Here are 10 reasons I think that anyone with an online presence should establish a mobile presence separate from your website:

1. Google has a separate index for mobile content.

Not only do they have a separate index for mobile content, but also it is fairly empty. The other day I performed a search for an Imax theater in Santa Barbara, and it told me that the best option was a theater in San Diego. Really? I jumped on Imax.com and found a theater located just 19 miles away.

I never thought I would miss directory style websites, but in this particular example, a mobile directory for all theaters in the US would have been able to give Google Mobile the correct solution to serve up.

2. Your regular website is not going to cut it.

There is a fundamental design difference between a regular website and a mobile website.

On a mobile phone, there is a very limited amount of screen space. If you have ever had to side scroll to view something on a website, you realize how much of an inconvenience it is. This is magnified on a mobile device. Even with the ability to turn the device lengthwise, the resolution is still extremely small.

There are numerous mobile phone emulators that can show you what your website will look like on a mobile device, and I can guarantee it is probably a terrible experience for a mobile device user.

3. 1/5 of Americans access the mobile web each day.

This percentage is increasing every year. If you’re not representing yourself on the mobile web, your competition surely will take up the opportunity.

4. Mobile web will overtake the desktop within 5 years.

Not only will the mobile web inevitably overtake the desktop, but also usage and adoption is growing at a much faster rate than the desktop did.

In the future, the vast majority of visitors to your website will be on a mobile device.

5. $1.6 billion purchased from mobile devices in 2009.

This is likely the most exciting and sought after information about the mobile web. If millions of people are using the mobile web, but they are not buying anything, most commercial websites would not bother establishing a mobile presence.

As you can see, purchasing from mobile devices is already in the billions.

Studies show that buyers do not have as much confidence in purchasing from a mobile device as they do from their PCs, but both comfort levels and the amount being spent is increasing.

Users went through the same hesitation when the Internet was just becoming popular, and now most people do not hesitate when buying something online from their PC.

You can rest assure that the same thing will happen with the mobile web.

6. 93% of U.S. adults own a cell phone.

Not all cell phones have Internet access capabilities, but that is currently the trend. Smart phones are not the only ones with access to the web. Standard phones are coming out with Qwerty keywords and website browsers seemingly every single month.

It is safe to say that in the near future, all phones will have some form of online access, whether it is being used or not.

7. 5% of the top 500 online retailers have a mobile website/iPhone app.

I was rather surprised by how low this number is. But then again, this means great things for the rest of us who are not in the top 500 online retailers.

I am willing to bet that one of the biggest reasons that you’re not ranking as high as you would like is because your competitors are doing a better job than you are in some shape or form.

Which means that if you’re reading this, chances are fairly high that you are already a step ahead of your competition.

8. Mobile advertising spending will surpass $6.5 billion in 2012.

Ad spend is a great indicator for the current status of an industry. If someone is willing to spend their hard earned money putting their products in front of users on the mobile web, you can assume there is a pretty good reason for it.

Furthermore, if they continue to spend more year after year, that indicates that the previous years investment paid off. And that is exactly how mobile advertising is trending across the board.

9. Users average 13 hours online per week, up from 7 in 2002.

As online usage increases regardless of the device used, accessibility is going to be the next lever to increase online usage.

A desktop or laptop used to be the only way to access the Internet, but now with Internet enabled mobile phones the Internet has truly become mobile. It is now simply a matter of service availability from your mobile phone network provider such as AT&T and Verizon.

10. There are an estimated 2 billion cell phones worldwide.

Not only are there a lot of cell phones worldwide, but they seem to outlast their owners and are passed down to another owner. There are great recycling and refurbishing programs that use old cell phones as emergency dialers or resell them at discounted rates.

As you can see, the mobile web is clearly trending up and has a lot of room to grow. If the mobile web were a stock, now would be the time to buy. It is the closest thing to a sure bet as you can get.

Sources & Reports:

• Cell Phone Statistics
• 100 Wireless Facts
• Mobile Ad Spend To Rise, But Still Leave Room To Grow
• Harris Interactive Poll
• Harris Interactive Poll: Measures Consumer Sentiment on Mobile Purchases
• M-commerce is catching on: 5% of the top 500 e-retailers offer mobile sites
• On-the-Go Mobile Purchases, Banking on the Rise
• Morgan Stanley: Mobile web to overtake desktop in five years
• The Mobile Internet Report

From a developer’s standpoint, Twitter is an exciting application because of the freedom provided through their API. A rogue hacker can download one of the many Twitter libraries, connect to the API, query for the top trending topics at that time, take and put the trending topics in irrelevant tweets that are meant to spam Twitter, in the end 4chan‘ing the trending topics that show on a user’s home page for monetary gain.

Let me explain. Or rather, let me quote Superman: “With great power comes great responsibility.” Twitter has essentially given every developer in the world great power by allowing them access to their API. You can make the argument that any API can provide this value. However, due to the sheer amount of content and range of the audience, Twitter takes the cake right now. That is until Facebook releases its search API, if they ever do.

From a business standpoint, Twitter’s API should provide the same excitement. How you might ask? Through savvy content distribution.

So what does this have to do with search engines?

A few months ago I wrote an article on a topic that gained a lot of attention. It was retweeted about 100 times, which wasn’t a huge deal—relatively small in comparison to many other popular articles shared on the web. But what came next was shocking.

Through the retweet button from Tweetmeme, I was able to derive the short URL used to share the link. I also distributed the article by using a short URL link of my own. Using these two short URL links, one posted on the website and the one I created for myself, I setup Google Alerts so that I could track the viral activity of each.

I also took it a step further. I realize that due to the different Twitter clients, web apps, desktop apps, or any of the hundreds of ways to post a Tweet to Twitter, that most likely the short URL would be changed during a retweet, thus diluting my attempt to track the viral activity. To counteract this, I set up a script to check the Twitter search API for Tweets about my article periodically each day. I then logged the URL’s that were included in each Tweet. If the URL showed up more than once, I started to track it with various methods, including Google Alerts.

The point was to try and find out every spot that my article was distributed via Twitter. Luckily right now URL shorteners are usually only used for Twitter, which allowed me to ignore the potential influence from other website applications on the short URL’s.

What I found was a huge opportunity to gain backlinks from posting links in Tweets.

Twitter = content distribution = backlinks

Alarm bells are probably going off telling you that links on Twitter do not count because Twitter utilizes the “nofollow” attribute on all links, and you are correct. Many of my friends who consult for companies on search engine optimization theorize that even though “nofollow” exists, links using the attribute still maintain a measurable value. True or not, I don’t know—but the valuable links from retweets are not search engine backlinks.

The value of the Twitter API comes with giving free access to millions of developers across the globe to your content.

You play the savvy marketing executive and I will play the exceptionally resourceful programmer. You don’t know me and I don’t know you.

Lets say you break a story about Google Wave on your company blog and you ask your bright young intern to Tweet about it with a link to your blog post.

Just after your intern posts the link, I query the Twitter Search API (the beauty of real-time) for “Google Wave” and it serves up your Tweet. Since I am a content aggregator, my cool little script pulls your Tweet down from Twitter to my local database, parses the Tweet for the link to your blog post and removes the shortened link which gives me the full website address to your company blog. I pull the title from your website, and then distribute the result on my website.

Visually, the initial Tweet looks like this:

JoshuaOdmark: Is Google Wave the next best thing? We think so… http://9mp.com/Yxe

And the result that shows on my website:

Google Wave Drips With Ambition. A New Communication Platform For A New Web.

Boom! You just gained a backlink

Of course this is a hypothetical situation with certain assumptions, but you can see how it is possible to gain backlinks through Twitter. The key is to get your Tweets in front of as many third party applications as you can.

You can do this by getting as many retweets for your links as you can. Each and every retweet is an opportunity to gain at least one backlink.

But always remember, nobody likes a spammer. Take the high road and follow Twitter’s acceptable use guidelines. Over time you will keep all of your current followers, continue to gain more, and create an authoritative Twitter account which will pay off in dividends down the road.

Twitter is one of the hottest companies in the world right now and they have the venture capital funding to prove it. So focus on the long-term value by building great content, continuing to build your engaged followers, and the backlinks from retweets will come naturally.

At that point, all that’s left is to count the increase in organic traffic to your website.