It’s more important than ever for local business owners to vie for better SERP visibility

In May 2012, Google partnered with Ipsos OTX Media CT to get a better understanding of U.S. smartphone usage. Their study revealed that 94% of smartphone users have looked for local information, and 90% took action as a result (called the business, walked into a store, redeemed a coupon, etc). Also, 96% have researched a product or service on their phone.
At around that same time, Myles Anderson discussed key findings from BrightLocal’s Local Consumer Review Survey – one of which was that 85% of consumers use the Internet to find local businesses.
It’s more important than ever for local business owners to vie for better SERP visibility, both in desktop and mobile search. Your prospects are usually on the go and are looking for details on products to buy, places to patronize, events to attend and so forth. Mobile users in particular want the information they need at their fingertips, and they’ll select from the business with SERP visibility.
What follows here is a roadmap for listing your business on search engines to increase sales in your niche.

Verification

Hundreds of Internet directories act as a verification sources (by providing citations) for business data on Google, Yahoo! and Bing. When these search engines can match specific business data from a webpage or business directory to the info they have on file, this serves to verify the information, which in turn makes your data more authoritative. That’s why it’s so important for your business to have consistent NAP (Name, Address, Phone) information across search engines and directories.

Enhancing Your Listing

Although your NAP information is the most important in terms of consistency, many online directories (as well as Google+ Local) allow you to include a wide variety of information about your business. You can often enhance your listings with a description, store hours, payment types accepted, products, services, images, videos and even a logo. Generally, you can also select one or more categories under which your business might fall.
These fields give search engines a better understanding of your business. Understanding the format types and optimization opportunities for each individual directory is key to your brand’s performance in local search.

Top SERP Placement

Search engines rank the businesses they know more about in their top listings. Their aim is to deliver a good user experience, and to do that, they constantly crawl for other sources of business information on the Web to verify your data. Gathering your local business data while keeping this data updated and current is therefore critical to high rankings.
In addition to providing search engines with a way to validate local business data, directories often link back to the business’ website. This natural, trusted backlink provides a local and relevant link that enhances your local SEO results in the SERPs.

Updated Information & Data Consistency

Consumers will find your business first when all of your business data is updated, optimized and linked naturally on the Web. Search engines and directories rely on updated optimized local business data.
Local listing management, or business listing management, starts and ends with your providing:

• A consistent data source for ALL of your data feeds
• Providing properly formatted and optimized feeds for each individual directory based on their specific and accepted fields.

This is time-consuming, detailed work.

Case Study: Doing It Right

Below is a local case study from December 2012 involving Holiday Inn Express & Suites in Council Bluffs, Iowa.
The campaign objectives were to:

1. improve search engine rankings,
2. be found across a majority of online directories, and
3. stand out from its competitors.

Social Media For Business Statistics

General social media and Internet stats

• 40 % of accounts and 8% of messages on social media sites are spam
• 91% of online adults use social media regularly
• YouTube users watch more than 3 billion hours of video per month
• About 1 in 3 blogger are moms/mums (had to cater to both our American and British/AU audience there J) (source: Hubspot)
• There are more devices connected to the Internet than there are people on Earth (source: AllTwitter)
• 24% of people have missed witnessing important moments because they are too busy trying to write about them on social networks
• 83% of people believe platforms like Twitter and Facebook help them make new friends
• 25% of people believe social networks have boosted their confidence
• 24% of Americans and 28% of Brits have admitted to lying or exaggerating on a social network about what they have done and/or who they have met
• 40% of people spend more time socializing online than they do face-to-face (source: AllTwitter)
• Every minute of the day:
  • 100,000 tweets are sent
  • 684,478 pieces of content are shared on Facebook
  • 2 million search queries are made on google
  • 48 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube
  • 47,000 apps are downloaded from the App Store
  • 3,600 photos are shared on Instagram
  • 571 websites are created
  • $272,000 is spent by consumers online (source: AllTwitter)
• Internet users spend 22.5% of their online time social networking
• The web contains more than 8 billion pages
• There are more than 2.27 billion people online (doubled since 2007)
• 70% of adult social networkers shop online
• 53% of active adult social networkers follow a brand
• 80% of active internet users visit social networks and blogs (Source: AllTwitter)
• Almost 8 new people come onto the internet every second
• 79% of online shoppers spend 50% of their online shopping time researching products
• the average budget spent on blogs and social media has almost tripled in 3 years
• 57% of marketers acquired customers via blogging
• 44% acquired customers via Twitter
• 61% of global internet users research products online
• US Internet users spend three times longer on social media and blogs than email=
• social media use has increased 356% in the US since 2006
• the average user spent only 3 minutes on Google+ in Jan 2012
• 65% of Pinterest’s traffic is from the US
• there are 152 million blogs on the internet
• companies that blog have 55% more website visitors
• 35% of consumer comments on Facebook Pages are compliments
• 93% of US adult Internet users are on Facebook
• 9/10 mobile searches lead to action – over half lead to purchase (source: Hubspot)

Social media for business statistics

• 
  27% of small and 34% of medium businesses are using social media for business (+10% Year on Year)
• 25% of SMBs have no strategy and only 28% of small and 24% of medium businesses measure their ROI of social media activity (source: MarketingMag)
• Social media users who receive excellent customer service from brands spend on average 21% more than non-social customers
• 83% of socially savvy consumers have walked away from a purchase in the past year after a negative customer service experience – compared with 49% of everyone else
• 80% of businesses use social media sites to monitor/extract information relating to competitors
• Only 44% of customer questions on twitter are answered within 24 hours
• 56% of customer tweets to companies are being ignored
  (sources: AllTwitter, AllTwitter and AllTwitter)
• 55% of consumers share their purchases socially on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and other social sites
• Facebook is most popular site to share online purchases (55%), Twitter (22%), Pinterest (14%), Instagram (5%) and LinkedIn (3%)
• 59% of Pinterest users have purchased an item they saw on the site, 33% of Facebook users have purcahsed an item they saw on their news feed or a friend’s wall
• 79% of Pinterest users are more likely to purchase items they’ve seen on Pinterest compared with Facebook users purchasing behavior
• 64% of Facebook users have clicked on a Facebook ad, but only one-fourth of these users actually converted and bought an item
• when making online purchases, 66% of consumers prefer to purchase from a retailer’s online site, vs its app (Source: AllTwitter)
• There are over 10 million social mentions of the Fortune 100 each month<
• With Twitter generating the most amount of chatter
• 87% of the Fortune 100 now use social media – with twitter the most popular
• Tweet volumes tripled in the last 12 months
• 75% of the Fortune 100 are on Facebook
• Each corporate YouTube Channel averages 2million views
• Fortune 100 Companies are creative multiple accounts per platform / per region
• 50% of Fortune 100 Companies have a Google+ Account
• 25% have a Pinterest Account (Source: Digital Buzz Blog)

• Facebook is the number one social marketing tool for brands at 83% (88% target for 2014), followed by Twitter at 53% (target 64% in 2014) (source: AllTwitter)
• On average companies respond to only 30% of social media fans’ feedback (Source: Factbrowser)
• By 2016 more than half of the dollars spent in US retail will be influenced by the web (Source: Forrester Research)
• 42% of employers say no to any use of social media in the workplace
• 40% of young workers rate access to social media at work abovereceiving a higher salary
• 53% of employers have a formal policy on social media
• 59% of media companies actively encourage their employees to use social media
• 71% of energy companies prohibit any use of social media at work
• Over 50% of workers aged over 50 use social media every day at work (source: AllTwitter)
• 73% of Fortune 500 companies have a Twitter account
• 66% of Fortune 500 companies have a Facebook page (source: AllTwitter)
• 18 different countries across Asia, including Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, South Korea and Thailand discovered that Facebook (88.8 %), Twitter (66.4%) and YouTube (62.4%) were the social platforms of choice amongst all respondents.
• LinkedIn (40%) finished fourth, ahead of blogs (39.2%) and Pinterest (20.8%), with Google+ being used by just 12.8% of Asian corporate marketers.(Source: AllTwitter)
• 94% of corporates use social media and 85% say it’s given their business more exposure
• 74% of brand marketers saw an increase in website traffic after investing just 6 hours per week on social media
• 61% of corporates still rate blogging overall, 23% of Fortune 500 companies actively maintain a corporate blog
• 76% of corporate marketers plan to increase their use of YouTube or other video marketing
• 65% of corporate marketers use social media to gain market intelligence (source: AllTwitter)
• 24% of the top 10,000 websites in the world use some form of official Facebook integration on their homepage (if standard links to Facebook Pages is included this jumps to 49%)
• 42% of the top 10,000 websites have some form of Twitter link on their homepage, just 4% use Twitter’s share button and only 10% utilize any official Twitter widgets
• The Facebook Like button is used on 7% of the top 10,000 homepages
• LinkedIn is featured on just 0.6% of the top 10k websites (0.3% using the LinkedIn share button) (source: AllTwitter)
• People are 25% more likely to buy a product that they would be proud to own if it has social media buttons next to it
• People are 25% less likely to buy an embarrassing product if it’s placed anywhere near a social sharing tool
• 70% of brands ignore complaints on Twitter
• 83% of people who complained on Twitter loved the response from those companies that did make the effort
• Only 26% of businesses regularly include a call to action in their tweets (source: AllTwitter)
• 42% of marketers believe Facebook is critical or important to their business (+75% since 2009)
• 62% of marketers say social media became more important to their marketing campaigns in the last six months
• Social media has a 100% higher lead-to-close rate than outbound marketing
• 77% of B2C companies have acquired customers from Facebook vs 42% of B2B
• Retail is the top industry that has acquired customers through Facebook (over 90%)
• 80% of US social network users prefer to connect to brands through Facebook
• Brands have seen a 46% increase in user engagement with the new Timeline format in Facebook
• Auto-posting to Facebook decreases likes and comments by 70% (Source: Hubspot)
• Facebook is responsible for 86% of social referrals, Pinterest 11% and Twitter 3%
• Facebook users generate 2.5 times more page views than Twitter and almost twice as many as Pinterest (FB 7, Pinterest 4.1, Twitter 2.7)
• Conversion rates for Facebook traffic: 2.6%, Pinterest 0.9% and Twitter 1.1%
• Average order value (AOV): FB $2.50, Pinterest $1.60, Twitter 80c (source: AllTwitter)
• 25% of Twitter users connect with a brand on the platform (over one third of these do so for discounts and promotions)
• Over 25% of Twitter users would consider contacting a business via the platform
• Over half of social networking users who share business-related content do so on Twitter (source: AllTwitter)
• 39% of companies do not track their social media responses at all, and 55% ignore all customer feedback on Twitter and Facebook, largely because they have no process in place to respond. (Source: AllTwitter)
• What do people want from brands on social media? ….

• 83% want deals and promotions
• 70% want rewards programs
• 58% want exclusive content
• 55% want feedback on new products (source: AllTwitter)

Facebook Statistics

• Each day Facebook users spend 10.5 billion minutes (almost 20,000 years) online on the social network
• Australians spend 26 minutes, 27 seconds on Facebook each day, New Zealand 30m31s, Singapore 38m46s, United Kingdom 26m27s, France 21m53s, United States 20m46s, India 20m21s, Brazil 18m19s
• Only 50% of Facebook users have more than 100 friends (source: AllTwitter)
• There are 955 million active users on Facebook that spend an average of six hours and 35 minutes per month on the network (desktop only)
• An average of 3.2 billion likes and comments are posted every day
• Facebook posted a 67 percent year-over-year mobile growth rate (543 million monthly active users on mobile).
• The 6:35 per month spent on Facebook is nearly double the time (3:20) spent on Google.
• 58% of users return to the site daily.
• In an analysis of more than 60 Facebook marketing campaigns, 49 percent reported areturn on investment of more than five times, while 70 percent had a return on investment greater than three times. (source: AllFacebook)

Taiwan**	11,068,000	77.9%
United States**	152,763,000	69.6%
Australia**	11,010,000	68.4%
Read as: 38.1 million Brazilians visited Facebook during March 2012, about 76.7% of those who were active online that month from Home/Work computers in the market. * Online measurement in Switzerland is from Home computers only. ** New Zealand, Taiwan, the U.S., and Australia use Hybrid measurement, which includes sources in addition to home/work computers. Source: Nielsen

• In any given week, less than 0.5% of Facebook fans engage with the brand they are fans of. (Source: Marketing Science)
• 20% of Facebook users have purchased something because of ads or comments they saw there. (Source: Ipsos)
• We are finding that 50 percent of smartphones are actually connecting to Facebook every hour of every day. (Source: AllFacebook)
• Facebook has 232 million users in Europe, 222 million in North America, and 219 million users Asia. (Source: AllTwitter)

LinkedIn Statistics

• 61% use LinkedIn as their primary professional networking site
• 81% of LinkedIn users belong to at least one group
• 42% of users update their LinkedIn profile information regularly
• 82% are aware there are ads on LinkedIn
• 60% of users have cliked on an ad
• 90% of users find the site to be useful
• 61% do not pay for a premium LinkedIn account (source: Socialtimes)

Instagram Statistics

• More than 50 million users over past 2 years
• 300 million pictures uploaded to Facebook a day (via Instagram)
• Instagram gains one new user every second
• One billion photos have been taken with the app
• There are 58 photos uploaded eveyr minute
• 575 likes and 81 comments by Instragram users every second (source: Digital Buzz Blog)

Twitter Statistics

• Twitter has over 500 million registered users, but just 140 million active users (compared to Facebooks’ 950 million active users and probably over 2 billion registered users)
• The USA, whose 141.8 million accounts represents 27.4 percent of all Twitter users, good enough to finish well ahead of Brazil, Japan, the UK and Indonesia. (Source: AllTwitter)
• There are over 1.3 million active Twitter users in Arab countries
• Kuwait leads the way in Twitter penetration in Arab nations at 8%, ahead of Bahrain at 4%, Qatar at 2%, the UAE at 2% and Saudi Arabia at 1%
• Kuwait sent almost 60 million tweets in March (source: AllTwitter)
• 15% of online adults use Twitter
• 28% of black online internet users use Twitter
• 14% of Hispanic internet users are active on Twitter
• 12% of white internet users are active on Twitter
• The 18-29 demographic is most represented on Twitter, at 29% of user base, ahead of those aged 30-49 (14%) and 50-64 (9%)
• 14% of online men use Twitter vs 15% of online women (source: AllTwitter)
• Roughly 9% of US adult Internet users are on Twitte
• The average Twitter user has 27 followers
• 25% of Twitter accounts have no followers
• 40% of Twitter accounts have never sent a single tweet
• Only 18% of Twitter users tweet once or more a day
• ? of Twitter users are 25-34 years old
• More than half of active Twitter users follow companies, brands or products on social networks
• 79% of US Twitter users are more like to recommend brands they follow
• 67% of US Twitter users are more likely to buy from brands they follow
• 57% of all companies that use social media for business use Twitter (Hubspot)
• 
  Mobile/Smartphone statistics
  
  • 
    

    See what I did here? IT'S NOT EVEN AN IPHONE IMAGE! Turns out, other smartphones exist. I have no idea what this is, but it looks a lot like an iPhone except it's not one. That's all I have to say about that.
    Mobile now accounts for 10% of internet usage worldwide (this has more than doubled over last 18months) (The Next Web)
  • 1.08 of the world’s 4 billion mobile phones are smartphones
  • Apple and Android represent more than 75% of the smartphone market
  • 7.96% of all web traffic in the U.S. is mobile traffic. That number skyrockets to 14.85% in Africa, and 17.84% in Asia — up 192.5% since 2010
  • 29% of mobile users are open to scanning a mobile tag to get coupons
  • 39% of instances where a consumer walks out of a store without buying were influenced by smartphones
  • 91% of mobile internet access is for social activities, versus just 79% on desktops (Source: Hubspot)
  • Over 1/3 of Facebook’s users access Facebook Mobile; 50% of Twitter’s users use Twitter Mobile
  • QR code scans increased 300% in 2011 compared to 2010
  • The average tablet user spends 13.9 hours per week with the device
  • 73% of smartphone owners access social networks through apps at least once per day (Source: Hubspot)
  • There was 103% growth in website traffic from smartphones from 2011-2012
  • US consumers spend almost 1 in every 10 ecommerce dollars using a mobile device (Source: Hubspot)
  • There are currently 6 Billion mobile subscribers worldwide
  • This equals 87% of the world’s population
  • China and India account for 30% of this growth
  • There are over 1.2 Billion people accessing the web from their mobiles
  • Over 300,000 apps have been developed in the past 3 year
  • Google earns 2.5 Billion in mobile ad revenue annually (Source Digital Buzz Blog)