The lead up to the so-called “Mobi­leged­don” pro­vid­ed a strong reminder to brands about the impor­tance pri­or­i­tiz­ing mobile-friend­ly site design in order to avoid suf­fer­ing a hit to their mobile rank­ings. How­ev­er, mobile-friend­li­ness goes beyond rank­ings. Ulti­mate­ly, brands and retail­ers will need to mar­ry mobile search intent with cus­tomer-cen­tric tech­nol­o­gy to pro­vide the best pos­si­ble mobile expe­ri­ence if they are to win at the moments when con­sumers are search­ing on mobile.

For those who fol­low the dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing head­lines, it seems that every year is her­ald­ed as the “year of mobile.”

With the roll­out of Google’s update to the mobile search algo­rithm on April 21, which rewards “mobile-friend­ly” sites, 2015 could jus­ti­fi­ably be that year.

As of now, mobile SEO can’t be treat­ed as a trend­ing media buz­zphrase. Instead, it forms a crit­i­cal com­po­nent of a brand’s over­all search vis­i­bil­i­ty.

The media have been quick to ana­lyze how the change will affect the search land­scape. Brands with web­sites that don’t pro­vide a mobile-friend­ly expe­ri­ence, and there are many, may suf­fer a hit to their mobile rank­ings.

How­ev­er, there’s also an under­ly­ing sto­ry here about the evo­lu­tion of con­sumer’s search intent on mobile devices. Local search.

How Influential Is Local Search On Mobile?

As ear­ly as 2011, Google research revealed that 20 per­cent of all search­es had local intent.

On mobile specif­i­cal­ly, accord­ing to Google, 56 per­cent of “on the go” search­es and 51 per­cent of in-store search­es from a mobile device have local intent.

The most recent data from the search giant has revealed that search­es using the “near me” mod­i­fi­er have increased 34X since 2011. At the end of last year, in the peri­od Q4 2014, a mas­sive 80 per­cent of these search­es were made via mobile devices.

Google Data, March 28–29, 2015

Anoth­er piece of research from Google revealed that “50 per­cent of con­sumers who con­duct a local search on their smart­phone vis­it a store with­in a day, and 18 per­cent of those search­es lead to a pur­chase with­in a day.”

The mobile-friend­li­ness update is a tes­ta­ment to the ris­ing influ­ence of mobile on user search behav­ior. Mobile is a cru­cial part of con­sumer pur­chase jour­neys.

In the next few weeks, brands may be more focused on the tech­ni­cal ele­ment of the mobile deliv­ery and under­stand­ably so. How­ev­er, the greater les­son here will be for brands to gain a thor­ough under­stand­ing of the way their con­sumers are look­ing for answers via mobile search, and pro­vid­ing for those needs accord­ing­ly.

When you think about it, mobile search does pro­vide a stun­ning pic­ture of user intent. Espe­cial­ly when on the go, peo­ple pull out their smart­phones when and where they are seek­ing out an answer to an imme­di­ate need. Per­haps they are look­ing for a good place to eat in the local area, or where the near­est ser­vice sta­tion is.

For brands, achiev­ing cus­tomer-cen­tric­i­ty will be in ful­fill­ing these moments with rel­e­vant con­tent, on web­sites that pro­vide an excel­lent mobile-friend­ly expe­ri­ence.

5 Local and Mobile Search Opportunities

The smartest con­sumer-fac­ing brands rec­og­nize the fun­da­men­tal impor­tance of SEO, for meet­ing con­sumers at moments of need as they nav­i­gate their pur­chase jour­neys. Some man­age that jour­ney bril­liant­ly, pro­vid­ing a clear and per­sua­sive path to pur­chase.

UK retail­er Argos is one such exam­ple. Hav­ing an expan­sive under­stand­ing of cus­tomer pur­chase jour­neys is an immense­ly pow­er­ful con­cept, and one which enables brands to work out where the poten­tial oppor­tu­ni­ties lie to bet­ter reach con­sumers.

In the com­ing months, it may be that mobile devices become the bat­tle­ground for brands look­ing to be “num­ber one” at those moments. Cer­tain­ly the oppor­tu­ni­ties are there:

1. Hyperlocal Advertising (Apple Watch)

The much antic­i­pat­ed Apple Watch, which began mak­ing its way onto con­sumer wrists April 24, means a new oppor­tu­ni­ty for brands to bring so-called hyper­local adver­tis­ing to con­sumer wrists.

Tak­ing cues from GPS loca­tion data, glance recog­ni­tion, and seam­less full-screen tran­si­tions, Apple Watch seeks to pro­vide rel­e­vant and use­ful infor­ma­tion to con­sumers, the strongest sig­nals for intent could well stem from mobile search.

2. iBeacon

iBea­con tech­nol­o­gy is anoth­er fea­ture of mobile devices set to rev­o­lu­tion­ize in-store shop­ping expe­ri­ences. It pro­vides brands with the abil­i­ty to track and inte­grate retail shop­ping expe­ri­ences via NFC and has already been her­ald­ed as the “sav­ior” of brick-and-mor­tar stores.

The depart­ment store retail­er Macy’s have already invest­ed heav­i­ly in the plat­form, rolling out the tech­nol­o­gy across 4,000 U.S. stores.

3. Quadruple Play Services

Quadru­ple play telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions are fast becom­ing a real­i­ty in many ter­ri­to­ries. Sky Ads­mart, for exam­ple, pro­vides the oppor­tu­ni­ty to serve per­son­al­ized tele­vi­sion adver­tise­ments based on geo­graph­i­cal loca­tion.

If fur­ther devel­op­ments enable brands to retar­get these ads based on desk­top or mobile search, in much the same man­ner as dis­play adver­tis­ing is man­aged online, brands could find them­selves in a sce­nario in which they are able to uti­lize the unique char­ac­ter­is­tics offered by video adver­tis­ing, such as emo­tion­al sto­ry­telling, to meet con­sumers at the moments they are seek­ing them.

4. Inventory Management Systems

The app space is intrin­si­cal­ly linked to users mobile usage, and a num­ber of retail­ers are devel­op­ing sophis­ti­cat­ed apps that enable has­sle free buy­ing expe­ri­ences for users. Nord­strom, for exam­ple, devel­oped an app that inte­grates with both Nordstrom.com, and the retailer’s inven­to­ry man­age­ment sys­tem, which enables users to check stock lev­els for the items they are inter­est­ed in and, should they want to, get them deliv­ered to their clos­est store.

5. Local Inventory Ads

When it comes to mobile search, Google’s local inven­to­ry ads are per­haps the best exam­ple of how brands can lever­age the grow­ing influ­ence of “near me” con­sumer intent. When com­bined with a sophis­ti­cat­ed IMS, it means being able to pro­vide vis­i­bil­i­ty for users on the go, giv­ing users the abil­i­ty to find out where a prod­uct is in stock local­ly, and poten­tial­ly pick­ing it up that very day.

Mobile Journeys & Connected Technologies

In all the above exam­ples, suc­cess will lie in using new tech­nolo­gies to max­i­mize the oppor­tu­ni­ties on local search. Local search is so pow­er­ful because it ulti­mate­ly goes beyond mobile.

In the next few weeks, mar­keters may jus­ti­fi­ably be watch­ing the mobile search results with eagle eyes. How­ev­er, as impor­tant as mobile rank­ings are, true mobile “vis­i­bil­i­ty” takes places across an entire user jour­ney, at the many moments and queries in which con­sumers are search­ing.

Just as is the case for desk­top search, over­com­ing Mobi­leged­don will require an omni-chan­nel com­mit­ment to mobile SEO that puts cus­tomer-cen­tric­i­ty at the heart of a brand’s dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing oper­a­tions.

Local search is extreme­ly valu­able on mobile because it pro­vides a strong sig­nal of con­sumer intent.

“Most search being done on mobile devices is local­ly rel­e­vant by nature as con­sumers want some­thing near them, whether that is to look up a phone num­ber, weath­er, prod­ucts, or even direc­tions,” said Adam Meshekow, Exec­u­tive Vice Pres­i­dent, Prod­uct Strat­e­gy & Nation­al Sales, SITO Mobile. “The intent of the upper fun­nel is already there and serv­ing that intent moves them fur­ther down the fun­nel in the cus­tomer jour­ney.”

Ulti­mate­ly, it isn’t just mobile rank­ings that pro­vide vis­i­bil­i­ty. Tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tions on the mobile plat­form will pro­vide addi­tion­al oppor­tu­ni­ties to increase a brand’s mobile pres­ence.

“It is extreme­ly impor­tant for brands to uti­lize local search tech­niques to pro­vide aware­ness for con­sumers to enter into the fun­nel at a hyper local lev­el,” Meshekow said. “For exam­ple, when a con­sumer is in a big box retail­er, there are over 100,000 prod­ucts that they could buy. Mak­ing con­sumers aware of those prod­ucts, via hyper­local geofenc­ing for exam­ple, could enter them into the fun­nel for a new prod­uct. While in a hyper­local envi­ron­ment, it’s an addi­tion­al adver­tise­ment oppor­tu­ni­ty.”

For brands, ensur­ing that their sites are rec­og­nized as “mobile-friend­ly” will be the first pri­or­i­ty. How­ev­er, once that chal­lenge is over­come, rec­og­niz­ing the impor­tance of local intent in mobile search queries, and mar­ry­ing the pro­vi­sion for those needs with avail­able tech­nol­o­gy, will be impor­tant for brands that wish to look one step ahead.

What do you think is the biggest local search oppor­tu­ni­ty for brands?