Mobile internet is growing at a very rapid rate, this is due to fast growing popularity of mobile devices such as Smartphones, and it will not be a surprise to see it overtake the desktop advertisement market.
The biggest question for marketers out there is how can we take advantage of this opportunity?
Below is my list of the top eight strategies which should get you started in this fast growing industry. Please bear in mind that we will be focusing on non-paid advertising.
Basic SEO Best Practices – Just as effective as site optimisation is for your desktop, the same applies for mobile sites. Therefore having good content, keywords, search engine accessibility and links is vital in mobile SEO too.
Mobile Website – First and foremost is deciding if you need a devoted mobile site or if you will redesign your current site to a mobile friendly version. If you think majority of your customers use mobiles phones, then a dedicated mobile site will be suitable, otherwise create a custom CSS file for your mobile friendly site. Visit Mobile Filters in Google Analytics for more information on determining your website’s mobile activity – also bear in mind that there are other factors still to consider. Even though mobile usage is growing rapidly there are still some downfalls like web extensions and animations that cannot be viewed on smartphones such as iPhone, and many users still have traditional phones that might not be able to view your website content as intended.
Mobile URL Serving – A lot of webmasters have their mobile sites detect users who access via a mobile phone, and then displays a mobile friendly site using a different URL. This is no longer required because website owners now use Canonical URL tags to present both users and Googlebots with a single URL. A good advantage to having a single URL is that you will have a single destination for link building.
Mobile Keyword Research – The way user’s type search queries on mobile differs from desktop searchers. On average search queries are 20 percent shorter. There are various keyword suggestion tools out there which provide mobile filtering options, which can be used to help you choose the right keywords to target.
Mobile Emulator – If you want to see how your mobile friendly site will appear, there are plenty of resources out there which can aid you with this. One of them is “Dotmobit”.
Mobile Content – As we all know, content is king – therefore it is also important to test the effectiveness of your mobile content, just like you would on the desktop. Understanding your customers, what their likes and dislikes are, as well as keywords and social topics – these insights will help you achieve the best content strategy for your mobile site.
Mobile Site Map – Once you have a list of all your mobile URLs; create an XML sitemap to submit to Google Webmaster tools. Non-mobile URLs should not be included, but URLs that return both mobile and non-mobile content can be included.
Mobile Analytics - You can use Google Analytics to track traffic to your mobile website and learn how many users are visiting or leaving your website on their mobile device. This will give you great insight as to where you should invest your energy.
In conclusion, millions of peoples out there are using mobiles phones to connect to the internet and there are more phones in the world than TVs and computers combined – so if you are not considering mobile marketing as one of your strategies, then you are putting yourself at a great disadvantage.
Hi Blandine! Great post on mobile. You’re so right about the keywords, e.g. in food, people search on PC/laptops for savour things, but on mobile they search more for sweet things