Advertising dynamics are changing. The days when running a weekly ad in the local newspaper and having a sign painter artfully stencil your logo on your storefront were sufficient to assure your spot in the local market place are long gone. Having a small business web site that can be searched and found on the Internet by customers - and potential customers - looking for the products or services you offer in their city is becoming a key marketing tool for small business success.

For the first time ever, spending on TV advertising is set to outpace spending on newspaper ads this year, according to the latest report from market analysts Veronis Suhler Stevenson, a private equity firm in the media and communications field. And Internet advertising is expected to surpass even TV advertising by 2011 - in three year’s time.

Local search, the ability to have customers find your products on the Internet when they are specifically searching for goods and service in your city or region, is a key component to Internet advertising for small business. ComScore, a leading Internet research firm, notes that in a recent survey 47% of local searchers on the Internet contacted or visited a local merchant as a result of their online search. The Kelsey Group, another leading research firm, estimates that by 2010, the local search market, which is already competitive, will grow to be a $6.2 billion market in the U.S. alone.

The importance of having an effective small business web site that can be found in a local search for products and services over the Internet has newer been stronger, and if forecasts are correct, the necessity of having a local search capable small business web site will only grow.

“According to industry analysts, approximately 80% of an indi­vidual’s income is spent within about 50 miles of their home,” says marketing expert, Michael Flecishner. “With 95% of the potential local search advertising market today remaining untouched, this is a huge opportunity for businesses.”

As small business move their marketing and advertising efforts online, however, the inevitable problem of overcrowding in the local search results pages of Google, Yahoo! and other Internet search engines is increasingly apparent. It is not enough to merely create a small business web site. Your site needs to be engineered (search engine optimization, being the industry term) so that it can be found and ranked by Google and the like for the key terms that describe your business. Doing so is an art and a science. Effective keyword research, function-based web design, Internet linking structures and quality on-site content all drive the ability of a small business web site to rank on the major search engines.

Starting from scratch, as many local small businesses do, it can take thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours (yours or someone else’s) to design, build, and optimize a small business web site that will allow your small business to compete for its share of the local search market. And the effectiveness of your efforts are by no means assured. Sesimi.com offers an affordable alternative for building and optimizing a small business web site. Sesimi.com offers a unique subscription service that can provide your company with an optimized small business web site that will rank consistently in Internet search engines’ local search results. In as little as 48 hours, the web design and search engine optimization specialists at Sesimi.com can design, build optimize and host an effective one page small buiness website on their unique small business web domain that will rank in local search results - converting web traffic into foot traffic at your storefront for as little as $39 per month for optimization and hosting.

Properly marketed, a small business or small business web site can dominate the local search results on Google, Yahoo! or the other Internet search engines. Improperly marketed, and no one may ever find your local, small business web site. As illustrated in a recent article on local search in Canada’s National Post, something as simple as omitting to register your small business with Google Local may mean that your potential customers are finding your competitors, but not your small business web site from their Blackberry or laptop.

While something as simple as registering your small, local business with Google Local will get you some limited search engine exposure, ensuring that you small business web site is ranked well on Google and other search engines will depend on a number of factors, as the National Post explains - particularly if the person searching for the products or services you sell is searching the INternet from a Blackberry or similar mobile device, which is an evermore frequent occurrence.

“Google itself explains that all of its search results ‘are based primarily on relevance,’” says the National Post. ” But Google Maps also ranks business listings according to geographic distance from the requested starting point. But that’s all the help you’re going to get. ‘Sometimes our search technology decides that a business that’s farther away from your location is more likely to have what you’re looking for than a business that’s closer,’ says Google — which likes to keep these things secret to discourage people from trying to manipulate search results.”

Accordingly, it can be a difficult matter for a small business owner to optimize his or her small business web site for local search, as well as mobile search from iPhones, BlackBerrys and the multitude of new smart phones customers are using to sear the Internet for local products or services. There are a number of costly mistakes that can preclude a local business from being ranked or ranked well on the leading search engines - aside from neglecting to register with Google Local.

Sesimi,com provides a one-stop solution to have your small business website built, designed, optimized and hosted by Sesimi on its unique small business web hosting domain. The domain itself, along with each unique small business web page is optimized and connected to the wider Web in a manner proven to put your small business at the top of the Internet search engine rankings.

“Of course, there are lots of search-engine optimization (SEO) consultants who can help you get better results from standard Google searches,” as the National Post notes, “but they may not be paying attention to Google’s local-business service.” Or to other local search ranking criteria, either.

If your small business is dependent on local traffic - both foot traffic and web traffic - sign-up online for a unique small business web page designed, built and hosted by Sesimi.com. Each small business web page built by Sesimi.com is specifically optimized to dominate the Internet’s local search rankings.

Putting up a local business profile on a small business web page built, optimized and hosted by Sesimi.com proved to be a marketing boon for a local kitchen design shop that builds and installs custom-designed kitchens. “We put up a Brampton Kitchen Design web page for our client, says Mike Cloke, Sesimi.com’s co-founder. “The family-owned business was struggling to distinguish itself in a tight home renovations market here in the GTA. Their web page now ranks at the top of Google’s search engine results for that query and our client now has five months’ of work - much of it from web traffic driven to the site by Google.”

Sesimi.com (and Sesimi.co.uk in Great Britain) have rolled out an optimized small business web page domain which hosts unique, affordably-priced and effective local business profiles that are optimized for local search (and are mobile-search capable) for markets across the United States, Canada and the U.K.

Unlike most other business directories, the Sesimi.com domain hosts only one small business web page for each type of business product or service in any one city or region. The local business profile has proven to be an effective marketing tool for small businesses who need to market their products effectively and affordably on the Internet. Clients with local business profiles on the Sesimi.com and Sesimi.co.uk web domains range from kitchen designers, to real estate agents, consultants and equipment rental specialists. Sesimi.com builds each of its clients’ unique web pages with the latest search engine optimization techniques perfected by large corporations and online marketers, providing them a one-stop solution to their online marketing needs.

The case for the growing importance of local search to small business was nicely made by Brian Wool at The ClickZ Network (www.clickz.com). Characterizing local search as the get-no-respect, “Rodney Dangerfield of Online Marketing,” Mr. Wool notes that Internet pundits have long been calling for the demise of traditional media like local newspapers and the Yellow Pages™ who draw much of their ad revenue from local advertising.

“There’s certainly been no cliff,” he writes, referring to the presumed fate and destination of traditional print that seems headed for a fall as consumers adopt online search to find local products and services, “just steady growth online and constant decline in many traditional advertising media.” The most recent numbers from JupiterResearch, a leading technology research consulting firm, forecast that online advertising revenues will grow 20% in 2008, while traditional media advertising will falter along at 4%.

These trends show that advertisers are recognizing the growing importance of local search to consumers who are more and more using the Internet, and mobile search from Internet-capable mobile phones, to ferret out local products online.

Contrasting the quality of free local search results that consumers are getting on search engines like Yahoo! and Yellowpages.com with pay-per-call search results from traditional directory service assistance calls - and, particularly, the quality of search results he found using Google Maps on his iPhone - Mr. Wool makes a convincing case that these trends will only continue and deepen. His analysis makes it clear that local small businesses will have to come to grips with the necessity of establishing an online marketing profile and a searchable web page that their potential local customers can find online - and, perhaps more importantly, find from their iPhone.

Google has announced a further enhancement of its local search capabilities by extending its successful GOOG-411 service into Canada. Google’s move highlights the importance of having an optimized local business profile that is capable of being found online when potential customers are looking for local products and services online – whether that search is from a laptop, from a “smart” mobile phone with abilities to conduct internet searches, or now from any phone thanks to improvements to Google’s 411 service.

Through an amalgamation of sophisticated voice-recognition software, traditional business listings and Google’s core internet search business, users of GOOG-411 dial the service’s number (1-800-GOOG-411) and answer the search questions that Google’s computer poses.

GOOG-411 is “Much like a movie theatre search service,” the Canada’s Globe and Mail reports. “It asks for the user’s city and province, then what they are searching for. A request for “pizza” made from the Globe and Mail newsroom in downtown Toronto yielded eight responses, and the service listed the choices and offered addresses for each.”

Google provides phone numbers for local business carrying the products and services the searcher is looking for, sends a text message with the information or, if desired, will sends a local Google Map listing the products, location, numbers and other information directly to the service user’s cell phone screen.

Canadian users of the new-generation “smart phones” will likely take to this new service in droves as it is rolled out beyond the United States for the first time. Local business owners will want to ensure that their web pages are registered with Google for the new service, and will show up when tech-savvy customers type in local search and, now, mobile search terms that describe their products.

Having a small business web page with an optimized local business profile that is capable of supporting a company’s online marketing efforts should be a top priority for small businesses in North American markets. Forecasts released by PricewaterhouseCoopers with respect to the growth of online marketing and internet advertising in Canada call for continuing rapid growth over the next five years.

“PricewaterhouseCoopers’ latest Global Entertainment Media Outlook suggests online advertising is already enjoying unparalleled growth in this country, soaring 33.2 per cent to $1.3 billion last year,” reports the Toronto Star The PwC report suggests that Internet advertising will become “a $3.4 billion (U.S.) industry over the next five years as more consumers migrate to their computers and mobile devices to access multimedia content.”

Jerry Brown, director of PWC’s Canadian entertainment and media advisory practice notes that “Keyword search, classified advertising and online video advertising - full-motion video ads shown on the Internet - will be the fastest-growing components” in the surging e-commerce sector, while in Canada’s e-mobile marketplace, “wireless network upgrades will similarly drive mobile advertising.”
As traditional TV, radio and print advertising media continue to lose market share to the Internet, small businesses dependent on advertising - particularly small businesses which target younger growth demographics - will need to ensure that they have a digital footprint which is capable of effective online marketing. An effective small business web page should contain an optimized local business profile which permits effective keyword search, local search and particularly mobile search so that products and services can be marketed to the host of Internet capable smart phones that are set to flood and transform the Canadian marketplace.

“Local search” - the term internet marketers and search engine insiders use for when you and I punch in search queries like “Italian restaurant Toronto” or “Boston aluminum siding” - is, with mobile search from cell phones and handhelds, the growing focus in online marketing and internet advertising.

Udi Manber, Google’s VP of Engineering -Search Quality, is the man encharged with honing the algorithm formula behind Google’s ever expanding capacity to bring information to the screens of desktops, laptops and - increasingly - mobile phones and handheld devices like the SmartPhone and BlackBerry. In a recent interview with C/NetNews.com’s Stephen Shankland, the Google VP pointed to the growing prominence and importance of “local search”, both to consumers and to Google. Noting, first and foremost that Google’s aim is to provide “universal search” (that is, to provide whatever information, from whatever source on the planet it is that people are searching for), the formerly sequestered chief arbiter of Google’s search algorithm, highlighted the growing importance of “local search” to consumers and, therfore, to Google, hands down the world’s largest and most frequently used search engine.

“We want to get everything into Google search,” Google’s search guru conceded in one of his rare public interviews. “Having said that, there are specific searches–the kind of operations you want to do in the results. For example when you do local search, geography matters, where it is on the map matters, and you want to see the results on a map. Or when you do product search, price matters. If you have cases of searches where some things matter more and you want to allow people to operate on those or navigate those parameters, then we’ll give you more tools to do that.”

Google is once again leading the pack, proactively responding to how users do search. Recent numbers from pollster Nielson/NetSurvey show that 86% of internet users will make use of local search terms, and 90% of the transactions that are initiated via local search are completed off-line - i.e., at a local business.

As local search and, increasingly, mobile search come of age, the growing usage of local search as a portal into the products and services consumers are looking for in their neighbourhood highlight the importance for small businesses and large chains alike to have an optimized local business profile web page or web site domain that search engines can find and which will funnel increasing web traffic their way. Local search is already the means by which online marketers are converting web traffic into foot traffic - and given the comments of Google’s search guru, it looks like local search is here to stay as the emerging way we find products and services in this evermore digital world.

Local search is fast becoming the emerging trend in online marketing and advertising, if not advertising and marketing in general - online or offline. The emergence of local search as the the next marketing wave underscores the importance for businesses large and small to have a “digital footprint” - be it a simple web page or a sophisticated and extensive web domain - in order to bring their ’storefront’ to consumers tapping into the internet’s potential or to bring consumers from the internet to their ‘bricks and mortar’ storefront.

Nielson/NetSurvey survey results (in conjunction with WebVisible) show that 86% of internet users search for local products and services online - up from 70% of internet users in 2007. Moreover, it is not the case that internet users are using the internet’s local search capabilities to access products and service online. The Nielson results show that 90% of the transactions that are initiated through online searches for local goods and services are completed offline. In other words, local businesses are drawing customers and clients from the internet to their ‘bricks ‘n mortar’ tores and offices. Consumers who are increasingly comfortable with the evermore user-friendly Web 2.0 internet experience are “Windows Shopping” rather than window-shopping.

As local search challenges and surpasses traditional advertising and marketing media such as television, radio, newspapers, and even traditional local search print ginat Yellow Pages™, in importanceis for driving customers to local businesses, large chains and national advertisers are jumping on the local search bandwagon. “In 2008,” according to marketing powerhous Marchex.com, “local ad campaigns (by national advertisers) will employ tactics and encourage consumers to complete their purchases at local services or retail outlets.”

As local small businesses that have relied on street visibility and foot traffic to sustain and grow their customer base are faced with online marketing competition from national advertisers, their ability to compete successfully in their own local market will hinge on their ability to develop an online presence with the same visibility as their local storefront. Setting up a web page for online marketing that is optimized for local search es that search engines like Google or Yahoo! will be able to find and pass on to users looking for local products and services is the first step from small local businesses that wish to remain competitive in this increasingly sophisticated digital marketing era.

There are ever greater opportunities for businesses of all sizes to reap the benefits of emerging local search and mobile search technologies. In an interview with CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo, yesterday - an interview credited with bumping Google’s share price 4.7% - Google CEO, Dr. Eric Schmidt, called the emerging capability for consumers to conduct local searches using mobile phone technologies (cell phones, iPhones, BlackBerries etc.) “a tremendous opportunity” for growth.

Google’s research indicates that over the next three or four years, another billion mobile phones will be added worldwide. Eventually, there will be “five or so billion mobile phones in a world of six billion or so,” Dr. Schmidt predicts. Integrating local search and mobile search capabilities will be a key for driving these customers to local businesses.

Schmidt, not surprisingly, travels with the requisite array of laptop, cell phone PDA etc. He notes there has been “a huge increase in maps, Google Maps”, particularly, he says, has been “hugely successful”. Internet mapping, especially Google and Yahoo! maps, is the key ingredient in optimizing both a business’ local search and mobile search capabilities. “When I want to go to the equivalent of Starbucks,” Schmidt says, “I just type ‘Starbucks‘, it says its over there. For me, that’s jusut a huge - a huge improvement. And that service is available almost everywhere in the world.” (As an avid caffeine addict, I can only add my, “Me too!”)

As technical innovations improve local and mobile online searching - and Dr, Schmidt intimates there is a pipeline of innovations at Google awaiting rollout - it seems clear that optimizing your company’s website for local and mobile search - whether you are a turnkey operation, a small business, or a medium-sized growth business - is an imperative. It may seem daunting, especially for the small entrepeneur, but the investment of time, money and effort will be a necessary investment for your company’s success.

Working with a search engine optimization company that specializes in local search and has experience working with a range of clients from small, owner-operated companies to large firms, may be the best way to ensure your company’s footprint is out there and can be found with ease by your potential customers. You do not want to miss the “tremendous opportunity” that industry leaders, like Dr. Schmidt, have so clearly identified.

Okay, it’s not quantum computing….yet. However, a study released this week by Yahoo! Research in conjunction with researchers at Cornell University highlights the increasingly refined local search capability and capacity that search engines are developing.

Using a model based on probability theory to track the most frequent queries from Yahoo!’s logs, the research team led by digital search pioneer, Lars Backstrom from Cornell, found that the ‘probabilistic’ methodology they utilized (please forgive my tantalizing allusion to quantum theory, I couldn’t resist) significantly outperformed the simpler geometric techniques currently utilized by Google, Yahoo!, MSN et al. Using probability theory, the research team was able to pinpoint the natural geographic “hot spot” for any particular search query, as well as its ‘dispersion’ - how quickly the relevancy of a particular search term falls off as you move away from the geographic locale naturally associated with the search term. (The researchers used the names of baseball teams as an illustrative search term. The search term “Yankees” quite naturally had a wider geographic dispersion than the term Royals did, reflecting the national following of the New York team as opposed to the more localized following of the Kansas City ballclub.)

Even more interestingly, the authors of the study were able to track and predict how the natural epicentre, or “hot spot” of a search term as well as its dispersion can change over time. (The illustration they used was queries about “Hurricane Dean” as that storm blew in from the Carribean. Search intensity and dispersion increased and widened in real time, dispersion spreading widely just before the hurricane made landfall. In contrast, queries about the “Grand Canyon” - a national monument carved by time, but relatively unaffected by its passing - pretty much reflected the population distribution of the U.S. as a whole.)

As search engines begin to adopt this next generation of local search methodology it will “affect both search-based marketing and advertising efforts by region,” and will “also be useful as a component for search engine rankings themselves.” The methodology outlined in the study appears to be eminently applicable to everything from marketing political candidates (ugh…enough!) to focusing one’s online marketing efforts geographically and in real-time to changes in cuisine tastes, music preference, and even consumer responses to changing weather patterns.

The focus that search engines and leading academic researchers are putting on local search capabilities underscores how important a segment of online advertising and marketing local search has become - an importance that will only increasingly rise over time. The good news is that thanks to Yahoo! Research and Cornell we will soon have the ability to track that rise in importance in real time, as well as its dispersion across North America and the world!