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According to the latest study conducted by BIA/Kelsey and ConStat, a whopping 97% of consumers are going online to search for products and services in their areas. For local businesses, these types of searches are the most important because they often result in a quick conversion, either with phone call or a visit to their physical store.

So how do local searches work in Google?

Google remains the top “go-to” search portal where consumers turn to find local businesses. To do a local search in Google, the consumer either adds a specific location to their search parameter (New York City, say), or Google will do it for her by returning search results based on her GPS coordinates. Search Engine Watch’s Linkdex recently report that 69% of the time, search results are significantly affected by the searcher’s geolocation, so if your business hasn’t claimed its Google+ page then you might be at a disadvantage.

Google Places is now Google+ Local

If you’ve been trying to make your site more visible through SEO and online marketing tactics for a while, you may remember listing your  business in what was used to be called Google Places. In early 2012, Google Places was replaced by Google+ Local, along with the conversion of some 80 million Google Places page to Google+ Local pages. With this change, what use to be a static “Place” page morphed to a more dynamic Google+ Local page, integrating more seamlessly with other Google products.

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According to Google research, “By 2013, more people will use their mobile phones than PCs to get online.”  Furthermore, if you haven’t been paying attention to what your site looks like on a mobile device, chances are you are sending your potential clients elsewhere.

What does a bad mobile experience can do to your business?  Here are some numbers from a recent survey:

• 61% of users said that they’d quickly moved to another site if they didn’t find what they were looking for right away.
• 79% of users will search for another site if they don’t like what they find on one site.
• Even if they like a business, 50% of users said they will use them less often if the website isn’t mobile-friendly
• 52% of users said that a bad mobile experience made them less likely to engage with a company

Whether you are just about to set-up your mobile site or are thinking of redesigning it, be sure to include the following key elements to help you gain advantage in the mobile world.

1. Make sure that your site is fast.  Most mobile users do their online tasks as they go about their day.  A simple design that loads fast and with content that is easy to read will help them keep on your page.  Some ways to make your mobile website load faster are to include only the pages and features that are important to mobile users (you can use your website analytics to determine this).  If possible, use bullet points instead of large block of texts and compress your images to keep them small.

2. Make sure your website design is mobile-friendly.  Mobile devices have smaller screens so be sure that your content is readable without straining your audience’s eyes.  Minimizing scrolling and making your buttons thumb-friendly will also help improve user-experience on your site.

3. Simplify your navigation. Have a clear navigation helps mobile users to easily find what they are looking for in your site.  Include a “Back” and “Home” button to make it easy to navigate between pages on your site and include search functionality if you have complex navigation and/or a content-rich site.
4. Give your audience the ability to take action. A lot of mobile users look for information about local businesses including where and how to find them, business hours and contact details.  Make sure to include this information in your site and provide a map and  directions.  ”Click-to-call,” SMS texting and email features will also enable visitors to get in touch immediately for any questions or inquiry.
5. Links to your social networks.  60% of mobile users use their phone for daily social network activity.  Amplify your presence by allowing visitors to engage with you and to share your brand message on social networks.

If you need help building your mobile site, Panoptic Online Marketing can help you.  We offer mobile websites starting at $400. This includes the mobile hosting, auto-sync with your original site, and mobile updates, ensuring your customers constantly have the best experience.  With great features including “click to call,” our mobile sites appeal to clients on smaller budgets who are looking to get the most bang for their buck.  No annual contract required.

Good advice from Google, for smaller websites.  In this ten-minute video, Google Developer Programs Tech Lead, Maile Ohye, offers ten basics for good onsite SEO.  If you do nothing else, do these things.

Panoptic’s Melissa Cahill presented at this weekend’s WordCamp New York City 2012.  The topic was “Do it Yourself SEO w/WordPress”  and the session proved to be tremendously popular — standing room only on Saturday and Mel was asked to repeat the presentation on Sunday.  And the room filled up on Sunday, too!

Below are the slides from the presentation.  Video is likely to be posted on the WPNYC.org site sometime this week, so keep an eye out.

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Last week a colleague of mine proposed, only half jokingly, that we  offer to help small businesses recover from the effects of the latest Google changes by removing all the bad links pointing back to their websites.  He was talking about “Penguin,” a recent upgrade to the all-powerful Google search engine algorithm.  In a nutshell, Penguin knocked down the rankings of sites that had spammy link profiles — that is, Google penalized websites that, among other things, tried to “game the system.” One of the biggest factors contributing to your website’s ranking are the number of “backlinks” or “incoming links” — links that points back to a page on your site from somebody else’s site. Search engines assume that the more links that point to your website, the more useful your website must be. Makes sense, right? But in the race to secure those precious top rankings, many folks tried to beg, borrow or pay for as many links as possible, regardless of where they came from. Unfortunately, a lot of SEOs used these same tactics on behalf of their clients, and now find that all those worthless links need to be removed. What a mess! Remember: Google has to ensure that the results returned by a search are going to be relevant and credible, so they are constantly seeking ways to reduce the “web spam.” It’s not that Google wants to ban SEO — only lousy SEO. Here’s what Matt Cutts of Google had to say about it late last year:

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