Mobile Marketing Trends: SEO and Advertising

Mobile is the new landscape that consumers are navigating to interact with content on the web. The explosion of mobile computing advancements has made the experience far better than it was even seven or eight years ago. Now when you promote a website, you can’t just think about those using desktop or laptop machines, but also those looking at your content through a hand-held device. How is mobile marketing different, and how does it affect web marketing and SEO?

Mobile Marketing and Search

Business Relevance

Now that almost 40% of internet time is spent on a mobile device, businesses should be taking notice with their web presence. In just the past two years, search on mobile browsers has increased significantly. According to Comscore, nearly 86 million Americans are using mobile phones to search for local businesses.

If you run a local business and you haven’t done anything for your web presence, you will probably still show up in search; however, the questions are, “how often?” and “what will the information look like?” Those who have never made an attempt to put out relevant and accurate data may be displaying something outdated, while those who have may rank higher.

Mobile Marketing and Advertising

Trends are showing that mobile use increases during the evenings and weekends. No surprise there, right? The part mobile marketers should be paying attention to is how to leverage that to get the best possible return on your mobile advertising spend. If you are using popular platforms like AdWords or AdCenter, scheduling ads so that they show to users at peak times is a plus.

Website owners and advertisers need to think more about reaching consumers in these channels. They can’t use the same methods, though. People are in a different mindset when using a mobile device. They often consume information differently and have less space and time to do it in. The number of smartphone users is also growing. It is estimated that right now, there are about a billion active smart phones on the planet. That number is projected to double by 2015, which is ten times the rate of growth it took to get to 1 billion in the first place.

Mobile Marketing Strategy

There are not a huge amount of companies that have a mobile marketing strategy. As the number of smart phone users grows and the hunger of advertisers to reach those users also grows, the need for a plan will emerge. In 2011, it was important to at least be thinking about a mobile strategy, if not developing one. The pressure to do so is magnified today and will only continue to get stronger. Device manufacturers are showing no signs of slowing, and the public’s lust for the latest mobile gadget seems boundless.

Just when many small businesses (and even large companies) are starting to find their way in online marketing, they will have to revisit their strategies to make sure they are thinking about mobile, as well. Because mobile is a different animal, many of the same tactics that worked for desktop marketing cannot be repurposed.

Mobile Encourages Conversation

One other elephant in the room is voice-activated features on mobile devices. It is much easier, much more convenient and much more likely that someone will use voice to search for something on a mobile web browser. Google’s Matt Cutts recently released a video talking about how query syntax will change based on users having the option to speak their queries rather than type them. He points out that we speak differently than we type, and that Google is striving to become better at conversational search. That is, they are trying to get better at understanding the overall meaning of what a person is looking for instead of linking together a string of words to find in a document.

If more and more people are searching for things using a smartphone, that means that a lot of the traditional tactics for ranking web pages may not be as effective any more. While there isn’t a clear answer as to how this will affect everything, it’s probably safe to say that eventually it will become more important to focus on creating things that people will click on and share a lot rather than something a machine will find relevant based on its structure, keywords and how many documents are linked to it.

How are you handing the increasing impact of mobile technology? Do you have any additional insight into this important subject? Be sure to let us know what you think by dropping us a line or leaving a comment below.