Yahoo has recently updated their images, greatly improving the zoom factors and quality. While most of the time, this company has shied away from the image side of things, preferring to leave the graphic genius to Google, Yahoo is now stepping things up.

What does this mean for Yahoo advertisers? Well, as the imagery improves, chances are more people will be heading to Yahoo as a favorite search engine. Google has long since been a major player in this area, but with Yahoo stepping up, it could get interesting.

The fact is that the gap between the two is narrowing drastically and you can expect to see more value from your Yahoo advertising dollars.

Local mobile marketing is a great way to reach more people. Everyone has cell phones these days, in fact, there are currently more mobile phones than PCs in the US, so take full advantage of it!

Text messages are still one of the most effective methods of local mobile marketing. No one is really immune to them yet and since spam is quite infrequent on mobiles, it is very likely that your target market will be checking the messages they send.

You need to keep your local mobile messages short and sweet. This ensures that more people will read them. It´s a great medium, so you want to be sure that you give people a great reason to read and respond to your text messages.

Local mobile marketing is far more effective if you make it easy for people to respond. Take care not to overload your market with messages though, just a few once in a while is far more effective.

Local live search is a great way to check out what your clients are finding when they look for your keywords. Really, I should say potential clients because they might not ever find you if your competition is strong.

Do searches for your keywords on a regular basis, not just to see what position you´re in, but to check out the competition. What do they have that you don´t? Could you do anything to get ahead of them, or to make it all but impossible for them to move above you on the lineup?

Your competition is often the best place to find out what works and what doesn´t. You can see for yourself the tactics that they are using and develop your own to overtake them.

Local live search makes it possible to see exactly what your competition is up to and how you rank against them. This should give you quite a bit of information on how to beat them.

One of the big issues with local pay per click advertising is the high risk of click fraud. This is when people click on the ads displayed on their own website to earn money. Obviously, to the advertiser, these clicks are completely useless, but still being paid for.

No matter which local pay per click service you choose, make sure they offer the option of deciding which sites your ads should NOT appear on. That way, if you feel that some sites are promoting click fraud, you can ban them from displaying your local pay per click ads and save yourself some cash.

Local pay per click ads are somewhat more limited than those in other areas of advertising, since you will only be displayed on sites that show the local keywords. So do be careful that you aren´t banning all your available options!

Ever since people have started really using the internet to find local businesses, the Yellow Pages have been taking a hit. People say that the print version of the famous phone directory is not very environmentally friendly, being sent to millions of people, some of whom will never even open it.

While the print version of the Yellow Pages had its heyday, these days, we are looking at local online advertising as being far more sustainable and more and more environmentalists are pointing to printed directories as being very non-environmentally friendly.

If you want your business to stay on the greener side of things, you might want to consider the option of online Yellow Pages, though the print version is looking like it will become an opt-in only offer soon.

Local online advertising isn´t all pay per click and SEO. In fact, you can do quite well by simply advertising on a local website. Depending on the size of your town or city, you´ll have at least a couple of blogs or websites that focus on your area.

By offering to pay for advertising by the month, you can get an ad on these sites or blogs and do some very effective local online advertising. It´s a great way to get started, too, if you aren´t interested in pay per click or anything like that.

Even if the website or blog doesn´t have an advertising page, you can ask them about the possibility of doing a little local online advertising on their site. Some will turn you down, while others will accept your offer and you´ll have a brand new venue. It´s definitely worth a try.

Local search engine optimization is probably one of the most valuable things you can do for your business. It allows people in the area to find you while doing a simple search online and it is completely free, unlike regular advertising.

With larger numbers searching for local businesses every year, experts are predicting a 16% increase in local search engine optimization by 2012. That may not seem like much, but it´s extremely fast growth for this area.

With local search engine optimization doing so well, we can expect to see a lot more competition coming up shortly, so it´s a good idea to hone those local SEO techniques now, before everyone jumps into the water!

The world in general is showing a definite trend, leaning away from print resources and moving toward online searches. And of all the searches done online, about 25% of those are local searches, meaning that local online advertising is an extremely effective method of reaching people who are looking for what you have. Some other reasons that online advertising is so useful:

• Local searchers are ready to buy. In general, people use broad searches to find out more about a product and look locally when they are interested in buying. That means that local online advertising can be just the thing to bring in more sales.

• People are more likely to buy if they can pick the product up. Human beings like instant gratification, so being able to have the product in their hands the day they decide to buy is a huge plus.

• 46% of internet users have searched for a local store in the past 3 months. People are using the internet to search for locations to buy items in their own towns now and 46% is a pretty decent number!

These are some excellent reasons to try local online advertising if you haven´t yet started. People are very responsive these days to local online advertising and it can be a great way to reach new clients.

Advertisers with Superpages will be enjoying a new way of interacting with clients now. They have recently added a brand new feature, the “Post a Business Reply” link that will allow users to respond to the reviews left for their business.

In addition to rating and reviewing local businesses, users can report incorrect business contact information and blog about a business. Other user-generated/enhanced content abilities, for both user and advertiser, include options to contribute information about businesses, such as products, services, specialties, hours of operation, and photos of the business. Superpages.com has more than 550,000 user-generated content entries.

The ability to respond to what people are saying about your business online can be extremely useful in thanking and encouraging people. If someone leaves an unhappy review, you can try and remedy the issue, which is often one that you weren´t even aware of. This new Superpages function also allows businesses to correspond with their visitors and this can actually help create a bond between the company and the client, which is very useful in promoting repeat traffic!

All in all, it looks like this new addition to Superpages is going to be a great one that many people are using.

Local mobile marketing is definitely going to be big in the future. As you probably know, Japan tends to start all trends technical and this is no exception. At this point, an overwhelming majority of Japanese (about 70%) access the internet through their mobile phones, rather than a regular computer. In fact, in many areas of the world, mobile access is more common.

We can expect to see this trend hit the US in a couple of years and as more and more potential clients hit the internet and start doing mobile searches, local mobile marketing will become huge. The most successful, of course, will be those who get in early. Now is the perfect time to start experimenting with the whole idea of local mobile marketing and establish your brand in the marketplace.

Local mobile marketing may not have peaked yet, but there is absolutely nothing wrong with riding the success to the top! In fact, it could end up being a very good way to go. Local mobile marketing is really the next email marketing and may even be more effective for quite some time. Get in on it now and you can expect to be as successful as those first email marketers if everything is done right.

Are you doing everything with your local search engine optimization to ensure that your website goes to the top of the rankings? If you aren´t sure, read on, there are plenty of tips right here to help you figure out what you ought to be doing with local search engine optimization to make your website really work for you.

Headlines: Are your keywords in your headlines? They ought to be. Whether you have a blog or a static site, local search engine optimization will be boosted if you optimize your headlines.

Meta Tags: Be sure to include your keywords in your meta tags for a boost in local search engine optimization.

Links: Using your keywords as anchor text for links can really help your SEO as well. You should also use the keywords in your link titles for a super boost.

Alt Tags: This is the text that appears when a photo or image cannot be displayed. Put your keywords here and your local search engine optimization will really do well.

These are fairly simple tips, but you can really make your site better by including local search engine optimization techniques everywhere. Use your keywords wisely for the best results and watch your site rise in the search engine ranks.

According to Business Day, a Nigerian newspaper, local mobile advertising is going to be huge. Mobile advertising in general is expected to gross $10 billion by the year 2011 . . . an astounding number and one that shows how important it is that you get in now before there is much competition!

According to Naphtal, what is certain is that this industry is growing, and growing fast. By attending the summit, delegates will learn how to take advantage of new revenue streams to drive growth in mobile data usage and generate highly profitable advertising revenue.
Naphtal said that the summit is the foremost event of the year dedicated to communication and loyalty on the mobile in the emerging markets.

At the moment, local mobile marketing is still a relatively fresh field, but it is one that is expected to open up fairly rapidly, as you can see. The advantages for anyone getting in early is that people aren´t jaded by text messages and online mobile ads. It´s a very narrow window, but right now is the perfect opportunity to start using local mobile marketing while it is still new and fresh!

When you hear “local pay per click”, you probably think of Google Adwords, but the truth is that there are quite a few other options out there for local pay per click. One huge on is Yahoo. Many people figure Yahoo is somewhat overshadowed by Google, and with the recent rumors of sale . . . Yahoo might not seem like the top choice. However, there are several reasons to try Yahoo out for your local pay per click needs.

Decide where your ad will rank. You can see how much you need to pay in order to boost your local pay per click ad to the #1 spot on Yahoo, which is a huge advantage of Adsense.

Quality ads get better positioning. Yahoo actually takes a look at how well your local pay per click ads are written, so with a top quality ad, you can get further than ever before.

Direct linking is permitted. With Yahoo, your local pay per click ads can link to an affiliate site, something that isn´t allowed with Google. This can be a huge benefit if you are into affiliate marketing.

Google and Yahoo aren´t the only local pay per click options out there. Do your research and consider advertising in more than one place to boost your results. You might be pleasantly surprised at how well things go for you with other types of advertising.