Universal search has been the major focus of most serious online advertisers to date, however increasingly smaller and/or regionally based companies are turning their attention to the local search space.

If you are serious about search, (local or universal), you must appreciate that achieving a first page, or Top10, result on Google (the only search engine that really counts at the moment) is imperative because if your website, or more likely your directory listing, is not Top10 on the Google SERP it is virtually invisible to the majority of web users.

As a rule the companies with websites that dominate universal search (have high page ranks) can also dominate the local space if they choose although in practice this tends to only be ‘verticals’ i.e. niche and national directories.

YOC has been prototyping two new local search products (SMARTDEALS and SMARTPAGES PPK) for over six months now and the results are very encouraging.

Both include a major new innovation – the inclusion of the advertiser’s company name and phone number in the search engine results page title – see below.

This feature is particularly important because it dramatically improves the so-called conversion rate, being the ratio of users who click on an advertisement and those who actually place an order / purchase goods expressed as a percentage. 

Anecdotal evidence strongly suggests that with local search this figure can be very low, often only 1-2%, which can quickly turn into a major financial loss with campaigns utilising high AdWord click thru rates and/or low transaction values.

For example, I recently mentored a regional company who were actively promoting their wares with Google AdWords and could not understand why their return was so poor.  They were paying about a $1 per click and converting only 2% of traffic, i.e. they were paying $50 per transaction.  Unfortunately for them the average price of their sales items was only $30 - they simply did not appreciate that the seemingly low conversion rate was probably about right, meaning their campaign was not viable at that price point.

It must also be remembered that in many instances advertisers are not expecting to recoup all their transaction cost with a single sale; rather they spread it over an expected life time value, e.g. couriers, where the click thru rate can be as high as $7 to $8 only receive this amount for an average transaction, but once a company uses the service it may keep on using the same courier regularly for many years.

The major difference between our two new local search products is their form of delivery. 

SMARTDEALS is published as part of YOC’s regular e-zines, see below AUTO REPAIRS: George's Auto Prestige, ph: 4228 7999 and features a single product or service – it costs $99.00 per month including GST.

SMARTPAGES PPK is part of the SMARTPAGES directory and is suited to medium sized companies with multiple products or services – typically keyword phrases cost about $1.00 per day although volume discounts and some other start up cots are involved.

And, naturally they are all guaranteed Google Top10.

For more information contact the SMARTPAGES team on 9516 2000 or 4254 0200 Bus Hrs or email me direct : andrewc@smartpages.com.au