It's been just over a year since Apple's Siri was unveiled with the iPhone 4S. The latest version works with the iPhone 5 and newer versions of the iPad. Siri didn't cause an overnight revolution of how most search on their phones. Many iPhone users still type keywords into Safari and get back answers from Google. But Siri, along with mobile apps and mobile searching in general, are changing searcher habits and posing new challenges and opportunities for search marketers. The people at Alchemy Viral have created an infographic that covers a variety of things to keep in mind about how to bette [...]

Related Topics: Apple: Siri | Channel: SEO | Infographics | Search Marketing: Mobile | SEO: Mobile Search

With the launch of the iPhone 5, perhaps the most eagerly awaited electronics launch ever, speculation has been rampant on the impact it'll have on the mobile phone market, on Apple's future as an innovator post-Steve Jobs, and on the coolness of the next gadget to get dropped into your pocket. But from a mobile search perspective, iPhone 5 is pretty much more of the same. A more effective version of Siri will be standard in the new phone's iOS 6 - but that was a game changer from the iPhone 4s. iPhone 5 has certainly caused a sales storm, pushing more smartphones into more pockets. B [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Microsoft: Bing Maps & Local | Microsoft: Bing Mobile | Microsoft: Mobile | Mobile Search | Search Ads: Mobile Search | Search Engines: Mobile Search Engines | Search Marketing: Mobile | SEO: Mobile Search

In the last few months, there's increasing evidence that mobile search activity for restaurants is growing by leaps and bounds. Consider the following: Yelp recently shared that mobile usage now accounts for 40% of their activity, up from 27% in 2010. According Groupon's CEO, 30% of all transactions on Groupon’s platform are now attributed to mobile device use, and those usage levels have tripled in just one year. Given these trends, it's very likely that we'll see restaurant search hit the tipping point in the next 12 months, with more mobile-based activity than desktop-based. Key [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Mobile Search | Search Marketing: Mobile | SEO: Mobile Search

2012 is the year of mobile. Or is it 2013? Or maybe it was supposed to be 2011. Regardless of the calendar year that we’ll end up attributing the explosion of growth to, the mobile tide has been on the rise for some time. This past April, the Interactive Advertising Bureau released a report citing that mobile is the fastest growing media channel, with ad spending up 149 percent in 2011. As mobile continues to grow from a buzzy talking point to a standard marketing approach, it’s worthwhile to take note of some important trends related to mobile search and how they are bound to affect [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Mobile Search | Search Engines: Mobile Search Engines | Search Marketing: Mobile

One of the key findings of the Q2 2012 Global Digital Advertising Update from Adobe (Efficient Frontier) is that search marketers can get more value from mobile campaigns than they now can on the PC. According to the report cost-per-click (CPC) prices are lower for both tablets and smartphones than comparable PC search campaigns and the ROI is higher in both cases -- although "conversions" are lower on smartphones. Adobe's data are drawn from "over 250 billion impressions and activity of 46 million fans for 225 companies in the automotive, CPG, financial services, media and entertainment, a [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Search Ads: Mobile Search | Search Marketing: Mobile | Stats: General | Stats: Search Behavior

[caption id="attachment_127964" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Have you thrown these out of your marketing plan? Source: ilikestuff.com"][/caption] Google recently released an addendum to their guidelines for optimizing for smartphones that gives more detail around how to optimize for feature phones as well. I know some of you are thinking, "Feature phones? What is this, 2005? Let me pull out my Razr and look for ringtones on WAP sites. Why on Earth would anyone need feature phone traffic now that everyone has an iPhone or an Android?" In 2012 in the US, this is often what it [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: Mobile | Mobile Search | Search Marketing: Mobile | SEO: Mobile Search

When Google published their new guidelines for mobile SEO, the item that made headlines was their declaration of responsive design as the preferred option. Last month, I covered the basics on how responsive design works and how to optimize it. But the second option Google discussed got lost in the headlines: increased support for purpose-built mobile sites located on m-dot subdomains (e.g. m.brand.com. ) This type of site had previously been flagged by Google’s Matt Cutts as being the favorite from a usability standpoint. While Google now favors responsive sites, their support for m-do [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: Mobile | How To: Mobile Marketing | Microsoft: Bing Mobile | Mobile Search | Search Marketing: Mobile | SEO: Mobile Search

Google did not just tell all of you to make your sites responsive. Actually they did, but that’s not all they said. At SMX Advanced, Pierre Far of Google announced something else as well. Responsive Web design is Google’s preferred option he said, but only if it’s best for a site’s users. You may think this is trivial, but it’s not. Just ask the sites hit by Panda and Penguin how important paying attention to users is for sustainable SEO. Google Gives Clearer Guidelines On Mobile SEO, But Still Some Questions Let’s review. In the overview of Google’s recommendations for smar [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: Mobile | Mobile Search | Search Engines: Mobile Search Engines | Search Marketing: Mobile | SEO: Mobile Search

TechCrunch reports Apple seems to have changed how they rank apps within the App Store search results. Prior, having the keyword in your app's name would tend to work well in terms of ranking the app in the app store. Now, according to several app developers, Apple is also ranking the apps based off of download numbers and maybe even reviews. It seems as if Apple is weighing the app names and keywords less in their app store search ranking forumlas. My company has several apps in the market, and I noticed a ranking change for several of the apps. Whereas some of my paid apps that had [...]

Related Topics: Apple | Channel: SEO | Search Engines: Mobile Search Engines | Search Marketing: Mobile | SEO: Mobile Search

For B2B marketers, a common challenge is targeting the key platforms and mediums where users are most likely to consume information. In today’s digital landscape, this now includes mobile marketing. According to a recent eMarketer article, nearly one-quarter of B2B ecommerce professionals said that mobile Web was one of the most influential touch points for their customers. In addition, 28 percent of U.S. C-level executives in the B2B space used a mobile device to research business purchases; 21 percent used a tablet.   For this reason, mobile will become an increasingly impor [...]

Related Topics: B2B Search Marketing | Channel: Mobile | Search Marketing: Mobile

In his Smashing Magazine response to Jakob Nielsen’s directive to build separate desktop and mobile sites, Bruce Lawson used the line "you never know better than your users what content they want" to argue that we shouldn’t be building separate mobile websites. I would agree with him that you never know better than your users what content they want, but would argue that’s usually a reason to build a separate mobile website. In search, we have the benefit of user queries that tell us what the majority of users want, and those queries often tell us that they’re looking for different t [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Mobile Search | Search Marketing: Mobile | Search Marketing: Search Term Research | SEO: Mobile Search

I had a chance recently to speak to DataPop CEO Jason Lehmbeck. Before DataPop Lehmbeck was at Overture/Yahoo. DataPop is an agency/platform that specializes in "offer driven" search campaigns. I was talking to Lehmbeck about mobile search trends and what kinds of consumer response he was seeing to various campaigns. Lehmbeck gave me some unpublished, internal data that I'm now sharing in this post. He said that mobile paid search "looks like much like search advertising did in 2001." 15 to 25 Percent Mobile Paid Search Traffic Between 15 percent and 25 percent of paid search traffic is n [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Search Ads: Mobile Search | Search Marketing: Mobile | Stats: Search Behavior | Stats: Size

Owners of ecommerce sites are a pretty observant bunch. The clarity that sales provide (or lack thereof) can make marketing a bit easier to quantify. There isn't a need to tie promotional activities back to branding metrics, or tricky-to-quantify engagement on the site ("Do we want more page views, or do less views mean the site delivered on the first try?") Thanks to that clarity, store owners keep a close eye on their data, and have probably seen mobile devices show-up on their radar a lot more than they used to. Combine that with the buzz around smartphones, and the idea of a store ap [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | How To: Mobile Marketing | Mobile Search | Search Marketing: Mobile | SEO: Mobile Search

Inertia is always a problem when you're starting something new. The start seems like a very tall wall, and we often make that wall taller by imposing a lot of requirements and parameters on what needs to be done. Mobile marketing must seem that way to a lot of companies, and as a result, far too many of them are sitting on the sidelines. Fortunately, there are a few vendors out there offering a shortcut to the mobile Web:  a turnkey publishing platform that allows a marketer to quickly deploy mobile landing pages. The question is: how effective are these pages in the context of mobile s [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | How To: Mobile Marketing | Mobile Search | Search Ads: Mobile Search | Search Engines: Mobile Search Engines | Search Marketing: Mobile | SEO: Mobile Search

Marin Software has released "The State of Mobile Search Advertising." It provides yet more evidence of how the search and paid-search markets are being profoundly affected by mobile devices. In almost every category there's triple-digit growth according to the report, which projects that smartphones and tablets will combine to generate 25 percent of all Google's paid search clicks in the US by the end of this year. Marin also estimates that nearly one-quarter (23 percent) of "Google’s US paid-search spend [by December 2012] will come from mobile campaigns." These are remarkable statements [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords | Google: Mobile | Search Marketing: Mobile | Top News

Did the headline catch your eye? I really wanted a teaser headline for this post which would entice people to read and discover the details of a new global search engine -- but for that message, a teaser alone just wasn't credible. But when I added the word "Apple" to the headline, it completely changed its dynamics -- just like Apple does every time it enters a new business area. So, I must be talking about Siri right? Wrong. I agree actually that Siri is a really important development, but Apple has much more up its sleeve than just Siri. What Does Apple Have Up Its Sleeve? On the 23 [...]

Related Topics: Apple | Apple: Siri | Channel: SEO | Multinational Search | Search Engines: Outside USA | Search Marketing: Mobile | Search Marketing: Multinational | SEO: Mobile Search

By now, you may have already put Super Bowl XLVI in the history books. But let's remember: this was the first to occur in the post-PC mobile era. (It was supposed to feature my Green Bay Packers, but that's another story.) This was Mobile Super Bowl I: a record TV audience. Half with a smartphone. All watching brands spend $116,000 per second to reach them. During the game, mobile consumers stepped up, delivering record mobile search, social, and video activity. Yet most advertisers looked unprepared, seemingly without a mobile game plan. Many enabled Shazam users to tag commercials, but [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | How To: Mobile Marketing | Mobile Search | Search Marketing: Mobile

Anyone involved in online marketing has an innate sense that mobile is a big deal. We're never more than an arm's length from our phones, and we have a curious tendency to do everything on them. I once sat in front of a dark, Netflix-enabled flat-screen, watching Netflix on my iPhone. It was just easier, and I had it on, and I could switch back and forth with Facebook, and... ok, maybe I have a problem! In any event, our personal fascination with mobile phones shouldn't dictate our work decisions. And one question that needs deciding more and more these days is around mobile search: [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | How To: Mobile Marketing | Mobile Search | Search Engines: Mobile Search Engines | Search Marketing: Mobile | SEO: Mobile Search

"2012 will be the year of the tablet," said Kenshoo CMO Aaron Goldman in a recent Search Insider column. With the figures he’s seeing, it’s hard to disagree with him. According to Goldman, 7% of all online sales Kenshoo saw over the holidays came from a tablet, and "Of the sales transactions completed via mobile, over 83% of the revenue was driven through tablets, and overall tablet conversion rate was 2.72%, more than 3x higher the conversion rate for mobile phones. Additionally, the average order value from tablets ($149.84) actually exceeded that of desktop computers ($146.07)." [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Mobile Search | Search Marketing: Mobile | SEO: Mobile Search

Happy (belated) New Year. Let's face it, 2012 isn't the first year someone has christened the "year of mobile." But it is the first time consumers have done so – and continue to. Still in the market for resolutions? Let me suggest 10 that'll charge-up your brand to set pace - and lead - with mobile in 2012: Think Mobile First Smartphones most likely rang in 2012 by blowing past 100 million US subscribers. That means there’s a 50% chance your customers are now holding a smartphone; and 80% are using it to change how they shop. Plus, 2012 forecasts call for a 73% rise in m-commerce [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Mobile Search | Search Marketing: Mobile | SEO: Mobile Search