Coming soon to Google, Bing, and Yahoo: apps!

That’s right.

The way this is going to work is when you’re on your cell phone and you go on Google, Bing, or Yahoo and search for something, not only will you get links to websites. You’ll also now possibly get links to download apps that answer your search question.

They’re currently beta-testing, which means they’re experimenting on a small scale for now.

If this does get traction and gets rolled out, it’s going to be a big advantage for small businesses to be early adopters and get their apps entrenched in organic, search engine optimization listings.

One of the biggest drawbacks of creating an app for a small business has been the fact that the app is only valuable if people download it.

Well, if businesses’ can get their apps in search engines, there could be some real potential here.

Noted internet marketing guru Greg Sterling recently wrote an article where based off of data from Google and comScore, he’s calculating that people that search for something locally could make up close to half of all searches on search engines.

This is huge to grasp.

For any small business that doesn’t actively market themselves on the internet because they think that the search engines are for big, nationwide companies, half of all people searching on the search engines are looking for LOCAL businesses.

There have been some in the internet marketing industry making a big deal about how voice search is the future of our business. (aka Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana, OK Google, etc.)

I think it has a ways to go though.

Search engines on computers and cell phones offer the benefit of choice. You can look at various websites and click on those you want to.

Voice search is limited in the sense that it doesn’t offer choice.

There are some industries where voice search can be more successful, like when customers have zero loyalty to a brand. Like taxi cabs. I would think most people could be Ok with asking Siri for a cab and talking to a random company. Or someone that wants to be surprised by calling a mystery restaurant.

But a lot of small businesses charge a decent amount of money for their products and services where consumers will want to do their research.

If there was a way voice search could offer the choice, then I think it’s use could get more wide spread.

According to study done by Blue Nile, 27% of keywords searched for in 2015 are done in the form of a question.

So in other words keywords like “average price of limo service” or “moving service near me”.

I’ve noticed the past few years, more and more, study after study is showing searchers getting more specific with what keywords they’re searching for.

And sure, in the auto repair industry, “auto repair” does get searched for more than any other individual keyword. But it’s not getting searched for as much as it once did.

Because there’s been a dramatic rise in how many people will search “brake repair” or “affordable auto repair” or “discount ford auto repair”.

I’ve been saying the same thing to our small business clients: there is a TON of opportunity targeting these specific keywords.

The rest of the search engine optimization industry hasn’t caught up yet. So it’s likely your small business competitors aren’t caught up either.

For years, search engine optimization companies used link building tactics Google wasn’t happy about to produce better rankings.

But since 2012, Google has slowly but surely wiped out nearly every effective link building technique.

And one Google spokesman has even gone as far to say that trying to do link building can do more harm than good.

And of course, Google could just be trying to scare people into not doing it anymore, but the past year or so, the SEO industry has formed a consensus to focus on content instead of link building.

The reasons are that Google is now confident in knowing if people are trying to game the link building system. So if you try it and Google catches you, Google might remove you from their search engine for a period of time, aka a Google penalty.

It couldn’t be any more clear that in 2015, the way to get better SEO rankings is through content.

The last few years, the advertising industry has been paying close attention to consumers preferences on how to pay to watch video on the internet.

Would people prefer to watch a quick ad before their video plays like on YouTube? Or would people prefer to pay like they do on Netflix or Amazon Prime?

A recent study suggests that people would rather watch a quick ad.

Which is great news for businesses considering how it’s still very possible in the next 5-10 years that people will cancel their cable and dish TV service to just watch TV through the internet.

The opportunities for small businesses to advertise for TV watchers will be plentiful!