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This article is a Guest Post: Carla Sanchez is a freelance writer for Omniture. Omniture is the world leader at cms software and search marketing; software that enables you to better understand your customers and increase your sales.

As 2011 moves into full view, trends in search marketing will be highlighted by local and mobile search as well as social media marketing efforts.

As the Internet industries grow up and mature, many businesses are looking at how search marketing will trend in 2011. And more importantly, how those changing trends are going to affect their business revenues and bottom lines. A number of important technological developments on the hardware and software fronts will have their affect on how users effectively benefit from search. Additionally, the big search engine companies like Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft’s Bing are continuing to make interesting and exciting changes to the services they are bringing to web searchers every day.

One aspect of search marketing that we saw steadily increase last year was the use of offline advertising to promote online search. Bing launched and rode a steady wave of interest based upon their novel television commercials. Regardless of just how effective the actual search results might be, the ads brought a bit of market share to the newly emerging search engine.

The reverse is also a trend to keep an eye on in the coming year. Retail sales are and continue to be heavily influenced by the web. This means the more effective your business is at search marketing, the higher the chances you’re company’s online messages will reach and influence your retail buyers. People love to take their time online and get answers to questions, see options, and figure out exactly what it is they want to buy. Just as they tend to like to take their time learning about your products, they also want to be able to buy immediately.

Though somewhat slow and stumbling, the trend towards mobile search has finally begun to take off and is growing at a rapid pace. Hardware manufacturers continue to compete with smaller, faster, and more effective smartphones. Even some search providers have gotten into mobile hardware and software development with the release of Android operating systems and a number of heavily integrated applications designed to take advantage of search marketing.

If you’re not actively developing your search presence to appear for the local, mobile searcher you’ll be missing out on immediate results that could have a big impact on your bottom line. Most of the big search providers are focusing a lot of their attention on various local and mobile search solutions. If it’s important to them, you can be sure it needs to be important to you as well.

Not to be overlooked is the trending opportunities associated with social media marketing. Most of the larger, more influential online social communities have a number of opportunities to reach targeted niches within the larger member set. Whether you’re using their in-house search features, or are taking advantage of targeted, direct, on-page advertising, these communities offer a rich, untapped audience to get your message in front of.

Active online marketing campaigns inside of Facebook, or even on Twitter, can provide you with results that make your ROI extremely attractive. An important aspect to succeeding within the social marketing world is to fully understand each community you’re attempting to reach. Knowing that an audience on Facebook will be quite different from one you’re attempting to connect with on LinkedIn is a sure way to maximize your efforts while minimizing the potential damage which could be created by poorly designed and delivered marketing efforts.

At the end of the day trends are interesting and can have a great impact on your business’s effectiveness. Chasing the latest, greatest trends however may be less important than simply providing steady, consistent efforts. Essentially, it’s important to know what’s happening in the world of search marketing, but also to be making progress establishing your presence as an authority for the niche target markets you hope to compete in.

Carla Sanchez is a freelance writer for Omniture. Omniture is the world leader at cms software and search marketing; software that enables you to better understand your customers and increase your sales.