Category: Mobile marketing

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Google, Amazon and Apple – the new Big Three?

Once upon a time, a long, long time ago there were three American companies that were referred to collectively as The Big Three. GM, Ford and Chrysler were the biggest selling automakers in the world. Recently Toyota and Honda have staked claim to positions in this grouping.

The newest Big Three sell digital information and hardware to make use of it. Google has announced to fully join this group with the announcement of the Nexus 7 tablet shortly after launching Google Play which unified its sales of software, music and other media. Amazon still leads in sales of books and its Kindle players are well regarded. The newest Kindle is the Fire which is not quite an iPad killer but established the price point that Google is matching with far superior equipment in the Nexus 7. “iPad”, of course, references Apple – the king of the hill in digital music sales and the runaway leader in smartphones and tablets.

Google is the most successful search company which provides them the opportunity to market their other goods and services very effectively. The intensity of the competition can be seen in recent events like the patent wars between Google’s Motorola Mobility division v Apple, Apple dumping Google Maps on the iPhone and Samsung v Apple lawsuits.

What all this means to businesses is that mobile is increasingly important and looks to become even more important in the post-PC era that we are entering. All the more reason to make sure that your business website is mobile-friendly and that it is showing well in mobile searches.

Mobile is a part of what search optimization by sem[c] is all about. All you need to do is click to find out more.

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Mobile marketing is becoming more important as handheld use increases

Mobile Marketing

Do you see people with smart phone and tablets everywhere? Everywhere I look on the train people are reading, texting or surfing (even, occasionally, talking). With the news that Google has entered into the handset production business mobile has moved to the front burner. They made the acquisition of Motorola in defense of the Android operating system. Google now owns thousands of patents related to mobile computing. This acquisition clearly makes the statement that Google sees itself as a mobile company. This means that mobile marketing is going to be very important

Some of the various sites that we monitor are showing over 15% of the total visits coming from mobile devices. This emphatically underscores the importance of making sure that your website is mobile-friendly. If your site relies on Flash-based navigation alone it is likely that many mobile visitors will not be able to get any of the information that they are searching for. Apple’s iOS that runs on iPhones and iPads cannot see Flash animations. This makes it very unlikely that they visitors will return to your website on their mobile devices. The good news is that the Flash can be converted to HTML5 which will preserve the functionality while, at the same time, make it accessible to all Internet-connected devices.

It should be noted here that the Web crawlers used by Google and other search engines don’t handle Flash very well either.  For SEO purposes it is a very good idea to limit Flash usage or convert it the the HTML5 alternative.

Please contact us if you have any questions about search engine optimization, social media marketing for all types of Web browsers from the desktop to your mobile handset.

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Apps?

If you have a smartphone the manufacturer has undoubtedly gone out of its way to trumpet how many apps are available for it. Apple’s iPhone led this charge although the various flavors of Microsoft’s mobile offering have had many available for years. Google’s Android operating system is now being offered by a large number of manufacturer’s and the rate of app development for Android has surpassed that of Apple’s iOS which means that Android will soon offer the largest number of apps.

Apple has now led the way again into tablets with their iPad. The larger screen of such tablets has started a new wave of development for tablet-specific apps. Google has released Android 3.0, nicknamed “Honeycomb”, which is the first version that is optimized for tablets.

All this enthusiasm for apps has spurred businesses to develop apps that are designed to specifically market their business. While no one can deny the “wow” factor of launching your very own app it does make me question how many apps the average person will use.

Both iOS and Android now have search built into the apps listings. Isn’t it easier to simply use the Internet to search for what you need? The blurring of utility between apps and websites becomes nearly complete when your website is properly designed to display a handheld-friendly design when accessed by a smartphone or tablet. A perfect example is found in Google Voice for iOS. What appears to be a nicely realized app is rendered in the Safari browser.

Contact us to discuss whether or not a custom app is right for your business.

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Mobile rising?

Do you see people with smart phone and tablets everywhere? Everywhere I look on the train people are reading, texting or surfing (even, occasionally, talking). With the news that Google has entered into the handset production business mobile has moved to the front burner. They made the acquisition of Motorola in defense of the Android operating system. Google now owns thousands of patents related to mobile computing. This acquisition clearly makes the statement that Google sees itself as a mobile company.

Some of the various sites that we monitor are showing over 15% of the total visits coming from mobile devices. This emphatically underscores the importance of making sure that your website is mobile-friendly. If your site relies on Flash-based navigation alone it is likely that many mobile visitors will not be able to get any of the information that they are searching for. Apple’s iOS that runs on iPhones and iPads cannot see Flash animations. This makes it very unlikely that they visitors will return to your website on their mobile devices. The good news is that the Flash can be converted to HTML5 which will preserve the functionality while, at the same time, make it accessible to all Internet-connected devices.

It should be noted here that the Web crawlers used by Google and other search engines don’t handle Flash very well either.  For SEO purposes it is a very good idea to limit Flash usage or convert it the the HTML5 alternative.

Please contact us if you have any questions about search engine optimization, social media marketing for all types of Web browsers from the desktop to your mobile handset.

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Are you benefitting from the increase in mobile traffic?

We are seeing an ever-increasing amount of traffic to the websites that we monitor from iPhones, Droids, and Blackberries, and predict that there will be an increase in Windows 7 Mobile access.
We have also seen websites from clients, prospective clients,  and competitors that really don’t show up on mobile at all.  For example, it is very common that a website’s graphic designer will incorporate a Flash front page. We have seen that even if the page detects that Flash isn’t available, it will suggest that the visitor install Flash. If the visitor is using Mac’s mobile operating system iOS on an iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch, it is impossible for them to install Flash, even though iOS is the most frequently-used mobile operating device that we are seeing in the statistics. This failure to properly configure the website will ensure that those visitors using mobile handset devices are much less likely to return.Both Google and Bing are aggressively wooing users of their competitor’s operating system and both are very present on iOS. Bing apps are being heavily promoted on iOS and Android. Google is built into Android OS and is the default search engine in iOS. Google just announced the capability on Windows 7 Mobile to replace the default search engine Bing.

Google also just announced big changes in the way that it displays search results for mobiles. Their mobile blog reports that they have:

 

“expanded the story space to make tapping on articles easier and more accurate. Tapping anywhere on an article headline or snippet opens it up, and clicking on a section heading opens up that topic section on your screen.

 

In addition, the default view of stories is now collapsed in order  to reduce scrolling time. You can ‘expand’ a story by tapping ‘More sources’, which brings you to related stories from other sources.”

 

In other words, it’s quicker and more convenient.

 

As the use of mobiles to access the web increases, your website’s ability to accomplish your business goals will need to work really well on handsets.

Feel free to contact us about any aspect of mobile marketing or SEM/SEO.
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How does your website look to a visitor using a mobile handset?

Mobile handsets are increasingly of the smartphone variety.  This enables Web access on the go.  The number of mobile visitors to websites has skyrocketed with the popularity of the iPhone and now Android from Google has surpassed the iPhone with an even better Web capability. What does this mean regarding the use of your website for marketing purposes?

I gave a presentation to an organization that asked me to assess their current website for Internet marketing purposes.  It had an all-Flash interface which inherently has search engine optimization problems. Search engines only have a limited ability to “see inside” a Flash animation which mostly looks like one big graphic to their spiders. Since the content is cloudy others sites with more optimized content will out-perform all-Flash sites easily. Flash also has ongoing security and performance problems which were detailed by Steve Jobs in his explanation of why Flash will not be allowed on iPhones. I showed the board of this organization how their site appeared on an iPhone. Visitors get a message that tells them to install Flash which is and always will be impossible on an iPhone. As the use of handsets for making searches increases it will become increasingly more important that business websites have an effective strategy for servicing mobile users.

 It’s never a good idea to make a visitor do something in order to view your content.  It’s more likely that they will go somewhere else and never come back.