A few words to introduce this series… I started writing this as a single article, but realized quickly that my explanation/commentary of each trend was almost an article in itself. So, I’ve turned it into a 10 part series covering the 2009 Online Marketing Trends that I feel small businesses should know about and consider as part of their future marketing strategies. Here goes…

2009 Online Marketing Trends for Small Business – Introduction

 I came across a report the other day on Online Marketing Trends for 2009, developed by Strange Media, and the opening statement really hit home with me…

“2009 is likely to be a challenging year for many businesses as the global economic slowdown takes hold. Digital marketing, however, looks set to continue its rapid growth, as its many solutions and advantages become even more apparent when marketing budgets are subjected to even greater constraints.”

As industry giants feel the pinch and scramble to maintain market share and mass appeal, small businesses are uniquely positioned to move quickly and flourish within the emerging marketplace of online consumers.

Let’s face facts…Tough economic times means more people using the internet to research products and services, and more people searching online for the best deals. Small businesses that focus on continually building a strong online presence will be positioned well to chip away at the market share of their slower, larger competitors.

The Strange Media report mentioned above lists 16 online marketing trends for 2009, several of which I will touch on here. But many trends within their report may be “over the heads” of most small businesses who are still getting their online legs. Instead of throwing a bunch of advanced digital marketing topics at you, I’d like to focus on 10 internet and search marketing trends that I feel small businesses should understand and can take advantage of quickly.

Part 1: Personalized Search

Also referred to as behavior-based search, personalized search is a set of ranking factors that Google and other search engines have gradually implemented within their already-complex search algorithms. For years, Google has been keeping tabs on how we search, what we search for and the types websites we frequent. They also know where we live (think “Big Brother”). Therefore, in an effort to provide us with the most relevant search results, they’re factoring our search patterns and location into their algorithms and presenting us with web pages that are not only good matches contextually, but also good matches geographically.

For example, I type “underwater basket weaving training” in Google. Before personalized search, top web page results may have been dominated by top trainers in San Diego, Tampa or even Cancun. Well, I live in Kansas, and when I’ve done searches with the term “training” in the past, I’ve always clicked on Kansas City-based companies. With personalized search, an underwater basket weaving trainer based in Kansas City may find themselves on the first page of the Google results when I’m searching for them.

There’s an additional wrinkle to this that I should mention. For those companies who have been hanging your hats on top Google rankings, realize that personalized search may throw off your analysis. Searching from your computer may be returning top rankings for your key terms, but doing the same search at another location may return a very different result. Just remember that a certain ranking position doesn’t necessarily dictate success. Converting website traffic into customers dictates success. Focus your success metrics on conversion rates and know that personalized search may play a significant role in bringing higher quality traffic (fewer bounces) to your site.

Does this make sense? Did I miss anything? Feel free to comment…

Stay tuned for Part 2: Bounce Rates Will Affect Your Search Engine Rankings – Subscribe to the series via e-mail or my RSS feed.