Jeff Paul - Straight Talk On Biz - Honest Reviews on the Latest Business Opportunities

Search Engine Strategies in San Jose this year features a special session focused on Local 2.0, the evolution of Local Search 2.0. Local Search comprises a significant chunk of online visitor engagement which includes online mapping, shopping engines, and directories. I had a chance to catch up with Peter Hutto, Vice President, Business Development and Sales at Local.com to get some insight on his session regarding Local 2.0 at SES San Jose. Read our chat below:

[Manoj]: How important is it for marketers to include local search as a part of their total online strategy?

[Peter Hutto]: There is a local market component for almost all business to business or business to consumer products or services. Today, the vast majority of products or services can be sourced locally - in fact approximately 80% of all goods and services are purchased locally. There is no question that it is extremely important for all marketers to incorporate a local online marketing strategy.

[Manoj]: What percentage of online searches are local?

[Peter Hutto]: This statistic is often debated. When actually trying to determine the percentage of local searches you need to consider both explicit and implicit searches. The explicit searches are when someone actually specifies the "where" in their search. For example, "used cars in Palo Alto" or "shoe repair in Irvine." However, there are many searches that are implicitly local, when local intent is implied. For example when looking for "plumbers", "carpet cleaners", "marriage counseling" and many other products and services, a geography does not need to be specified since these services are implicitly tied to a local geography. Almost all local search platforms will geo-target the IP address and append that to the search query. Therefore when considering the percentage of online searches that are local, you should look at the combined number of both explicit and implicit searches. It is estimated that overall local search accounts for about 20-25 percent of online searches.

[Manoj]: How does a local search engine such as Local.com provide a unique search experience compared to Google/Yahoo Local?

[Peter Hutto]: Google and Yahoo are both broad in their focus and are not entirely focused on local search. Local.com offers a streamlined user interface and provides users with targeted, highly relevant local search results. These results include special offers, user ratings and reviews, local businesses' website links, maps, driving directions, photos and more. Consumers can find all of the information they need on local businesses, products and services in one place.

[Manoj]: What is required to implement a local search strategy at Local.com?

[Peter Hutto]: Just give us a call (888-857-6722) or go to http://www.local.com/ to get started. Our sales team can work directly with local business owners and provide them with search targeting metrics- by geography, keyword and category. Ads on Local.com can be up in one day, often within hours. We also have a client services team who specializes in campaign optimization and keyword build out. Advertising on Local.com is cost effective for local businesses and doesn't require extensive resources.

[Manoj]: What businesses flourish the most in local search?

[Peter Hutto]: There are 3 interesting segments that are starting to take off. We are seeing solid growth with search in traditional "trade services" categories, which have typically been the domain of the Yellow Page publishers like plumbers, auto repair, etc. We are also seeing an increase in the "professional services" categories like attorneys, accountants, financial consultants, etc. The bigger and typically consumer focused (vs. corporate) firms in these categories have been doing search for a while but there is a strong influx of newer and smaller firms who in the past did very little marketing. Finally almost all new companies are now considering search right out of the gate. The new business owner is very concerned about getting new customers and the majority are seriously considering local search because it is much more effective AND affordable than their traditional advertising channels like the Yellow Pages. The ROI and targeting capabilities of local search are nearly unmatched.

We often deal with clients that are planning to "revamp" their sites with Flash, with SEO having already generated tremendous gains in their sales. The thing that we most dread to hear is that they've hired an experienced "Flash designer" that will be taking their websites to the "next level." Unfortunately, that "next level" is often the basement - at least in terms of SEO results.

The bottom line here is that a site built entirely in Flash still faces huge obstacles. While there have been recent moves from Google and Yahoo! to try to index the content from combined Flash/SEO sites, those moves have not yet, from my experience, translated into SEO results or success (at least when compared to html sites).

We should make a distinction here between embedded Flash and sites built entirely from Flash. For example, a site that contains Flash elements but still contains basic html elements will not overly suffer, as the Flash element (usually a movie in a box on the homepage or elsewhere) is externalized. A search engine spider will generally not try to parse through any files that have been externalized in the code - they will only index the code that is readily apparent on the source page.

However, from an SEO results perspective, there are still major issues with sites that are built entirely in Flash, and SEO is normally the first thing that suffers. First of all, the URL generally never changes no matter where people navigate on the site. As any decent SEO practitioner will tell you, every page of your site is a potential entry page for a search engine. With a site built in Flash, SEO suffers even more as you only have one potential entry page, which is the main URL. This cuts off dozens, hundreds, or thousands of potential pages that could otherwise be indexed in Google and Yahoo! (and all other engines). When your only potential entry page in the search engine listings is your home page, it is very difficult to target a wide assortment of keyphrases, potentially eliminating SEO results or rankings.

Content is another very large issue. Search engines rank pages based upon a number of criteria, but one of the most important to SEO results is the text that they can "understand" on individual pages. At present, search engines read primarily html text (although some also read text in the PDF format) - which means that if you decide that you want to use a rare and fancy font that must be displayed in graphic form (since the visitor may not have that particular font available on his or her computer while browsing), the engine will not read the text and therefore will not know what the page is about, which could harm SEO results. Naturally, this also includes any of the text included in Flash. While Yahoo! and Google have recently announced enhanced capabilities in reading content within Flash, I have not personally seen that translate into great SEO results for competitive keyphrases.

One other emerging aspect is that as search evolves, more and more people are looking for information while they are away from their computers. Many mobile devices are currently incapable of displaying Flash content, although recent moves by Adobe to make "Flash Lite" available may change this. However, it remains to be seen whether people that are seeking information on a mobile device will even want to navigate through Flash, especially if they can get the information that they seek from a fast-loading html page. In my opinion, lean html content will be at a premium when a company is trying to target a mobile audience.

Despite the difficulties, it is not the intent of this article to assert that Flash and SEO will always be incompatible - merely that it is the state of the current situation. You can find many differing opinions on mixing Flash and SEO on the internet, but the true test is to try to find a Flash site (that is to say, a site built entirely in Flash) that you admire and see if it ranks well in SEO results for 50+ competitive terms that are related to the specific business (in Google or Yahoo!). In my experience, such sites that combine Flash and SEO are nearly impossible to find. If anyone out there knows of one, please let me know.

Flash can be, and often is, used for great effect on the internet, in interactive kiosks, and in many other applications. I'm not from the "any Flash is bad" school, although I do think that many Flash practitioners tend to get a little carried away and often ignore basic usability issues. However, sites built entirely in Flash with SEO elements are still, again in my opinion, like oil and water - Flash and SEO are obviously individually useful, but they don't mix well. Until they do, I will continue to advise my clients not to build sites entirely out of Flash - or, at the very least, to have an alternate html option for search engine and user preference purposes. At the end of the day, many clients are surprised to find out how many visitors actually prefer "old school" html.

What do Google, SERPs and Cartier all have in common? They are all "In the News" this week. Sage encourages us to check out Google's new tool Google Insights as well as Cartier's My Space page. Google Insights allows you to search for what people are well, searching for and then see both a geographic breakdown and time line of of popularity by percentage. Cartier's appearance on My Space adds credibility to an online community that was previously viewed as the "slums." Sage also highlights several SERP-related studies and articles, discussing the importance of being in the top ten while questioning the overall weight of SERP reports.

Rachel, Stoney and I are out here in sunny San Jose at Search Engine Strategies this week. While we're soaking up the info and crafting new content to send your way when we get back, I thought I'd provide a daily summary of the best posts recapping yesterday's show.

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