By Natalie Kleopfer, Account Coordinator

Looking to enhance your local and mobile advertising efforts? Learn how Google’s new updates can help.

On October 19th, Google unveiled several new mobile ad features and formats that will have a significant impact on pay-per-click (PPC) advertisers. Here’s a rundown of some of the key changes:

The distance between a user and an advertiser’s business is now factored into mobile search ad rankings. Local already accounts for 40% of mobile searches and the addition of proximity as a scoring factor will only cause that percentage to rise. Search Engine Land suggests that marketers start using  Location Extensions, a feature in AdWords that allows the addition of dynamic addresses to ads. While previous ads only allowed description lines and a URL, Location Extensions lets companies include their  names, addresses and phone numbers, too. This, combined with the new proximity factor, will help businesses drive more mobile traffic at a lower cost.

Another new Google feature is custom search advertisements for apps. Google will now place relevant ads in searchable mobile apps. If a user has an app that lets them search for a local movie theater, he or she will now see relevant movie theater and film advertising within the app.

Circulars, a new Google advertising format, is not restricted to mobile. Here’s how the new format works: When a user clicks on a search or display ad, he is directed to another ad featuring pictures and relevant products or offers. If the ad is viewed on a desktop computer, the user can email it to his mobile device. He can then take it to the business location to redeem the offers. This format is currently being tested with retailers Best Buy and Macy’s.

For more information about Google’s new offerings, visit the Google Mobile Ads Blog.

Posted by: Nicole Johnson, Marketing Coordinator

Ever heard of “location-sensitive mobile advertising?” It sounds fancy, but it’s just a term that encompasses a combination of two tactics that are becoming bigger and better every day – local search marketing and mobile advertising. The major players in the game (Yelp, Google and Facebook) are paving the way for new growth in this arena.

Yelp offers a smartphone application called “Nearby” for its mobile users. The app allows easy mobile access to any coupon or offer posted on a local business’s Yelp profile page. Users can also use the app to find businesses located in close proximity to their immediate locations.

Similarly, Google released “Near Me Now,” a feature that is automatically available to any user who accesses Google using an iPhone or Android phone user a 2.0.1 version or newer browser. The feature gives users easy navigation to restaurants, banks and other businesses in their areas. The mobile search engine results page serves up 10 local businesses and features three Google Adwords paid listings. Keep in mind that the Near Me Now link only appears if users give Google permission to access their locations with GPS tracking.

Posted by: Nikki Burmaster, Marketing Coordinator

The importance of local online search strategies has increased exponentially within the last year. Implementing and continually optimizing local search techniques give businesses, especially those in very competitive industries or those with smaller marketing budgets, a leg up in the online marketing space.

Companies with local listings on the three major engines receive preferential treatment on results pages, showing in the top few listings when served. This is a major advantage considering the integration of paid ads, tweets, videos and more in many search engines’ results pages that are pushing actual organic results lower and lower on the first page.

In addition to higher search engine results, many listing services allow companies to add coupons and messages featuring current promotions or recent releases. Some local listings offer mobile integration, displaying search results with click-to-call features and local ad extensions that populate maps, directions, reviews and more.

Posted by: Chelsea Maxwell, Marketing Coordinator

Mobile marketing is a strategy that we often hear talked about and the bottom line is mobile marketing is here to stay. As such, you need to make sure that you are creating and optimizing your website to be mobile-friendly.

The first way to ensure your website is compatible with most mobile browsers is to confirm your site is entirely W3C XHTML validated. Mobile browsers are not nearly as forgiving of XHTML errors as standard browsers. Additionally, when you adhere to XHTML accessibility guidelines, any images that do not show up on a mobile browser will appear in a text format.

When you are building mobile versions of your website remember that Flash, AJAX and Javascript don’t always translate across mobile browsers and should therefore be used sparingly in development. This will not only contribute to a better overall user experience, but will also help you gain better positioning within mobile search results.

If your company is already using mobile marketing be sure to test as you would the rest of your search engine optimization (SEO) strategies.

Learn more about mobile optimization at Search Insider.

Posted by: Lauren Klostermann, Project Manager

Since Google Buzz launched on February 9, 2010, it has had a far-reaching trickle effect across the web. Buzz, the fully Google-integrated platform for real-time sharing speculated to rival Twitter, has several implications for traditional search engine optimization (SEO) strategies.

The first is that Buzz is facilitating an influx of new content that is highly likely to be indexed in Google’s search engine. Buzz also allows all links posted to be read by the search engine. Based on Google’s search engine algorithm, more links to your site, even those via Buzz, will signify that your site is more important and should be listed higher in search results. Finally, Google Buzz has an easy-to-use integration on mobile phones to help provide your business with local information and reviews.

If your company already has a social marketing presence on Facebook and Twitter, Buzz is the next obvious place to begin a conversation, which will in turn also help your SEO visibility.

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