Reaching local markets with your online business, Part 2
Changes in Search Engine technology
The web has a ways to go
before local searches become as common as keyword searches are now...
In the Part 1 I suggested there is
no reason "in principle" that an online business should not focus on a
local market. The problems really boil down to just one:
We think there is not a sufficiently
high number of potential clients in the "local" area to support an online business.
This is compounded by the
less-than-advanced state of the web. As a source of local information it
leaves much to be desired.
Furthermore, since relatively few
businesses view the web as a "local" promotional medium, many are simply not
there. Businesses and service providers that cater primarily to a local market
often don't see the point in setting up a website and using it as a means of
promoting their business. So not only is it not credible, but it is far from
complete. Try looking on the web for a definitive list of plumbing websites in
your local area. You're better off using the yellow pages.
And guess what? That means that people
will not view the web as their default source of local business information. People
generally don't know how to do local searches, and even if they did, these
local searches would be inadequate. So they continue using the clunky old,
hard-to-read, environmentally unfriendly yellow pages.
But what if things were different?
Fast forward a couple of years and imagine
that
a source like Google or Yahoo could provide credible information about local
services. Say, for instance, you lived in Punta Gorda, Florida, and you needed
to find a local swimming pool maintenance company. Or say you lived in Napanee,
Ontario and you were considering moving to Dornoch, Scotland. You need
information about employment opportunities, places to live, golf courses to
join etc., etc. The web is the place to look, right?
So say you are a pool maintenance guy in
the Punta Gorda area, or a real estate agent in Dornoch, and you know the
default source of information for your prospective customers is the web (much
like it was the yellow pages back in 2000.) You'll want to be there, right?
How
did this happen (by the year 2005)? How did the web come to replace the yellow
pages as the default source of local business information? It happened because people
gradually came to have faith in various credible sources of local information.
Sources like Google and Yahoo
worked hard to develop comprehensive local directory services. In turn that
inspired virtually every business and service provider to get online.
Gradually the web just became the "place to be".
Other local sources of information were
developed as well. At first it was outfits with a broad community reach — like
the local newspaper or the Chamber of Commerce. Then gradually as these
directories became inadequate because of their limited scope and inability to
adjust to the new environment, more powerful and more interesting "new
technology" directories were set up. That gave local businesses even more
reason to jump on board, and that, in turn, further enhanced the credibility
of these special local directories.
Do these services exist yet?
For the most part, in late 2003 these credible sources
of local information are just being developed. Predictably it is Google,
Yahoo, and other similar world-class directories that are getting the ball
rolling.
In fact, Google has a serious project
underway as we speak. You can see it at
http://labs.google.com/location.
This experimental search engine tries to relate specific keywords to
geographic locations. It scans actual websites and finds geographical hints
embedded in the pages. If nothing else, this makes it clear that if a
webmaster wants his website pinpointed geographically, he'd better clearly
embed his location somewhere in his pages. Currently the results are not all
that great, because websites have not been "optimized" for this purpose (with
inter-related keyword and geographic hints), and the Google folks don't have
their algorithms quite figured out yet. But you can certainly see where it is
headed.
Another service being developed is
Overture's "Get Local Search". This is much like a yellow pages directory
and has no direct relationship to actual web contents. The information you
find on, say, pizza restaurants, take you to Overture listing/ads for the
restaurants, and not to their websites.
Finally, there is Yahoo! City Guides. This is based on
CitySearch.com, and has a direct tie with YellowPages.com. It is a more
evolved yellow pages with very extensive and detailed listings for specific
cities (US only for now). But it is not web-based like Google's location
search. It is much more typical of a traditional approach: "This is what we
want you to see, so this is what we are going to stick in your face."
Personally, I find it very distracting. If I want "golf courses" in the
Buffalo area, I don't really want to know what the trendy types are eating
today. And, I sure don't want to see ads flashing at me.
Conclusion
The advantage of a Google-like approach is that it puts
control of the content of your presentation in your own hands (or, at least
the hands of your webmaster). The alternative is essentially just an extension
of the traditional yellow pages format. Everyone is listed, but paying
advertisers get preferred location. And in either case (listing or ad), what
you present to the world is a very limited message designed by the directory
people.
The other perennial problem with "directories" is that they
pre-categorize businesses or organizations, so you must fit their
categories, rather than the other way around. This means that if you are in a
hard-to-categorize area, it will not be clear where you should be put, or how
to find you once you're there. Has this ever happened to you when placing a
yellow pages ad, or when trying to decide which Yahoo category your website
fits into? It has happened to me more times than I like to remember.
Personally, I hope the Google approach wins this particular
battle. Those of us wanting to see a continuation of the web revolution
wouldn't have it any other way.
In the next segment I will discuss methods of promoting your
online presence to a local market. That article is called
"Strategies for Reaching
Local Markets."
Richard J. Hendershot,
www.small-business-online.com
This article is called "Reaching Local Markets with
your Online Business, Part 2. Changes in Search Engine Technology."
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