There are a few of these terms starting to sprout up, this particular one is something we heard from @MattCutts at #Pubcon.  The Local, Mobile, and Social are the three major components when speaking in terms of your online presence whether it be #SEO, #SMO, #SEM or App Development; these are the terms to follow over the coming years in Internet marketing and brand engagement strategy.

Local

Local search will provide you with the highest conversion rate when doing true SEO.  The longer tail the keyword, the higher the conversion rate, because it is more specific and people searching for that “Exact” keyword will most likely see you as the authority, as will Google if you optimize properly.  Now with things like Geo-Location apps becoming more prevalent and Google paying more attention to perfecting their Places and Maps applications, Local search is still the best game in town for local businesses, small to medium sized companies, and regionalized search.

Mobile

With 91% of mobile Internet access now geared towards being social, marketers are turning to apps—Facebook brand engagement and SEO geared towards the mobile searcher.  Everyday the amount of Smartphone users is growing (and I know this because spell check recognized the word “Smartphone” earlier in this sentence as an appropriate phrase) and is now up to about 30% of all phone users in the US.  With a growing number of mobile device options and the explosion of tablets, mobile now consists of many different avenues.  There are mobile apps, mobile websites, mobile search, text marketing campaigns, geo-location apps, and the list goes on.

As marketers, our responsibility is always to our clients to determine the best way to optimize their mobile budget and reach the broadest and most qualified consumers in the shortest amount of time.  Mobile (by 2014) will dominate search vs. laptop/PC search and you want to be there when someone tries to find you.  The jury is out on mobile search conversion rates vs. PC/laptop search, but I promise to keep you posted.

Social

With thousands of blogs and people telling you how to optimize your Social Media Campaigns and break into this space, you have to have a pretty good awareness of your own company’s brand identity.  There are a few ways to View your Social Engagement Strategy, and here are some numbers to consider:

In a cross section of studies done for multiple brand campaigns, here is an average of average revenue value of conversions:

Twitter follower – $2.00

FB Like – $8.00

The best way to monetize this type of campaign (whether small or large) is to come up with a cost per acquisition, and put a monetary value on your Tweets/Shares/Likes so you can have your Social Media Manager establish goals and incentives.  Without a revenue model, your campaign will be fluff, and will have no metric or determination if anything is working.  You may have 1,000 likes on your page in a month, but if you had no goal in mind or way to monetize that goal, then you are lost in the clouds.

 Matt Freedman can be reached at mfreedman@1seo.com or follow him on Twitter @1seomatt.