Mobile SEO is becoming increasingly important for your brand to capture the growing number of people using their mobile to search. Recent research has revealed that Google mobile search grew 76% during the first three quarters of this year, accounting for 4% of search traffic for the engine. Now 4% may not seem a massive number, but when you take into account that in a typical month there are 9 million searches made through mobile browsers, it’s essential that you’re considering how your site performs for mobile.

So with this in mind, what are some of the things you need to consider when it comes to optimising for the mobile web?

Generally speaking, optimising for mobile is no different to optimising for desktop, if you follow good SEO best practice for your traditional website, you’ll rank well for mobile. However there are things to take into consideration which need to form part of your on-site work, like the way a user searches on a mobile, and the importance put on local search.

Because on mobile the average query takes longer to input than on a desktop, people don’t tend to search for longer tail terms.  According to Google’s research, the average query on mobile search is 15 characters long, but takes 40 seconds to enter. The searches that are made usually consist of one or two words requiring immediate action or information as the user is likely to be on the move, i.e. the user needs to know where a sports shop is or what time a restaurant closes. This is why searches on your mobile will produce local search results and produce feed results more readily.

Therefore it’s important to ensure localised terms form part of your on-site mark up, and your business and product listings are optimised for the location of your store, opening times, user reviews and as much information as possible that you can enter.  It’s worth seeing what your listings look like in Yahoo Local, Yell and other local online directories for any missed opportunities. Supplementing this with a mobile sitemap will further ensure you are in the best place to rank well and as with desktop search; you need to be on the first page to see any traffic.

However for mobile, search results pages differ in layout from desktop; with only 5 results displayed, and as a mobile user is less likely to view a second page, it’s important to note where there are differences between mobile and desktop SEO in order to rank well.

As newer factors like location, type of device and content formats represent the mobile web experience more, the search engines are beginning to figure out how best to harness them. Morgan Stanley’s latest ‘State of the Internet’ report predicted that in the next five years “more users will connect to the Internet over mobile devices than desktop PCs.” Whether this turns out to be the case or not, it’s clear that the share of search traffic for mobile will only increase in the future, so it’s important to keep up with the mobile landscape to ensure your mobile SEO is in place and you stand to benefit from the increase in mobile usage.

I’ve seen many hyper-inflated articles and stats of late from Orange (70 per cent of European users prefer the mobile web to Apps) and Adobe (Users favour mobile web over downloadable Apps). They are all very valid studies (very good actually) but are all based upon very small sample sizes. The facts, however, are right, and it’s positive that these figures are being brought into the public domain and to the attention of many marketers (although many of them feel that it’s all a little too late).

The problem here is that these kinds of figures and studies have been around for well over a year if not longer (the Yahoo APPetite study comes to mind), and many brands and early adopters have been over-eager, jumping in with out really considering the market or consumer mentality. A lot of investment has gone into Applications that will reach a small proportion of the client’s audience, with no real future-proofing or mobile strategy in place to position themselves for the future evolutionary curve of mobile, or the adoption of mobile by their target audience.

The hype that continues to surround Applications and the devices that support them often dominates the headlines, when really Applications can often be just a gimmick with no reach, vision or reason to encourage engagement or repeat usage. One of my favourite stats that has stuck with me for a long time is from Pinch Media, the mobile analytics company:

“Pinch Media, analyzed more than 30 million downloads from Apple’s App Store, reported that just 30% of people who buy an iPhone application actually use it the day after it was purchased. And the numbers plunge from there: after 20 days, less than 5% actively use these downloaded apps.”

They are very scary stats and ones I have been pushing openly into the public domain for a long time. Downloads just don’t equal success; purchase and usage are two very different paradigms.

So what will creating an Application achieve for you or your target audience? You have to remember that only a small segment of your audience may use an iPhone for instance. So will the App cater for their intention or needs? And will using it even benefit them at all in the first place? Unfortunately 9 out of 10 Apps (especially brand-related) currently do not, and are likely to be dropped and forgotten about at a very fast rate, if not instantly. This is very much in line with the Pinch media statistics, and these should not be ignored.

Apps serve a great purpose and are far from being dead, but the reason for developing them needs to be clearly defined and should always be part of a wider strategy or a clear and focused mobile strategy, which has your objectives and audience at the core. Strategy only comes from knowing your audience (their mobile trends and usage patterns, handset breakdowns and needs, are just a few examples) and clearly defining how mobile will fit your business objectives, and most importantly your business model itself.

The product should come from this and not the other way around. I constantly see marketers and brands create an idea, product or technology first, and then try to work it back and force it to fit their audiences. Very often they end up having to spend a lot of money driving traffic to it, with downloads still being their key metric. The convergence of technology doesn’t work this way and a product that is forced upon an audience, or doesn’t fulfil their needs, will likely disappear as quickly as it arrived.

As marketers develop and hone their mobile skills they must learn to use insight and knowledge of future technology and plan this into their strategies. Mobile Apps are here to stay, but are rarely the right place to begin any brand’s mobile journey.

A good look into consumer mentality on mobile web vs. Apps was released in a Yahoo! study at the beginning of this year entitled ‘Appetite’. Those of you who are IAB members can download it here. It’s a great piece of insight and should be used to start and fuel the right questions or reasons before planning any mobile product or technology.

Orange has released its latest batch of research stating that the majority of users prefer using browsers to access information on their mobile rather than apps. This follows research from multiple other sources such as Yahoo!, all divulging the same findings.

If I was a digital cynic, I’d probably mutter that this is mightily convenient coming from a media owner who has a vested interest in boosting and supporting browser traffic, given that it probably constitutes the majority of what they sell. Luckily, I’m not so jaded

However, a quick whip-round of opinion from the digital display team here at Steak showed a rather large gulf. Some agreed wholeheartedly with the research, expressing that they find apps too time consuming to maintain and too restrictive to be actually useful while others, perhaps with more of a personal interest in applications and their mobiles in general, felt them to be indispensable – which is certainly reflected by the burgeoning app market.

The conclusion reached, unsurprisingly, is that both avenues have their place, for different reasons and for different users’ personal preferences. Perhaps each should avoid competing with the other and accept their lot. They’re never going to be everything to everyone, and nor should they try.

Article at Marketing Week

Nokia Push and Burton Snowboards have teamed up to create a pretty awesome real life gaming experience for release in 2011. Now I’m no a snowboarder, in fact I’ve never set foot on a slope never mind a snowboard, but I don’t think that matters in order to appreciate just how cool this is.

Previous projects include PUSH Skating which takes skating back onto the streets and away from the games consoles. Simply put, the push technology is an application on your phone that tracks how you skate, but this new project Push Burton really steps things up a notch or two.

You gain points based on your tricks, speed and general skill on the board, which is all synced up with your social life in real time and logged online. The opportunities for integration with social media are endless. I can’t really do it justice; you should really watch the video:

Really pleased to have been included in the media agency section of NMA’s ‘Top 100 Interactive Agencies’ guide for 2010. This guide lists the top 100 digital, design & build and technical agencies on income earned, but also separately ranks media agencies by gross billings, and it’s in this section that Steak appears. For more info take a look at: http://top100.nma.co.uk/

From the NMA site – “Steak has started building capabilities in mobile and social media over the last year, appointing Mark-Antony Baker as head of mobile and John Barton as its first head of planning and social media.
According to Steak, social media has become an integral part of campaigns. Key projects in this area have included work for Swiftcover, partnering the online insurer with Absolute Radio, Spotify and Facebook to encourage its audience to vote for their favourite songs and to create the ‘summer’s hottest playlist’.”

See press clippings below:

So, the time of year came around again for technology giant Apple to give lucky App developers a first glimpse of their new iPhone software, the 4.0 operating system (OS).

There was a host of great new features included for the new iPhone OS but the topic of most interest to me was the launch of their new advertising service iAd.

For those unaware of what iAd is, it’s Apple’s first move into the digital advertising arena. After their acquisition of Quattro wireless last year for a fee reported to be in the region of $275million, they have combined Quattro’s technology to produce their own advertising platform, which will allow them to serve ads into their own devices.

Just a few months before Apple’s move to acquire Quattro they had a bid rejected for Quattro’s biggest competitor and the world’s largest mobile advertising network, Admob. Unfortunately for Apple they lost out to their titan-like rivals, Google.

If you keep tabs on the mobile industry you may have heard about many legal battles erupting left, right and centre, most recently to do with patent infringement, with Apple and Google jostling it out with a few bloody blows. Although Apple filed this against the handset manufacturer HTC (Google’s preferred manufacturer for their flag ship device the Nexus one, as well as many more great handsets of late) this was always aimed at Google and their reported usage of technology similar to the patents filed for the iPhone.

So the battle has now commenced, with Apple feeling the heat and lashing out at Google’s entry into the handset market, which is becoming a very impressive one. But the move we had all been waiting for has come with Apple’s fight back and now entering the advertising market.

Admob have been ruling the iPhone advertising industry for the past one and half years and Google’s proposed acquisition (still yet to be approved) had left them in a healthy position. Although there are many iPhone advertising networks Admob’s reign has mainly been unchallenged.

Apple’s new iAd system promises some great advancements – for example the inclusion of HTML 5, which could provide great engagement and interactivity for all adverts and should be applauded as very positive step forward.

But will that make it a Google killer?

Even if this could possibly be conceived of, it is a very long way off. Apple’s iAd system for one will only be available in their Apps. They stated yesterday that when they reach 100m devices they have the possibility of a billion ad opportunities a day, at 10 ad impressions per user. This may be close to the truth but are Apps really the future? I myself continually see evidence that disproves this.

Admob currently deliver their advertising worldwide through all phone OS systems (Android, Symbian, RIM, Apple, Java, low and medium spec handsets to name but a few) on the open web and in App. They have a huge market share and one that will only continue to grow. Apple’s entry to the  market is limited to in App and only on their own devices, it may slow Google’s growth in one area, but even 100 million handsets compared to the world’s 4.2 billion mobile users cowers in insignificance.

Google recently had a patent accepted for location-based marketing services which will be a big part of its future growth in mobile, again leaving Apple in its wake.  I would suggest any attempt now to block Admob out will result in loss of this vital revenue stream in future and one that Apple surely can’t ignore.

Maybe in the future we will see the Google/Admob partnership powering only Android OS and an Apple/Quattro partnership powering Apple OS as the titans clash. But is this really a battle for handsets? Not really – this should be a battle for the open mobile web; one I think where it is really clear to see that Google are already miles ahead and where the future of mobile really lies.

Mark Anthony Baker, Senior Account Manager