More than ever, people are turning to the internet to shape their decision-making — not just for large companies, but also for professionals and small businesses. comScore’s 2013 survey on Trends Shaping Local Searches turned up no surprises: a web presence is more important than ever.

Did you know:

Seventy-nine percent of smartphone owners and eighty-one percent of tablet owners use their devices to search locally.

Shops and services make up almost half of local searches — 44% on a PC, 49% on mobile, and 45% on tablets.

Size of business is not an excuse for lack of online presence — searchers looking for independent businesses have high expectations of finding a business website.

Local searches currently determine choices on everything from grocery stores to attorneys. Web presence is no longer a bonus feature; consumers expect the businesses they frequent to be available online — for quick reference, easy sharing, or as a point of contact. Without a web presence, consumers move on quickly. There’s no reason for you to get overlooked. Even for traditional professions like law, the internet still holds sway. As Lawyerist reports:

A full 76% of adults looking to hire an attorney in the past year used online resources to guide their selection. The same survey found ‘consumers are slightly more likely to conduct an internet search as they are to turn to people they know’.

Let’s take a look at the web trends for 2014 and see how your business measures up.

Web Presence.

We’ve already covered that consumers expect you to have a web presence regardless of your business size. There are three main components to a web presence:

1. Your website.

Your website is the point-person for your company online. If you play your cards right with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) your website will be the first thing to come up for your business in a search engine. This is your first impression on the customer, so why not make it a good one? Websites can be as simple or as complicated as you want them to be, but it’s important that you put your best foot forward while you have the chance — and it’s important that your site be mobile accessible.

2. Your social media profiles.

Facebook. Twitter. Google+. These aren’t just places to share photos from your weekend or catch up with your friends. Social media can work for your business in a variety of ways. It’s a great way for you to interact on a more casual basis with your customers. It’s an easy platform for you to send out updates, promos, or just to say hello. Customers can ask questions, or give feedback. It also provides another way for your business to get some buzz: people can easily share, tweet, or + to show their satisfaction, or share your business with their friends. Your customers are already spending time on social media, so why not keep in touch? See our examples below for how you can use social media to engage with your customers.

3. SEO

Three little letters. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. In short, SEO impacts how and where your business falls in search engine rankings, and how the search process works for customers looking for businesses like yours. Are you an apple orchard? Imagine never using the words “apple orchard” on your site, and expecting your customers to find you anyway. SEO can get complicated, but it comes down to using your website and social media profiles as a platform to tell your customers about exactly what you do, where you do it, how you do it, and why. The more you tap into the right keywords, the better chance they have of finding precisely what they’re looking for.

A comprehensive web presence, then, includes a website, mobile optimization, social media, and thorough search engine optimization.

SEO is changing.

Google, kingpin of SEO, changed the rules at the end of 2013. The new basis for SEO is rooted in a comprehensive web presence. What does that actually mean? How can you play by the new rules? Well, SEO is now based on:

strengthening your overall web presence,

high quality and natural links,

fresh, relevant content,

well designed, functional websites and

active social media and review pages.

It’s not a difficult compilation of boxes to check. Think of it this way: you need to appeal to search engines as much as you appeal to your customers, and you go about the process in the exact same way. What does this mean for your web presence in a practical sense? Well, for starters, resting on paid advertising might just be a thing of the past. Studies on website eye tracking have shown users focus most of their attention on the natural links for both Google and Bing searches. The paid ads don’t receive the same consideration. In fact, web presence companies like Conductor are even calling for the end of paid media. There’s no reason to spend money on ads when you can attract your customers naturally, they say. The research backs them up: nearly half of all website traffic comes from natural searches.

The role of Google is not to be overlooked in the SEO process. Google Local, Google Maps, and Google+ all combine to create the perfect cocktail for a small business. With standard business page templates and a search emphasis on a customer’s immediate vicinity, Google+ should be one of the first pages you set up.

In a practical sense, the best way you can take advantage of SEO is to be clear about what you do, interact with your customers online, and make a point to put out content. The latter may sound daunting, but it doesn't have to be. Content can be whatever works best for your company, whether it’s a photo, video, press release, or just sharing a blog post or article you found interesting.

Stop for a moment. Google “best pizza in Lincoln, Nebraska”.

Take a look at the search results. Wonder how those restaurants got where they are? Search engine optimization. Let’s look at two examples of small businesses, and how they can use information to build a better website, and, with it, better SEO.

First: The Apple Orchard.

Let’s say you own an apple orchard, and there’s a fantastic story behind it. It’s been in your family for generations, or maybe you’re just getting started. As a part of your orchard, you offer a “pick your own apples” feature every fall at harvest time. You sell your apples at the local farmers market on weekends. You have some recipes that you think really highlight their flavor. Maybe you have a harvest festival in the fall, with a corn maze and some homemade apple cider. You’re located in Shenandoah, and you can’t wait for people to hear about your apples. Now, imagine creating a website with that information. Or, more interestingly: imagine creating a website without it. How would people find you, if you didn’t tell them you were an apple orchard in Shenandoah? How would they know they could pick their own apples if you don’t announce it?

Second: The Accountant.

You’re a small, professional firm, located in Sioux Falls. You specialize in helping businesses manage their finances, and have a series of long-term clients who are very pleased with your services. You’re looking to add a few more clients to your firm, because you just brought on a new partner. Most of your referrals have been through word-of-mouth, but you've read our report here and decided you need to branch out to the web. How do you go about setting up your website? You know your firm better than anyone else does, so tell them about it. Highlight your specialties, and your experience. Contact your clients and ask them to write you a short review, or look at the hand-written notes you've received over the years. Make it easy for someone easy to find you, whether they search “small business merger help in Sioux Falls” or “best accountant near Brandon, SD”.

You have a great company, and you know the story behind that. All you need to do is make that story known online.

Mobile Matters.

Mobile web adoption is growing 8 times faster than original internet adoption.

Stop for a moment. Read that again. Now, consider this: Data from the Pew Research Center on cell internet use indicates “63% of adults use their cell phones to go online and 21% do most of their online browsing on their phone.” Mobile use isn’t going away. It’s growing, and it’s growing fast. Phones and tablets continue to take up a larger share of the browsing market each year. Having a website that appears on a mobile browser is not enough for optimization. Your mobile website should function differently than your regular website. It is no longer enough for mobile users to pinch and zoom to reach content, or squint to find a log-in area. Mobile sites reformat the content to make it phone-and-tablet friendly. This example from Periscopix shows the difference between the two:

Based on the new SEO rules, mobile optimization matters more than ever. Google’s new rules on SEO reward those who have mobile-friendly sites, and look less kindly on those who don’t. 72% of tablet owners purchase online from their tablets each week. Businesses should take note that just because searches are taking place online does not mean the consumers are searching for online products. In fact, nearly “3 out of 4 mobile phone searches that end in a purchase bring customers into brick-and-mortar stores”:

Social Media is Here to Stay.

Social media is not going away any time soon. Experian data shows that 27% of the time spent online is spent on social networking sites across the US, UK, and Australia. From Facebook to Flicker, Linkedin to #Latergrams, social media covers a broad spectrum of uses, users, and types of content. The biggest problems businesses seem to face is finding the best way to integrate themselves into these sites, especially if the web is not their business’s home base.

Is it worth it, on your end, to build and maintain profiles on these sites? Absolutely.

The key here is to both build and maintain. Shareaholic conducted its second survey of social media referral traffic, and the results are impressive: Facebook drove 21.25 percent of overall traffic that the sample sites received. Facebook is the world’s largest social networking site, and provides the kind of easy sharing and organic traffic that can have a tangible impact for businesses online. Professional firms are not exempt from this kind of traffic. The Lawyerist shows Facebook was the most popular site among respondents. Social media sites were used in the full search process for lawyers, including gathering (26%), finding (22%), validating (16%), and selecting (11%). As Verndale warns its friends in the law industry:

Ignore social media at your own peril.

Does it sound like too much work? Trust us, it’s not. Social media can take as much or as little of your time as you want it to take — and we land firmly in the “less is more” camp. It may sound like a lot to do and a lot to manage, but it’s really very easy. Social media management software exists on every level, and makes it easy to schedule your outgoing messages ahead of time, or keep track of your responses in one place for easy viewing.

So: web presence is vital. SEO has changed. Social media is here to stay.

Where does that leave you?

Launching and maintaining a social media and web presence does not need to be hard. You can get started yourself by creating profiles on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ for your business, and there are a number of tools such as Buffer and Hootsuite for managing your social media from a single dashboard.

Check back soon for our next post, covering tools and strategies for web presence management.