The Importance of Location Based Search For Digital Marketing Campaigns

The digital marketing revolution brought about by location-based social networking platforms like Facebook Places and Foursquare, has lead to online search and SEO becoming a location-based game. Since the time when search engines were launched, the geographical location of a company was always considered to be an important factor, while ranking websites for particular key phrases. However, the launch of social media websites and their rising popularity has transformed everything.

While previously, digital marketing specialists used to study website statistics to learn more about the geographical area from where search queries originated, today, professionals want to know exactly where the searcher is located. It has become more and more valuable to know where a potential customer is currently based, to create ad creative that is more relevant to user needs. Likewise, search engines also require this information to display the most relevant search results.

This information can now be easily gained through data collected from mobile devices that have GPS (global positioning systems) and internet connectivity. These 'smartphones' are flying off the shelves, and have effectively made online search mobile. The addictiveness of mobile apps and social media networks have resulted in people using mobile phones as their preferred device for connecting with the world, thus making mobile search more important.

Just like always, Google has been the first to capitalize on the market for location-based search. When they launched a product called Google Realtime Search, which enables users to search through comments and posts on various social media websites, they also included a geographic filtering feature. This feature enables a user to filter results from the social media universe according to the city/country they specify. It consists of a small search box on the left-hand side of the page, asking people to enter a custom location to get specific results. For example, if a user is travelling to London this spring, they can view tweets/comments about ideas for recreational activities in the area.

According to various digital marketing statistics, smartphone searches make up around ten percent of all searches run by users on Google. As the sale of internet-ready mobile phones continuously grows, digital marketing analysts expect this number to constantly rise. Hence, it is predicted that Google will increasingly use geo-social factors to decide website rankings on search engine result pages (SERP).

For digital marketing companies, this means that professionals need to create digital marketing strategies to keep mobile phone users hooked. One smart digital marketing strategy in this regard is to enter the location of a business in descriptions, tweets, comments and other content, on various social media websites. If you want to capture more online 'real estate', it is time to think of more strategies to refine your digital marketing campaign.

Qudos Digital is a leading digital marketing agency and can be contacted on 020 8891 2077 or info@qudosdigital.co.uk.

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