Beanstalk's SEO News Blog

I've refrained from joining the plethora of mobile web users so far due to the fact that I've never wanted to surf the web on a squished cell phone screen at near dial-up speeds, but online hand held devices are becoming larger and more user friendly all the time with bigger displays, better software, and increased network speeds. Meaning that the time is "now" to catch the wave (and the gravy train) of the mobile web boom.

We're already seeing incredible growth in the number of people using mobile devices to surf the web all around us. I think this is just the foundation for the exponential growth that is going to take place over the next few years and it will be one of the next great booms and revolutions of the internet. Entrepreneurs will find new services for mobile web surfers that we didn't know we needed.

Up until last week I would've probably asked the same question many of you will ask. "Who needs a mobile website?" Who would surf the web on that tiny screen with that clunky interface at those terrible speeds?

That is until I heard that Panago (a pizza shop here in Victoria BC) has their menu on a cell phone friendly webpage and that if I were driving through an unfamiliar town I could find some good grub without even pulling over to find a phonebook. Even better, wouldn't have to go to the restaurant or find a wireless access point for my laptop to even look at a menu? Alright, you've sold me. Now the question is, "Who doesn't need a mobile website?"

Imagine you go into Walmart and have a look around but wonder if Target has the item for cheaper. Well if you're one of the current mobile web surfer geeks who is ahead of the curve you're going to be frustrated that the rest of the world hasn't caught up with the convenience and services that businesses could be offering you online via mobile-friendly websites. But in a short time you'll be able to walk down the isles of one store and on an impulse, pull out your smart phone and compare prices with other nearby stores.

In the near future providing mobile websites and services for your customers will be a must. There will be new conveniences to offer and new expectations from consumers. Businesses that don't keep up with the conveniences may find themselves losing customers to more tech-friendly competitors. Businesses that do should see a lot of extra attention considering it doesn't cost much to build and maintain a mobile website in comparison to daily business operations and advertising expenses.

I imagine this will be the next big .com style boom. The borders of yet another digital land of intrigue and opportunity are in front of us. Welcome, once again, to the Wild West.

Labels: mobile seo, mobile website

I sit in a session that's of great interest to me and that's mobile PPC (and mobile in general).

Cindy Crum from Rank-Mobile opens up the session with a general outline of PPC ads, the devices they're built for and how you can create the ads. She notes that there are some tremendous limitations to creating mobile ads in the text allowed (due to limited screen space).

She talks about the higher bid rates due to the fact that users of mobile search rarely visit page two. Whether this is due to better results when searching local, whether the nature of mobile search is different (my guess is that this is it) or people's lack of patience with mobile due to limited screen space and the generally lackluster user experience due to people not optimizing their sites for mobile was not covered but I'll be sure to interview her tomorrow and get to the bottom of that.

Reid Spice from iCrossing was up next talking about mobile generally as well.

He begins by noting that it's not for everyone and that it will only work for some businesses (and the higher cost per click makes it something that needs to be tracked separately and differently).

Reid focused on Android phones and discussed the importance of testing your site on various platforms.

Who Is Mobile For?

According to Reid it's for people running very specific searches for products/services (such as movies or travel).

He notes that 88% of mobile searches are done via the iPhone (which is what yours truly uses). Of course, he does note that the dominance of the iPhone early has led to this and the % will change.

Conversion rates are lower however one has to consider that this may be due in large part to the poor user experience on many sites for mobile. It's harder to interact with a mobile site and so conversions are not as good. That said, if you're a restaurant or the such it may be difficult to track conversion as the customer will generally just walk in and the downside to that is - you don't know where they came from. On the plus side - you just got a customer. :)

Unfortunately this is the case with a lot of mobile searches.

Michael Martin of Internet Marketing Inc. was up next. He discussed mobile apps.

He broke down some of the biggest selling apps including Trism (made $250k from $500 in development). Tap Tap makes $5k/day for a free app via advertising.

The "I am rich" app was just a red ruby that sold for $999.99 and only sold 6. Unbelieveable.

In 2008 users spend $100 on apps. (I've only spent $10 but then - I've only had mine for a few months).

The Trends:

Games have the best long-term retention (I've been playing Word Warp for months).

A free app needs $8.75 CPM which is about 4X above average.

Moving Forward:

By the end of 2009 there will be 18 to 20 Android phones vs 1 iPhone. Service providers include AT&T, T-mobile, Verizon, Rogers & Vodophone.

Android will be huge (in case you didn't read the above statements). :)

Capitalization & Take-Aways:

GPS and location-based mobile social.
Advertising can be done via AdMob (I'll have to check it out), Media an AdWords.

Need to optimize the site to 320x480 resolution.

Branding is great with widgets.

Exposure can be done via App Store, App Wrld & Android Market.

Search Engine Marketing is still importnat (whew :) but this is another great avenue for marketing and branding.

Ed O'Keefe from Marchex was up next.

It's important to add mobile now while it is still "young".

Mobile marketing improves ROI due to the client's immediate desires.

The younger generation is more prone to use mobile. This needs to be understood when determining who should advertise.

Mobile ad spent is disproportionally low when compared with consumer interest with newspapers being higher (based on time spent with the medium).

Cell phones are not viewed as discretionary spending by consumers. Basically this means it will always be spent on and thus makes a good advertising medium.

In a case study they reduced customer acquisition costs. The volume wasn't there but that which did - converted very well.

Now is the time to get in while you can learn on your way rather than wait and go up against those that have already tested strategy down the road.

And Now It's Q&A

Cindy - mobile algorithms are different and thus, optimizing your site for mobile will help you rank organically on mobile browsers (note: you may not see this yet as most sites are not optimized for mobile and so your competitors are at the same disadvantage as you are).

I will be sure to ask Cindy tomorrow in our interview about how to optimize for mobile if you're trying to drop the content down (perhaps to a simple search box from a full content site).

Putting different numbers in apps and on mobile sites will help with tracking.

Providing incentives (such as coupons the display on your phone) will help with tracking for restaurants, etc. (this is my own personal take-away but wasn't spoken to though seemed to be alluded to).

Sudoko is the most click-on for ads at the surrent time (and is a great game to boot). :)

Identify your audence by carrier. A pay-as-you-go audeience is different than a visitor paying for a premium plan.

Labels: mobile seo, smx advanced

Since the release of the Apple's iPhone they have pretty much sat in a class of their own winning both small business and Mac fan boys over. As always when a product gets a large market share there can be a lot of grumbling over the quality, and support of a product which the Apple iPhone has definitely see its share (and lawsuits). One of the biggest draw backs of the Apple Apple iPhone is its very closed sourced and secretive nature, and it's application distribution system (iTunes). In fact in the past Apple has even gone as far as preventing companies from releasing training material on how to develop for the phone.

Now anyone in the SEO community has been hearing rumors of the Google Android Phone now since 2007, with the first model (HTC G1) recently hitting the market in the UK. Naturally you'd think that Google is a search engine, how can they produce a quality phone? That easy they don't, essentially what they are creating is a Google Platform (Operating System) for handset manufacturers to integrate into their phones. For Google this is the best possible approach as all the non software costs are covered by the hardware manufacturers (other then reference designs), for Apple this is bad as it potentially will be competing against a multitude of handsets.

The next major question is how can Google's handset platform possible compete against Apple when it has had the iPhone on the market long enough to have already released a second revision prior to Google's initial offers? Easy they just have to make it more appealing, and that is exactly what they did yesterday. On October 21st, 2008 Dave Bort a Google software engineer wrote "Today is a big day for Android, the Open Handset Alliance, and the open-source community. All of the work that we've poured into the mobile platform is now officially available, for free, as the Android Open Source Project." For more information here is the original post on source.android.com.

How exactly does releasing a phone platform as open source make it more competitive?

1. There is a lot of existing free software that has already been developed for Linux that will be easy to port to the Android as it is based on Linux already.

2. Linux has an extremely strong community of programmers, and has some of the best free development tools on the market (lots of programming languages, compilers, and libraries to build GUIs).

3. Linux developers, and open source proponents are WAY more fanatical then Apple Fan Boys. If you don't believe this statement all you have to do is watch the movie Revolution OS to see the likes of Richard Stallman, Bruce Perens, or Linus Torvalds.

4. Now that initial platform has been released to the general public there already will be developers sitting at home trying to improve on Google platform. Who doesn't like free development on their product?

5. Within 12 months I would be surprised if there were any less then 1,000 free applications for the Google Android. Just try to see how many free applications there are for the Apple iPhone.

As for me I'll probably wait for the platform to mature a bit first, but my next cellphone will definitely be based on the Google Android Platform. And I'm waiting with baited breath for all the SEO Applications that will be developed as Link Bait (Good free tools will always organically generate links). Not to mention that Firefox will most likely never be available on the Apple iPhone which already has dozens of SEO and Web Development addons. Essentially you can have a restrictive Apple iPhone, or the Google Android which is a true smartphone.

Labels: google android, iphone, mobile seo