just gotten worse.

Matt lays down the law.

Many big brand websites have been around for quite some time and have built up a hugely varied backlink profile over the years. This often includes links that, if built today, would be seen as black hat. These don’t technically fall afoul of Penguin 2.0, as Google has gone on record to state that they don’t retroactively apply spam penalties to sites for links that become black hat after a guideline change. (However, your rankings can still drop significantly due to these low-quality inbound links being given less weight.)

This makes auditing a big-brand backlink profile extremely difficult. You need to match up the date when a backlink was first detected to a record of what Google (and Bing, Yahoo!, Naver, Yandex and Baidu) stated was allowable at the time. That backlink “event calendar” can then be used for a more sophisticated bulk audit to identify offending backlinks where a penalty has been levied.

So, if you’ve been building links that are in contravention of Google Webmaster Guidelines, then you now have even more reason to stop. You also have a reason to start auditing anything that’s been built in the past that was unethical and disavow it.

For big brands, this also puts management of your SEO more closely in your control. It’s a lot easier for a single person to effect change through a Google account than for a group of internal content teams or development agencies to implement technical and on-page changes or develop stand-alone “content” sites that serve no purpose (other than to provide external links that would be more useful within the main site domain).

Sophisticated Backlink Analysis Started, What’s The Competitive Advantage?

Well, digging into Matt’s comments a bit further, there are a few standout items that will allow for optimisation. In particular:

• “Authorities” in niches will see their visibility increased in the next update round.

This impacts authority optimisation: the use of content strategies that leverage authoritative voices in your market are now much more valuable. This is an extension of Google’s doubling-down on gathering more social signals and incorporating them into Google’s main algorithm — beyond simply surfacing the benefits to logged-in searchers.

For big brands, this means that outsourcing your content creation entirely to PRs or SEM agencies will now be less effective. Instead, they will have to implement more integrated campaigns, centered around authoritative content that is set up to deliver SEO benefit to the site.

Project management will be more highly valued in agencies, as that’s the key to delivering this type of integrated content strategy. It bodes well for the health of the SEO industry as a whole that the authenticity of a voice is given further weight, as it incentivises the right behaviour for the benefit of the searcher (and therefore, the consumer).

To wrap up on the prevailing trend for big brand SEO: get control of your existing SEO efforts; and, if you haven’t already, get your team working to a coherent content strategy that uses your thought leaders’ own voices to get the good word out about your brand.

Then, follow that up with marketing and social promotion that serves a dual purpose for SEO and brand awareness.

Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.

If you ignore the bad spacing and read the parts that I bolded, someone sent me a spam email offering money to get links that pass PageRank. That’s a clear violation of Google’s quality guidelines. Moreover, we’ve been seeing more and more reports of “guest blogging” that are really “paying for PageRank” or worse, “we’ll insert some spammy links on your blog without you realizing it.”
Ultimately, this is why we can’t have nice things in the SEO space: a trend starts out as authentic. Then more and more people pile on until only the barest trace of legitimate behavior remains. We’ve reached the point in the downward spiral where people are hawking “guest post outsourcing” and writing articles about “how to automate guest blogging.”

So stick a fork in it: guest blogging is done; it’s just gotten too spammy. In general I wouldn’t recommend accepting a guest blog post unless you are willing to vouch for someone personally or know them well. Likewise, I wouldn’t recommend relying on guest posting, guest blogging sites, or guest blogging SEO as a linkbuilding strategy.

How To Hire The Right SEO Services For You Business?

How To Hire The Right SEO Services For You Business?

Let us face it – most businesses have no clue about what Search Engine Optimization(SEO) is  and what it entails. It is not something that anybody should be ashamed of; after all just because you have started an online business does not mean that you should know everything about optimizing the site for search engines.  You can read up about it on the web and even try your hand at a few basic things in this regard. But once you get into the scope of activities that are involved and required in the SEO process, you may come to the conclusion that you are better off outsourcing  it. 

But then the question here is how to hire the right SEO services for you business? We have already established that you do not know that much about SEO, then how do you know what will work for you? Here are some simple and logical steps that you can follow to hire the SEO services that fit with your needs:

1.    Clear off the misconception that big is better: Often small businesses make the mistake of hiring a really big SEO firm. While this sounds good in theory, it does not work well. Why is that? One would think that the bigger the firm the better the services, right? Wrong! Simply put there would be a mismatch in the services you expect and the amount of importance they place on your relatively smaller account. You need to look at not only the size of the service provider but also the fit.

2.    Get more quotes and proposals: Do not make the mistake of going with the first firm that provides you a quotation. It could be true that this one meets all you needs but still a little time spent on looking at what others firms have to say will give you  a better picture with a wider perspective. A simple comparison between the scope of services offered by one firm with that of the other will put you in a better position to negotiate.

3.    Do ask for case studies and testimonials: While it is true that more proposals will give you more information, you also have to factor in the fact that everyone is going to be positive and upbeat about the kind of services they provide. You will not get to see the negative side or the practical impact of what their services can do from the proposal. To understand the depth of services a SEO firm can provide you need to look at testimonials and case studies. These will provide a more realistic picture of what the firm can do for you.

4.    Be clear on your expectations: When you are setting out hiring SEO services one of the things that you need to be clear on is your expectations from this exercise and the amount you are willing to spend. Without this the whole process will be a wasted exercise.

As you can see hiring the right SEO services is a simple yet logical process that requires some thought, consideration and research to be effective.

                                                                                                                      - Poornesh Mishra

The Activities Involved In Search Engine Marketing

The Activities Involved In Search Engine Marketing

There has been a lot of discussion about how important online marketing techniques are vital for the growth of a business online. One of the aspects of online marketing is the Search Engine Optimization process that is at the core of ensuring that your site shows up in organic searches. It is a free process that involves hours of painstaking, smart, well planned and continuous efforts to ensure that your site grows slowly and steadily towards being recognized as an authority in the given field. While all this is fine and dandy in as far as the health of the site is concerned one needs visitors to come to the site and get converted to sales for the business to be able to sustain itself.

That is when you step back from only SEO related activities and look at the overall picture – that of Search Engine Marketing.

Some of the steps that are part of Search Engine Marketing are:

1.    Creating a full description of your services in a way that is short but complete and covers all the pertinent details. While on the face of things this looks pretty simple, in reality it is not. The thing is drawing the line between knowing and liking your own business and the fact that you are writing for someone who does not know much about it. What this means is that many a time a business owner may be so absorbed in his or her own business that they may get too involved in the technical aspects of it instead of telling customers how they will benefit from this. Let us give you a simple example - Icecream is one product that we all consume. But imagine an owner of an icecream site waxing poetic about the Swiss technology machine used in the production of icecream. This does not mean anything to the buyer. Instead of saying Icecream produced using Swiss technology, you can tell the customer that the icecream feels creamy to taste without the calories, lasts longer etc.  This way the customer knows what is in it for them, which is more important than the details of how that happened.

2.    Updating and ensuring that online identity is alive: While having an online site is just the simple step, it is also important that your online identity reflects the latest information. In the online world people expect results, information and even gratification that is instant. This means as a online business owner you have to make sure that you online identity is up to date, is eminently approachable and also offers something that is useful for visitors to the site or the social media page. This is something that many online business owners do not realize and this reflects in their online identity. This can cost them in terms of reliability and credibility. The role of the SEM teams is to ensure that such lags are avoided.

Once you have the above given basic but very important aspects of SEM covered, you can start looking at a more detailed list of things that need to be done to improve the efficiency of your SEM activities 

                                                                                                               - Poornesh Mishra

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/business/13search.html?_r=2&adxnnl=1&emc=eta1&adxnnlx=1297627206-2nnH8iNawYWH+VcDBhmiEQ&