What’s the difference between Link Building and Link Marketing and why could an understanding of the difference make a big difference to your bottom line?

There is a very good overview of what link marketing might look like from Eric Ward over at Search Engine Land.

What do you think about when it comes to link building? Asking other websites to link to your site, posting comments on blogs and forums? Basically trying to artificially boost the authority of your website. OK, so the comments and the forums posts may be legit, but these techniques have a very high appeal to spam artists and it’s contributing to more and more bloggers setting the no-follow attribute.

Google wants you to attract links to your website naturally, by providing something useful that other web sites owners feel compelled to link to , e.g. your content, a cool app, snappy video,  inspiring/funny images…etc.

Businesses should continue to focus on this type of link building. It’s important to develop reasons why other websites should link to yours. There’s a great post from Rae Hoffman, asking 11 top link building experts about their insights into link building.

So what about link marketing? What is it and is it a easier way to enhance your bottom line that  traditional link building?

Link Marketing is about getting visibility for your business in ways that are more akin to guerrilla marketing than link building.

An obvious example (now) from the Eric Ward article above is to cross market your business with another similar business. Let’s use a different, the site http://www.ownersdirect.co.uk offers people the opportunity to find accommodation from property owners directly.  What happens when you inquire about a property? You get the confirmation email. What if this email contained a link, with an endorsement, to car hire firm?

At the moment the Owners Direct site already links to some card hire sites, but they don’t actively endorse them? Why not, surely this is a great link marketing opportunity for both sides. A car hire firm, say Budget car hire gives you a link to the Owners Direct sites when you book a car and visa versa – a match made in heaven?

I’ve seen some comments along the lines of…this type of link marketing is difficult in the real world as companies are always wary of losing customers or harming their reputation – crap! This type of creativity in marketing is and should be regarded as more business development that marketing. Think about your own company – what companies do you know who are complimentary to what you do? Would a link in their thank you emails and newsletters bring benefit to both companies?

The bottom line with link marketing is that you want your website URL to appear in places where people find it both useful and natural to want to contact you.

What about another example – You go to the supermarket and buy some food, you pay at the checkout and get your receipt. Have you ever looked at the back of those receipts? Why is it only supermarkets that do that? Any business with  a POS has the capacity to strike up agreements to promote complimentary businesses on the back of their receipts. You have to get creative with this stuff.

Ok, so where do your customers hang out? What’s your target demographic? Maybe it’s moms with young children. Maybe you’re selling back to school books. What’s a creative way to get in front of this target audience? By leveraging the power of being linked with another business, one that is complimentary to yours?

What if you developed a link marketing strategy with a company that sells schools uniforms? Every time a mom buys x amount of schools books from you, maybe there is a discount printed on your receipt or their thank you email  - the discount is for buying X amount of uniforms from your partner compay and visa versa.

Link marketing does not replace link building, but complements it. I think link marketing and guerrilla marketing are very similar and are only limited by your imagination.

What about your experiences?

What unusual tactics have you used to gain links to your business?

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With the likes of Twitter and Facebook having the ‘no follow’ attribute set on their website, and more and more bloggers setting the attribute to avoid getting spam comments, how are you to get those all important follow backlinks to your website?

This was the question posed to Matt Cutts over on the Google Webmaster Central Channel recently. Matt goes how to describe how to get follow link to your website naturally  - as usual there is no great surprise in the answer – have a listen below…

Surprised at the answer?

How do you go about getting follow back links to your website?

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When a searcher types in ‘bicycle rack’ are they looking for the type that goes on your car, or are they looking for the one that you can lock your bike to when out and about? What do people mean when they say, ‘I’m looking for a bike rack?’

We were recently asked, ‘Is there any tool available that will tell me what a searcher means when they type in an ambiguous search phrase?’

As far as I’m aware there are no such tools available. How can you know the intent of a searcher? The question was asked in the context, what keyword should we optimize our site for? Is it possible to get a good ranking for both types of keywords, i.e. ‘bike rack’ and  ‘bicycle rack’ and should we be optimizing for ‘cycle rack’ also?

First things first, if any one knows of a tool that gives you an of understanding of user intent against certain keywords I’d love to hear from you.

In a situation like this, if you break down the navigation of your website to include all the different variations of a similar keyword and have similar content for each of these variations are you likely to get hit with a duplicate content?

In this case we suggested that they pick one of the keywords as their main target keywords and then have sub categories that target the additional keywords, something like:

bike rack

|__ bicycle rack

|__ cycle rack

The key to getting good rankings for all these variations is of course to start building really good, on topic, back links into the individual pages. I would suggest to try to steer clear of your normal link building campaign and develop a more creative link marketing campaign. Add in some video, audio, images to attract links to the different pages.

Targeting similar and ambiguous keywords can be tricky. A good way to see some insight might be to have a look at how the search engines handle such a query – what pages do they return.

Enter ‘bike racks’ into Google and you get results that are very much focused on bike racks for cars, but you’ll also notice that some of the pages returned are targeting both car racks for bikes and bike racks that go in the ground. These pages can be very valuable in terms of spying on your competitors to see where they are getting their back links from and how they have optimized their content.

You can also use this competitor analysis to see what keywords are being used. For example, on one of the sites returned for ‘bike racks’ the words ‘commercial’ is used quite a lot to really differentiate and clarify the meaning of the page, i.e. ‘commercial bike rack’, or ‘commercial racks’. Some of your potential customers may be using these additional keywords to clarify their intent when searching.

So, what about you? Have you had issues targeting ambiguous keyword phrases? How did you solve the problem?

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It’s very easy to get caught up with getting a website launched and agreeing on the content, any content, just to get the site launched. After a site is launched many companies get caught up withe bottom line numbers, i.e. how much revenue are we making from the website in the case of an E-commerce site, or for a service driven site, the typical stats are how much traffic did we get this month or what what our rankings this month.

Getting too focused on these metrics will probably result  in long term disappointment. I’ve listed 20 questions below that any marketing manager  should feel at ease in answering, and that will provide a whole new level of understanding about a company’s online strategy and performance.

This greater questioning and understanding of your online marketing strategy will  lead to making ongoing changes and improvements that positively impact on the ROI for any business engaging online.

1. Where are our customers coming from? What is our customer acquisition strategy?

2. What is the conversation rate on our website?

3. What are the goals for our website?

4. Are we actively tracking our goals with our analytics package?

5. What keywords are driving the highest revenue/goals?

6. What is our content strategy?

7. How do we plan to build the authority of our website, linking building or link marketing?

8.  Where do we get our traffic from? Are we getting traffic from sources that is of low value?

9. How much do we pay for our traffic? Should we be paying more/less?

10. Do we have a social media strategy? What is it? Does it reflect our company brand?

11. Do we have an email marketing strategy? Do we measure the success of it? How? What software do we use?

12. What is our web channel development strategy? How do we build partners/reseller online?

13. What is our online advertising strategy?

14. Who is responsible for the website? IT, Marketing, Sales?

15. Do we have a data back-up strategy? What happen if our website goes down? Who do we contact?

16. How does our website perform? Do we have bandwidth issues with our hosting company or with the plan we are on?

17. Who registered our company’s domain name? Who is getting notification that it’s about to expire?

18. Are we targeting the right keywords on our website? How do we know? What keyword software was used?

19. Who are our keyword competitors online? Are they different to our high street competitors?

20. Are we doing any A/B or multivariate testing to improve our conversion rate? If not why not? Is this type of testing it suitable for our business?

Only 20 questions, there are of course a lot more.

What about your online marketing strategy?

What questions would you add?

What questions would you expect your marketing manager to know the answer to?

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Quick review of the new Blekko search engine.

Have you had a chance to check it out yet?

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The rise in conversations about Search and how Search is evolving are growing. The debate focuses on whether Google will be superseded by Facebook and will Social Search take over from traditional search?

The core argument for me is, are searchers more likely to trust a faceless search engine or is your average searcher more likely to trust their social graph, i.e. family, friends and colleagues?

Some empirical insight into this question comes from the recently published Digital Influence Index June 2010. The report found that…

Internet users tend to look at many sources when seeking information, not relying on one source, apparently believing the truth is something average to the information  found on those outlets

The report goes onto say…

While most Internet users look to individuals and their experiences in online conversations and Internet postings, they do not trust everything they read. In fact, they tend to reply more on information from government or company sources than on what is posted by other users

What can be taken from this insight? I guess the first question to ask is where do people find our about new things today? Do they search for new products/services by asking their social graph or do they do the digging themselves?

As the quote above indicates people use several different sources. This question of ’sources’ and the impact a source has on an individuals decision was further investigated in the Digital Influence Index report. The graph below shows how sources of information have an influence on consumers making decision.

Information Sources - Social Search vc Search Engines

In 7 out of 9 categories, a search engine was the most trusted source of information.

Look at the numbers for Social Networking Sites in the chart.

So we know that Facebook has just topped the half a billion mark in users, but as the meteoric rise of social media continues unabated, the question that should be asked is,

…As Social Media companies grow and become more of an influence in our everyday lives, is there a similar rise in trust people have in the users on these systems, or are more and more people piling in to be part of the phenomenon without really understand what they are becoming part of?…

Let’s take a step back.

What always surprised me about Google and it’s rise to search dominance, was the fact the most people (i.e. those outside the online marketing industry) always put a lot of trust and confident in the faceless search engine results page.

Ordinary people trusted the results that were delivered to them as an independent measure of value.

When Google talks about it’s algorithm it uses words like trust, authority, reputation, page rank, high quality. Matt Cutts and his team are constantly looking to evolve the Google algorithm in terms of putting more and more emphasis on quality, the independent quality of their organic search results is what makes Google Google. Check out the short 3 minute video below showing Matt talking about this topic.

Now, back to Social Search. There can be no question as to the rise in popularity and reach of social media, what is in question is what information sources do people trust?

Do users on Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn trust their social graph? This question for me is more about the fundamental nature of people and less about the functionality of any particular social media site.

Ask yourself the question, and be honest, do you trust people you are connected to online? If you’re like me, you probably don’t really know most of the people you are connected with, sure you may know them in a casual business sense, but would you trust them? Would you trust them to give you a truly independent view of a new product or service you are checking out? Maybe?

According to the data returned by Digital Influence Index, if you’re from the US, there is a 15% chance that you trust information that is provided by other internet users. Compare that to a 27% chance that you trust information that is provided by companies and a 26% chance that you trust information that is provided by the government.

Trusting Web Information Sources

Think about a recent business event you were at, a face to face event. Think about the people you met, had a conversation with, exchanged business cards. You later connected with that person on LinkedIn and are now following them on Twitter. You’ve exchanged a few tweets and posted a couple of comments ( that were replied to) on their blog. Happy days, you have a new member of your social graph.

Question: Do you trust that person?

Do you trust them to give you an independent analysis of something you’re working on? Assuming you’re not paying them of course, would you trust them?

This, in essence, is the key question that needs to be answered when people debate how social search is going to take over from traditional search. Do you want your social graph to dictate what you see, or are you looking for a truly independent view of the world, a view that is not influenced by the unavoidable bias (positive or negative) of human nature?

What are your feelings about this? Do you trust your social graph? Do you trust search engines?

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What one ongoing change could you make to your website that might double your website conversion rate? What one single change might transform your business?

Amanda Simmons posted a decent blog over at Search Engine Land today outlining 5 Tip to Improve Conversion on B2B landing pages.

One of these tips really stands out for me and from what I’ve seen it’s of the most underused conversion rated task that businesses engage in online.

Think about your local high street for a  moment, or stores at the local mall or shopping center. Have you ever stopped and taken a long hard look at the shop windows you pass every day? Have you noticed, (maybe you have sub-consciously)  how the shop windows change from season to season, Summer, Winter, Autumn, Spring? Even mid season changes seem to be becoming more and more fashionable. What are the the shore owners doing? Why are they changing their shop windows every few weeks? It amazes me the time and effort even small store owners put into changing their window display.

Why do they do it and what’s it got to do with my website?

Obviously the reason they change the store windows is that they are trying to attract you into their store. They are trying to stand out from the competition and show you something that is more compelling. I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve seen people stop at a store front and be lured in by what’s in the front windows,  special offers, sales, new season range…etc.

These store are always trying something different in the hope that more passing trade will be lured into their business. They are always testing new ideas, new concepts. The more creative they are, the more they stand out, the more people are attracted to their store.

Now, let’s turn this around and ask you a very simple question – ‘How often do you change your website store front?

How often do you take a critical look at your website and think about what it is saying. What is your website trying to sell?

How often do you ask new/existing clients, ‘What was is about our company in particular, that made you do business with us?’ How often do you take this feedback and communicate it on your website’s homepage (store front). What you are trying to understand  and condense here to a few simple words is your value proposition. You’re trying to answer the question that is on every new prospects mind, ‘Why should I do business with you, What’s in it for me?’

Amanda gives a great example of the value proposition from rhapsody.com, shown below.

Another great example of a company experimenting with their homepage is Google, take a look at two of their early homepages.

or what about this one…

and eventually of course to the super streamlined, very user friendly current homepage…

The one thing that can and will double or triple your website conversion rate is testing.

Testing different calls to action, testing different value propositions, testing different images.

Get one thing straight about your homepage, your traffic doesn’t care about you, about your company, about how many awards you won. They only want to know one thing – How Can You Make My Life Better?

Start testing today and start measuring the results. A/B testing is the way to really make an impact on your online sales. Getting tons of traffic is great, getting tons of traffic that is converting in ever increasing numbers is the key to stellar success.

So, what’s the problem, why is every company online not engaged in rigorous testing of their homepage and their value proposition?

Honestly, I don’t know. At Interleado we change our homepage about once every quarter, probably should even be more frequent than that. Maybe those responsible for your company’s website lack the time or motivation when it comes to improving your sites conversion rates.

What would happen to the store on the high street if they didn’t change their store window? Would they be losing customers by failing to keep up with the changing seasons?

What’s your thoughts? Why are website conversion rates so poor and why do many business not change their web store front?

Have you been involved with a company that continually evolve their value proposition on their homepage? What results did you see?

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As part of a recent marketing campaign, Interleado have been talking to a lot of companies in Ireland about their website.

Three very clear pictures emerged from our campaign about the attitude Irish companies have to their website…

1. In larger SME’s it often very unclear who is actually responsible for the website. The IT function invariably get landed with the responsibility of talking to anyone about the company’s  website requirements.
2. When there is a non-IT person tasked  with looking after a company’s website, very often this person has other responsibilities and find little time to actually develop a clear plan for marketing their company’s wares successfully online.
3. There is still a lot of confusion when it comes to understanding the differences between organic search activities, paid search activities, Local Search..etc

Naturally the first question is, ‘Is it only Ireland that has a problem with defining internal responsibilities when it comes to Search Engine Marketing?’

I’d like to get your feedback on this one. From my our own experience, similar issues exist with UK companies, but not with US companies.

Let’s take a look our three findings and tease them out.

The IT Guy Approach to Internet Marketing

When a company gets a new website, the IT guy is sometimes landed with the ongoing responsibility of managing site. This can be anyone from the IT Director to the tech support guy. Probably because it’s seen as a more technical role, what with the ftp details, uploading changes, domain registration,  email related issues, spam fighting – it’s all technical right?

The obvious problem with approach  is that the IT will only ever look after the IT related stuff and will never get involved in thinking about promoting your latest products or services. I think this approach is maybe a legacy of the days before content management systems (CMS) . Before the days when anyone who would write a sentence in Microsoft Word could edit a webpage or even god forbid develop  a new page from scratch.

Some of the  CMS solutions on the market today are very easy to use, the likes of Wordpress or Joolma spring to mind, but some still leave a lot to be desired in terms of usability for the complete technophobe.

The marketing executive approach to Internet Marketing

Picture the scene! You have a very competent, very experienced person that is key to your business. You have faith in them, proven years of loyalty to the company. Everyone is talking about the web, everyone’s getting business from the web these days, we need to ‘up our game’ on the web. The only thing we need to decide is who will look after our new web strategy.

Who’s going to be the internal champion for our new strategic online marketing plan? Who can we trust. Who wants the responsibility? You have a management meeting and you decide to give it to a member of your team that is doing a great job on the marketing side of things. They have proven themselves in supporting the sales guys over the last few years. They know the company inside out and know the customers. You give the responsibility to Jane.

Now, notice I said you give the ‘responsibility’, not the job. This is inevitability where the problems starts, because now Jane not only has to continue to deliver on her existing responsibilities, she now is responsible for marketing the company online. Can you guess where Jane is after 3 months? Frustrated?Annouyed? Left the company?

What happens is that nothing happens. Jane’s primary responsibilities will always win out over the new online marketing responsibilities. What also sometimes  happens in this situation is that nobody is quiet sure what responsibilities one person has over another. The IT Guy looks after part of the website, Marketing another, Sales another, Support another. You end up with nobody really taking the responsibility or managing the development of the business online.

I know this is changing and more and more businesses are appointing staff whose sole responsibility is to manage the online marketing of the company, but I still get the feeling that there are many many companies who are still trapped in the traditional sales and marketing roles that have dominated the last 30 years.

The advertising approach to Internet Marketing

If you are running an advertising campaign with Google Adwords, or Yahoo or Bing, does this mean your business is running an Internet Marketing campaign? Let me put it another way, if your business is targeting 25% of the online market, are you running an Internet Marketing  campaign, or are you just dipping your toe in the water?

Internet Marketing, like everything else these days is becoming more and more fragmented. Putting all your eggs in one basket is selling your business way short. Internet marketing these days is so much more…

As the channels to market fragment, so does expertise. It very hard to get one person who knows everything about marketing your business online. Point three is really a fallout from point one and two where nobody rally takes the role of online marketing seriously and you get an ad-hoc approach and possibly the easiest approach to getting visibility is taken. Running a small Google Adwords campaign takes very little time to setup and manage. Running a successful Internet Marketing campaign takes, time, money and serious management backing.

Can you identify with any of the cases above?

Have you been in that situation before?

Are there cultural differences to how business run their business online?

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• What direction is Traditional News Media going?
  
• Recent Developments of Leading Publishing Companies
• The Future of Online News Media
• New York Times  & Financial Times Online Strategies

Now that the web offers nearly infinite ad space, display advertising has become a commodity and newspapers find it difficult to compete with ad networks that specialize in more efficient, targeted advertising packages across multiple platforms.

With the increase of different online search applications, we see more people turning to online resources to find instant real time information. Consumers now use several different media sources when searching for information on the web. Where does this leave traditional publishing companies?

According to Mashable, last year ad spending on newspapers was down 9.7% (magazines were down as well), while Internet ad spending had increased 7.5%, as did TV (up 10.5%) and radio ads (up 6%). The future doesn’t look any better for print, with Internet revenue set to overtake newspapers by 2014 or possibly sooner.

With new improved devices such as the iPad, smartphones, laptops and netbooks , there is no doubt that younger generations are more tech  savvy and increasingly mobile.

The convenience of digital  distribution means that many consumers no longer need or want newspapers or other  forms of print media.

With mounting print and distribution costs and the loss of classified advertising  revenue to websites like eBay, Craigslist and Google, traditional media is losing ground.

According to Mashable, in the States alone, Newspaper revenue fell by 28% in the first three quarters of 2009, after declines of 17.7% in 2008 and 9.4% in 2007.

As the number of subscribers dwindled, so did the value of print ads on a per-ad basis. Weekly news magazines suffered to a lesser extent; between 2002 and 2009, Newsweek lost 25% and Time lost 18% of its subscribers, while U.S. News & World Report closed its print edition and moved its operations fully to the web.

Recent Developments of Leading Publishing Companies.

As print media revenues continue to dwindle traditional media companies are beginning to look at partnering with Internet marketing companies in order to move into the online marketplace.

McClatchy

The McClatchy Company is the third largest newspaper company in the United States, with 30 daily newspapers, 43 non-dailies, and direct marketing and direct mail operations. McClatchy also operates leading local websites in each of its markets which extends its audience reach. These websites offer users comprehensive news and information, advertising, e-commerce and other services.

The McClatchy Company has recently been offering WebVisible’s online marketing solution to local businesses in several markets, including Kansas City, Mo., Tacoma, Wash., and Fresno, Calif.

The program has been so successful  (advertising sales in March were roughly five times higher than the previous month) that McClatchy and WebVisible are planning to add new markets every month through the end of the year.

The move gives McClatchy’s local advertisers the most efficient way to get found by customers no matter how they’re looking — in newspaper listings, newspaper web sites or search engines, or via mobile phones or navigation devices.

Together with its newspapers and direct marketing products, these interactive operations make McClatchy the leading local media company in each of its premium high-growth markets. By using Web Visible the McClatchy Company is embracing the shift in advertising from traditional publishing to online media platforms.

Gannett Local

Gannett has recently become the latest to hop on this seismic shift in advertising trends.  The USA’s number one publisher recently opened GannettLocal, a small business marketing division based in Phoenix.

They will be selling online marketing services to small/local businesses and those services include SEO and local search marketing

GannettLocal chief Brad Robertson: “GannettLocal is a new business model focused on working with small and medium sized business to provide them a high-touch marketing consultation and a suite of multiplatform solutions (search engine marketing, e-mail, digital display, website, and geo-targeted print/flyers) delivered by a team of dedicated experts over the phone.”

The Future of Online News Media.

It seems the only way for news publishers to survive is by investing resources into innovation online. However, many newspapers while moving to the online marketplace cannot ignore the fact that their audience expects to read their news for free.

Experiments and testing has started in terms of looking at the behaviors of news consumption with digital and interactive forms of storytelling. More importantly, business models are needed that will help generate revenue while still keeping regular traffic flowing to these news sites.

The advice of Financial Times editor, Lionel Barber is;  “figuring out what is special, distinctive and original about a news organisation’s content and focusing on that in terms of charging.”

Many people believe that these companies may need to come up with new methods of advertising on their sites as the online marketplace is also being squeezed. If they don’t act soon, the future could look bleak for many of these news publishers.

What to do?

Some news media websites have tried using Paywalls in the past to charge people for reading their content, but these rarely worked and in many cases have lead to a huge decrease in online traffic to various news media sites. The simple fact is, if people need to find out information on the web they will go somewhere else and find it for free.

In January 2011, The New York Times will go behind a paywall. However it’s not a complete paywall, it more like a regulator for allowing only a certain amount of articles to be read for free during a given time period.

This regulated paywall is currently being used by the Financial Times and is described as a “metered system”, whereby visitors are limited to five articles per day before being prompted to pay for further access.

Whilst other publications fiddle with adapting their business models to mirror that of the Financial Times, it must be remembered that FT occupies a unique position in the market, enjoying the majority of its circulation amongst businesses as opposed to individuals.

It’s unlikely that The New York Times will remain one of the most-linked-to news sources on blogs or other social media platforms in 2011 if a paywall is in place.

The big question remains to be answered – Would you pay to see news articles from your favorite news sites?

What online news sites would you pay for? What ones would you not?

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• What is the future of the Mobile Web
  
• New browsing habits & Information Sources
• Your Mobile SEO Strategy

Mobile Web Evolution

The mobile web is growing at a rapid pace, and the way in which people browse it is becoming very different from traditional desktop browsing.

People trying to build up a web presence on the mobile web must realize that the majority of your mobile audience are usually not looking for the same information that your desktop audience is looking for.For this reason it is becoming increasingly hard to create a mobile SEO strategy for your business.

Before the introduction of Smartphones, mobile advertisers were confined to the small screens of traditional mobile units. Web access was unappealing and expensive/ slow web pages on those phones often consisted of nothing more than a few hyperlinks and some text.

The introduction of the iPhone has changed the way we surf the web on our mobile handsets. Mobile web browsing has been brought to a new level of functionality thanks to the introduction of a full touch screen HTML browser. Now, the use of the web on mobile handsets devices has started to make more sense for both smart phone users and advertisers.

Click here for a broader explanation of the Mobile web

The Future of the Mobile Web:

Lately we have seen a huge increase in Location based and real time searching on mobile handsets. More and more applications are being used to browse the web in different ways as opposed to just using Google as the only means of search.

How/Where does this leave advertisers to access their web audience? Do they stick with Adwords and organic search techniques or do they find new & different ways to boost traffic to their websites via mobile handsets.

Following Google’s recent acquisition of AdMob, they have introduced “Click to Call” ads. Your business ad now shows up in the SEPRS on the mobile web but there is a clickable telephone number link that connects directly to the business via your Smartphone.

This proves that a lot of people who browse the web are looking for instant information or “on the go” information and may not even want to enter a website.

Most search applications on smartphones are now using your GPS location to give you more personalized and real time search results. Also, with new “check-in Apps” like Foursquare and Gowalla you can now advertise directly to an individual’s mobile when you know they are in a nearby location of your business. This is making Mobile SEO increasingly hard to track and analyze.

These applications are bringing mobile SEO to a new level, where businesses can track down potential customers based on location, instead of having to wait to be indexed in Google’s SERPS (search engine results pages), where they might not ever be found. These “check in” Apps, could be the way of the future for many advertisers. It brings about a whole new meaning to localized searching.

Foursquare and Gowalla are the two most popular “check-in apps” out there at the moment, with Google Buzz attempting (but failing) to capture some of this market too.

The thing about Foursquare and Gowalla, and these check-in apps, is that they create a connection between yourself and the merchant (business owner). It tells your friends where you are, and then in the aggregate, it tells the services like Foursquare and Gowalla what places have the most activity about them at any given time.

With potential customers sharing their locations means businesses can provide a real-time call-to-action to get them inside their establishment while they’re nearby. Search marketers can utilize location with APIs.

Foursquare is beginning to take off in some major cities and has over 1million users worldwide with ten “check- in’s” per second. Business owners are getting great visibility by interacting with potential customers who are in their locality and reeling them in by offering them discounts on certain products.

For more information and examples of these “check-in” apps click here

Does this pave the way for more methods of “on the go” or location based advertising techniques? Do people have similar browsing habits while on mobile phones when compared to desktop searching?

New Browsing Habits & Information Sources

Downloadable search applications for Smartphones have different input mechanisms that can make them more fun, more interactive or more useful, and in many cases, the results tend to be more specialized and provide more information than a regular mobile web search.

Mobile Search Applications are altering mobile SEO. Mobile searchers are actually turning to mobile search applications instead of web search. These include search applications like WikiTude,UrbanSpoon,RedLaser,Trip Advisor,Yelp and Shazam and many more.

For more info on these search apps click here

As the web quickly becomes more mobile and social than ever, we see these kind of Apps filling voids that were mostly left empty throughout the history of search and social media. We see more and more people not using web browsers on mobile phones, they just use different Apps associated with different websites due to their ease of use and quicker download time.

With Apple dominating the Smartphone market, other well known mobile phone brands are constantly playing catch-up. This is due to the popularity and functionality associated with the Apple brand and its hugely popular iPhone. The new 4G iPhone is due to be release next month, with Mashable announcing yesterday that the first batch of devices available for pre-order were already sold out.

Your Mobile SEO Strategy:

Mobile SEO greatly differs to traditional desktop SEO methods. A lot of questions are still being raised about how mobile sites are indexed. Mobile search engines do not index your website for search in the same way as your traditional desktop search engines would.

Whether you create a separate mobile site on a sub domain of your existing domain or you create different css style sheets for different mobile devices, it’s important that website owners understand that your mobile audience usually wants to see very different information than you desktop audience.

Most popular social media websites or any websites that have a significant user interaction on desktop devices still saw it fit to “trim” down their existing sites and introduce handy Apps. This allows mobile users to use the main functionalities of these sites while chopping out all the extra information that is not seen as hugely relevant to the mobile market or that could contribute to slower downloading time or rendering issues.
By making your website more appealing to mobile search and attacking rendering issues on different mobile devices you can greatly increase your chances of being found for different key word searches.

For more detailed information on how to tackle Mobile SEO you can check out our webpage devoted to exploring how to create a mobile SEO strategy for your business.

This webpage goes into more detail about rendering issues across multiple handsets, best practices for mobile SEO, as well as all the risks involved with mobile SEO including content duplication and different ways of getting around it.

Read more about your mobile SEO strategy here

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