It is estimated that more people will be accessing Internet information via a mobile device than a personal computer by the year 2013 (that’s not very far away, folks). As we know, most standard websites do not render well on a smartphone screen due to the smaller screen size, or use of incompatible plug-ins (such as flash). As many businesses opt for a mobile website to complement their standard website, one wonders what this means for keyword optimization and search trends? Do smartphone users search the same way desktop searchers do?

Interestingly enough, mobile search is used and rendered very different from a desktop search. Here are my Top 5 reasons why this is so:

• Mobile search is highly geared toward local information. Statistically 9 out of 10 smartphone searches result in an action. Chances are, if you are looking for for something on your phone’s browser (like a food, a museum, or a bike repair shop) it is because you want to purchase, find, or visit the searched item. Desktop searches tend to be less action oriented overall and more information oriented in nature. Because of this pages like Google Local Listings are positioned to rank higher than pages that are not locally oriented. Domains with geo-targeted keywords will also rank well in this system.
• Google has 97% of the mobile search market share, and their algorithm is different for mobile devices than desktops.
• Smartphone screen size is much smaller than a PC’s screen size, so it will be even more important to snag the top few spots on a mobile search in order to be on the first page.
• Site loading speed becomes critical in a mobile search. A site that takes too long to load when on-the-go information is needed quickly, will lead to higher bounce rates than a standard desktop site search.
• Android users are always logged in to Google on their mobile system.  This means that Android users will always be served personalized results more often than folks searching on a PC who may not have logged in. This will obviously change as more and more people begin to use Google+ or who search when logged into their Google accounts.  Most users aren’t aware if they are logged in or not, and personalized results definitely have an impact on what you will see in your search results.

These are key points to keep in mind when conducting a search on either platform, and even more important to keep in mind when positioning yourself and your business for the future, whether or not you have a mobile website. Keeping a claimed and optimized local listing has always been an important piece in your overall SEO strategy. But now, it seems as if listings such as Google Places and Bing Local could have even more impact on your search results in the future.

 

We’ve been watching Google test integrated Places search results for a month or two now, and today they began rolling it out systemwide. What has changed and what does it mean for you and your business? In this post, I’ll walk through some of the changes and their implications.

Your search results look different.

And actually, they don’t just look different – they really are different results. Take a look at a before shot from the Do’s and Don’ts article we posted last week.

Before today’s rollout, search results were broken into three distinct and separate areas: Local (pictured above), Organic (the ten results below the map) and Sponsored (PPC above the map and along the right hand side of the page). Local and Organic each had their own unique algorithms to serve up results. There were anywhere from 10 to 17 non-paid search results on the first page for any given search query.

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One of the most visible features of local search results is the reviews, which are pulled into Google’s “place pages” and other search engines’ local listings from hundreds of national and local sources. In 2008, growth in the local search market grew 58%, more than double the rate overall search achieved. In Google and Bing, local search results even display above the organic search listings. Wow.

Local search is here, and it’s big. Very, very big. Clearly, businesses have every reason to be concerned about how those reviews can impact their reputation. Great reviews are, well, great! No worries there. But then you discover that the receptionist you fired seven months ago when she forgot to give you your phone messages one too many times has come back to haunt you as unhappy clients have complained that she was smacking her gum and talking loudly on her cellphone with her friends instead of paying attention to them, and you realize it happened to be the day your daughter broke her arm and the dog threw up all over the kitchen, which had put a serious damper on your normally cheerful demeanor – and that isolated bad day is now seared indelibly onto your business profile for all the search engines to distribute. What now? What can you do to fight such injustice?

1. Respond to the reviewer – in public.

Many review sites allow responses to reviews, and web savvy businesses are quick to take advantage of it. However, it’s important to choose your words carefully. Don’t blame someone else. Don’t make excuses. Say something along the lines of, “I’m sorry you had a bad experience. Please call us so we can work on a solution.”

I’ll put it like this: Let’s say that you’re a shoe store in Chicago and I am a potential customer researching shoe stores in Chicago. I come across your listing. It has a bad review on it. Ouch. But you were concerned enough to respond and try to make it right, and that is one of the hallmarks of good customer service. It certainly improves my perception of your business!

2. Recruit your satisfied customers to write positive reviews.

A single bad review may deter potential customers, but if it’s buried under a pile of glowing testimonials that extol your virtues, that one lonely bad review begins to look more and more like a fluke.

Caution: Make sure the good reviews are genuine. Fake reviews are known as astroturfing, and engaging in it can land you in some serious hot water with the authorities – just ask Lifestyle Lift, who had to pay $300,000 in fines for posting fake reviews.

3. Flag it as inappropriate.

The worst that can happen is that the moderator who handles the request does nothing about it. But – what if they do? Basically, it can’t hurt to ask.

Along the same lines, some review sites, such as Amazon, give users the ability to rate reviews as “helpful” or “not helpful”. You can always rate a bad review as “not helpful”.

With both flagging methods, it’s important to note that you should not try to recruit your friends and family and in-laws to all go overwhelm the site with requests. Remember that bit about astroturfing in #2?

Also, don’t start emailing webmasters to plead your case. No one will take that seriously unless you have something to back it up, like an order from a judge. If the option exists, just hit that “flag as inappropriate” link, one time and one time only, and then let the moderators do what they will with the request.

4. Participate in industry discussion forums.

A few months ago, we discovered a client’s competitor was blanketing a LASIK forum with answers to users’ questions. The answers were helpful and insightful. They also had the doctor’s name and website in the signature line on every single one of those posts. When you conducted a search for him, the most prominent results were those which demonstrated his involvement and showed that he was both extremely knowledgeable about his craft and 100% willing to answer questions for potential patients. There may be a bad review in the search results somewhere, but anyone doing real research is going to take note of that demonstration of accessibility and expertise.

5. Be accessible.

Part of the key to #4 was that the doctor came across as accessible and approachable. It’s important to keep in mind that many bad reviews are written as a last resort. Chances are pretty good that they tried to approach you for resolution and couldn’t get it, leaving them frustrated, fuming, and needing to vent. If you are available, accessible and willing to work out a solution, that bad review probably won’t ever hit the web in the first place.

6. Act as though you care.

This obviously goes hand in hand with #5, but I think it deserves its own line. It’s one thing if your clients can reach you easily. It’s another to be friendly and caring enough to make them want to call you in the first place. Picking up the phone to register a complaint can be intimidating since most people seek to avoid conflict. Don’t make it harder on them by being confrontational or intimidating. A little warmth goes a long way.

7. Follow up.

The first time I visited my chiropractor, he called me the next day to make sure I was doing well after my adjustments. I’d never had a doctor do that before. I was really impressed! And yet, what a simple thing you can do to make sure everything is okay. If it’s not, this is their opportunity to tell you before they had a chance to complain! Make phone calls. Send follow-up emails. Make sure you delivered the expected service, and jump on the opportunity to fix it if you did not. It’s a nice, proactive way of heading off that bad review at the pass.

8. Accept criticism.

Maybe it’s not one bad review. Maybe it’s three. Or seventeen. That’s not good. A string of bad reviews can put you out of business. I’m going to give you some tough love on this one. The solution here is to LISTEN. You may be in denial, but the truth is that people are not happy with you and it’s not an isolated case. There’s a reason for it! Pay close attention to what the reviews are saying, and take it to heart. Sometimes a review is bad because you’re just not doing a good job. Listen to the criticism, conduct an honest self-evaluation, and work on improving.

9. Take legal action.

Libel, and I mean real libel, is not something you should gloss over. However, lawsuits should be an absolute last resort. Do anything and everything you can by playing nice before going down this road, and consider this: Anything you do within legal channels is fair game for the media. Take the plight of Horizon Group Management as a cautionary tale. Horizon sued a former tenant over a libelous statement made on Twitter. They wanted to defend and preserve their professional reputation, but then the story hit the national media. The entire world saw a tweet that was probably only previously seen by fewer than twenty people, and Horizon was painted as a tyrannical, lawsuit-happy company. Consider any ideas about libel suits very, very carefully and ask yourself if the potential consequences are worthwhile. In most cases, I’m betting they’re not. But I do believe it’s important to know that this option does exist for those whose reputations and livelihoods are truly on the line.

10. Stay on top of 1 through 9.

Okay guys. Look. This is not a one-time fix it and forget it deal. Reputation management is an ongoing process, and you cannot let the ball drop. However you choose to tackle those bad reviews, keep it up. Also, notice that many of these suggestions boil down to providing excellent customer service and being proactive about fixing problems before they happen. That’s called “being awesome”. How do you fight bad reviews? Keep being awesome!

Create a reputation management strategy and put it on the to-do list. Be responsive, be nice, be approachable, be accessible, be willing to take criticism, and be willing to keep it all up. Keep being awesome, and your bad review woes will simply melt away.

For SEOs, Google’s automatic location detection algorithm has been a hair-tearing experience. If my company in the United States is hosting and maintaining a site for a business with storefronts in Canada, then I want the site to be picked up in Canada!

Geo-tagging websites has been of dubious value for quite some time. In July, Matt Cutts of Google’s webspam team confirmed what most of us have suspected for quite some time: Google completely ignores geo meta tags, relying instead on the page content and IP address of any given website to determine its location.

Bing’s location algorithm is different, but equally flawed. One frustrated UK webmaster has a .tv website for a British television channel which Bing is insisting must be located in Tuvalu. So far, she hasn’t found any resolution for her problem. In this case, it’s clear that Bing is ignoring the fact that it’s hosted in the UK and written in English. However, a recent post over at Search Engine Roundtable notes that Bing is paying attention to geo meta tags. Bing hasn’t said anything on the subject, but users have noted the ability of “meta http-equiv” to influence language and country targeting. No one is talking about any results beyond that, but this recent Search Engine Roundtable post about geo meta tags is certainly intriguing. Given the UK webmaster’s dilemma, it’s unclear to what extent they figure into the algorithm.

In both cases, the search engines are interpreting a website’s location as determined by various clues from the host without taking context and intent into account, and the result is an SEO nightmare.

Perhaps more interesting for those of us not looking to transcend international borders is the possibility that Bing may be looking at geo meta tags for local search. It certainly makes sense. Local search’s prominence increases by the hour. Geotagging images is increasingly popular and probably figures into image searches. The rising importance of video – which can also be geotagged – is undeniable. Given geo-tagging’s increasing popularity in other aspects, it seems as though plain organic web search should be heading there, too.

Don’t get me wrong – for the average user, personalized search via IP detection is a wonderful thing. However, in an increasingly global business environment where a business, the customer, the website host and webmaster may all be in different physical locations, a website should be able to reach potential customers half a world away in a legitimate manner. It seems as though allowing geotagging to influence local search results could give webmasters some very welcome relief.