With businesses dedicated to mobile SEO, there must be a market for it, right? However, there have been many arguments questioning the usefulness of mobile SEO and whether businesses should even create mobile sites.

To gain some more understanding into this debate, I looked at opinions of those with experience in this field.

What do the experts have to say?

In February last year, Bryson Meunier wrote this article where he discusses common arguments against mobile SEO, one of which proposes that since the iPhone and other smartphone users are able to access full HTML web pages and these are shown in search engines’ page results, then optimising a site for mobile users would be a waste of time.

Meunier disagrees with this argument by referencing sources stating that smartphone adoption drives mobile web usage but he says: “SEO best practices will generally make a site accessible to smartphone searchers.” However, he also says that accessibility is “not an end game” and while making your desktop content accessible to simple users makes you “ok for mobile search”, you “won’t be optimized, and you may not be prepared for the future of search”.

Over a year later, in another article by Meunier, he lists 16 reasons why people should optimise their mobile sites. Included in his reasoning is that mobile search is evolving and mobile ranking factors are becoming more prevalent so brands that don’t optimise a mobile site today will be “busy playing catch up tomorrow”.

Moving on to an article by someone who also has experience, but perhaps less enthusiasm, in mobile SEO, I took a look at what Bena Roberts wrote in August last year :

“The fact of the matter is that the market for mobile SEO is still early… mobile search engines are continuing to evolve and develop… what I have found this momentous past year is that achieving effective mobile SEO results is not a given. In fact, it is not as easy as it seems and I urge users to be weary of parting with money freely for the chance of global mobile eyeballs… Mobile SEO is hard, hard work… There is no magic in the mobile web and as I celebrate one year of visibility mobile I realise what we have learnt, had to re-learn, test and master has been incredible.”

Roberts documents her argument with a personal example. After getting one of the leading UK newspapers to the top of all mobile search engines on three different keywords in December 2008, she found her hard work had come to nothing “due to changes from key search engines and obvious buying search keyword campaigns from competitors”.

For discussion of a more recent nature, I looked at what Gareth Owen had to say in his article entitled “What’s next for search, SEO?” Since people are using the Internet in different ways via different devices, Owen tackles the question of how search engines will know what is important or whether something is more important for a mobile user than a tablet or laptop user. This is his answer:

“There are still a lot of “ifs” involved here. Ultimately, the search engines might feel that what exists now is good enough to tell them which are the most important sites… But perhaps there is an argument that for each device you will need a site specifically optimized for each different version of Google. Google for mobile, Google for smartphone, Google for tablets – each version might prefer different types of web property to display higher in the listings. Ultimately there isn’t a definitive answer right now…” However, his belief is that SEO will encompass social media and skill-sets that include a large degree of developer knowledge specifically for ensuring websites are compatible with multiple devices.

After looking through the above opinions, I’d like to draw your attention to phrases that have been mentioned in order to highlight a trend in these various arguments which supports Owen’s argument that there is no definitive answer right now. These phrases include, “may not be”, “the future”, “evolving”, “tomorrow”, ““still early” and “continuing to evolve and develop”.

Let’s give this debate some more background information and look at what Andy Hagans says on his website. Before saying that those with mobile sites are “slugging it out in the present mess”, he says, “mobile SEO and SEM are, well, very immature”.

Can we say that this has changed? Are mobile SEO and SEM now mature? There seems to be a common problem here. It looks like SEOs are still unsure as to how mobile SEO works and how businesses can rank high in mobile search.

The test

To gain some more insight on the subject, we at Webgrowth decided to conduct an experiment. After installing Opera Mini to a smartphone, we conducted a search using Google Mobile Search and searched Google.co.za for what we thought was a highly competitive market – “American news channels”. This is what we saw:

We then conducted the same search, but this time on a desktop, using Google.co.za again. The results were:

Thus, the top six results stayed exactly the same with a few small changes after that. As you can see from the first table, websites without mobile sites are still in the top results, and beating some that own mobile sites. Taking the example of Reuters, one can see that in both mobile and desktop search, Reuters has maintained its position.

If this is the case, I have to ask – is there a difference between Google’s algorithm in mobile search compared to desktop search and does having a mobile site make any difference to your ranking in Google Mobile Search? My immediate response would be “no”. But, I’d also like to jump on the bandwagon and agree with a common argument seen above. Perhaps a “not yet” is more suitable.

With more and more people worldwide using the mobile web for search and social networking, there is obviously reason to suspect that mobile SEO might be a market businesses should think about entering at some point. However, with so much uncertainty as to how one ranks high on the mobile web and how best to optimise a mobile site, I think that businesses would be wasting their time in the current scheme of things and that, in time, when there are more answers, this is a market that might be worth tapping into.

Lastly, I’d like to bring this argument home. After searching Google.co.za on Google Mobile Search for “news channels South Africa”, only two of the top results had mobile sites and they were ranked as number three and eight, with other channels without mobile sites ahead of them. Their ranking remained the same in desktop search.

If companies are targeting a mature search market i.e. USA, and don’t know all the ins and outs just yet, then there is no point for South African businesses to delve into this market right now. Like all businesses, SEO is most successful when one knows what works and what doesn’t.

So, best we wait for the Americans to get it right before we try competing with them.

After half a year of work by 218 contributors, the thirteenth major release of WordPress is now available for download. WordPress 3.0 brings users new features, including a new default theme called Twenty Ten and new APIs allowing theme developers to easily implement custom background, headers, shortlinks, menus, post types and taxonomies. The merge of MU and WordPress has created new multi-site functionality, allowing network admins to run millions of blogs from the same installation. Users will benefit from the new lighter interface, the contextual help on every screen, over a thousand bug fixes and feature enhancements and more.

The following video will tell you all you need to know about WordPress 3.0:

Google Street View first launched in May 2007 in several cities in the United States and over time, began to expand its reach worldwide. As of a few days ago, South Africa was added to the mix.

With the 2010 FIFA Soccer World Cup upon us, it makes sense that this development has arrived in time for foreigners to get 360 degree street-level views of their travel destinations, stadiums, accommodation and areas they are interested in visiting to get a better idea of where they are going before they actually go there.

Google began taking Street View photos in South Africa in September, driving about 64 000 kilometres across the country and covering some 27 towns and cities. This development is great news for the tourism industry, bringing South Africa’s many beautiful sights to cellular phones and PC’s worldwide and helping tourists to get better acquainted with our streets.

Street View has a number of benefits, such as checking out the exact location of a place you need to be, looking at parking options, finding a restaurant or accommodation that suits you, looking for the best spot to watch an event taking place in the streets and checking out the inside of a sports stadium. Some have even said that it helps prevent you from getting a parking ticket! And if nothing better to do, Google Street View will definitely provide you with a way to pass the time.

For the real estate business, Google Street View is a very useful tool. House hunters are able to view real estate without having to physically go there and can make their own decisions about the property and its neighbourhood. Real estate companies in the United States have begun to see the value in Google Street Views and are including it in their websites. This real estate company offers street views on all their properties (scroll down to “Maps and Views” and click in “Street View”).

Google’s ultimate goal is to provide street views of the entire world but Google Street View has come under fire for apparently invading privacy. Google has responded to these claims by saying that they are only providing users with imagery that is in the public sector already. Google Street View also features technology that blurs both faces and licence plates and will remove images that are reported as a problem by users. Google Street View South Africa states that they have “gone to lengths to safeguard privacy while allowing all South African users to benefit from this feature.”

My last blog post, “Internet Marketing in South Africa today“, discussed how the Internet has developed in South Africa and the impact this has had on online marketing. I took a look at what search words were picking up in popularity in the United States and through this study, advised that business owners employ SEO as an internet marketing strategy now.

To dig deeper into this subject, I have asked three South Africans connected to the SEO industry to share their thoughts on the state of SEO in South Africa today. The first interviewee is John Gardner. John is owner of travel website, Accommodation Hunter, who has used his knowledge of SEO to become one of the top-ranked travel websites in Google, South Africa. The second person I interviewed is Jonathan Andrews, eMarketing Strategist of AlterSage, a prominent SEO company based in Cape Town. Finally, the third interviewee is Webgrowth’s very own Neil Pursey, whose four years of experience in SEO has helped numerous local and UK companies climb Google’s search rankings to #1 positions.

1. What in your opinion is the best kind of online marketing campaign? (e.g. SEO, PPC, social media campaign etc.). Why?
   

   John: I think it is impossible to choose one. Each client has separate needs, more often than not they are also mistaken as to what those needs are. So you need to help them understand their product from a consumer’s perspective and from, there find the right balance that best satisfies the consumers of your clients. If you are selling an online product with a short shelf-life (e.g. the latest iPhone app), you would not dedicate resources to SEO but instead focus on a PPC campaign.

   Jonathan: It’s hard to pick just one, because “the best” solution would depend entirely on the nature of a campaign and its desired outcomes. The old maxim “when all you’ve got is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail” applies here. It’s better to know what you’re trying to achieve first and then you can choose the right tools with which to achieve it. As a general answer, I would say that a combination of channels normally has the most impact.

   Neil: All three bring a business different value to the table and also different skills sets to succeed, so it’s difficult to say. SEO is a long-term strategy and has the highest ROI. PPC is more short term and is used to attain instant results. I prefer to use it to test various keywords. If the keyword receives a lot of traffic through PPC then it’s worth implementing a SEO strategy around it. Social media is difficult to measure ROI at the moment but having a strong following base on platforms like Facebook and Twitter definitely holds a lot of value. I also believe Google is taking note of how many followers and/or fans a business has; I strongly believe this helps your SEO. So all roads lead to SEO, SEO is King! We can use various other tools to complement SEO.

2. In general, do you find South African web developers have a good understanding of SEO?
   

   John: A resounding NO! Almost all the developers that I have worked with are specialists at what they do and have taken years to learn what they know. “SEO” is a monster that requires your full attention, from week to week there are new developments in “SEO” and keeping abreast with these changes is the difference between average “SEO” and great “SEO” and in today’s world, that can be the difference between roaring success or failure of an online company.

   Jonathan: Sadly many do not. Most web developers these days claim to have SEO experience or offer SEO as a service with little understanding of what it is. This is a great pity because SEO is not just something that can be retro-fitted to a site at the end. In fact, an SEO campaign would have far greater success if developers worked with SEOs or built websites with sound SEO principles in mind. SEO considerations should be present prior to even commencing with development. Many things like the type of mark-up used, the website information architecture and the website’s keyword and content strategy all have an effect on a site’s optimisation and ultimately how it will rank.

   Neil: Let’s just say, to date, every website owner that has come to me needs their website re-developed because of poor coding. There are a few web developers out there that keep SEO in mind, but the bulk of them are still using old techniques which is very frustrating for business owners and SEO’ers alike.

3. What would you recommend as the number one SEO fundamental that a business owner should implement when building a website?
   

   John: Employ a reputable SEO company to guide you. SEO is so dynamic that, yes you can learn the basics in a couple of months. But what is the opportunity cost? Would not your time have been better spent on working on your core business?

   Jonathan: Make sure that your content is accessible to search engines. This means ensuring that you have decent (keyword-rich) text-based navigation and that your site’s pages aren’t excluding robots from crawling them by other means like incorrect robots.txt files, dynamic text or the use of elements like iFrames.

   Neil: Get your on-site optimisation correct. Basic knowledge of title tag, meta description and content optimisation is crucial. If search engines can’t navigate through your website correctly then the website will fail. If I can add to this and say that a close second is design/aesthetics of a website. Link building is crucial and it makes life much easier when searching for incoming links for a sexy looking website.

4. Where do you think SEO is going in the future?
   

   John: I believe that “SEO” is one of the vital building blocks of a good website. With this being said, Social media is very quickly becoming the fastest horse in the “SEO” stable, but if you don’t know how to shape it and make it work for you, it will just be a pretty horse.

   Jonathan: Increasing numbers of people are using search engines to find what they are looking for. The internet has recently clocked the zettabyte mark (a million million gigabytes) and the planets digital content grew by 62% last year – that’s a lot of data. Search engines are still the most efficient way to find what you’re looking for amongst this chaos. And as more businesses are realising the importance of being visible online, the battle amongst competitors for rankings (and visibility) is getting fiercer. This means it’s more important than ever to ensure that you optimise every element of your site fully. While I wouldn’t say that any market vertical is completely saturated, I do think that those who chose to ignore digital as part of their broader marketing strategy are already missing out. Organic search marketing or SEO will always have a place in the online marketing mix.

   Neil: SEO has only been prevalent in South Africa for the last 2 years. In the US, it started when Google was born, roughly 12 years ago. So we have a lot to learn still in terms of knowledge, but with the expanse of our bandwidth, it is a growing industry. Unfortunately there are few fly-by nighters popping up and giving SEO a bad rep but in time they will be quickly exposed. There’s no hiding on the internet! There is still a lot of room for growth. The only industry that is proving very competitive is the travel industry. Other industries like the building industry are picking up speed and competition will grow. All in all, as long as we have a need for search and internet connectivity there will always be a need for SEO.  It will just evolve and manifest in different forms over the coming years.

5. Do you believe there to be any synergy between SEO and social media?
   

   John: Yes, Social media is the biggest part of SEO, but it is also the hardest one to work. When you get it right, it will be your best marketing tool, with huge cost reward factors.

   Jonathan: SEO and social media can definitely complement each other. In fact, it’s well worth looking at ways to optimise your social media outputs too. Search Engines like Google have been making use of a type of universal search in their SERPs for a long time now. You’ll notice when you search on Google, that in addition to the usual web results, you’ll probably also see results for shopping, blogs, images, tweets, videos and a whole manner of things as well. I now notice that Google are also including “results from your social circle” in their search engines results pages too.  Social media is definitely becoming “searchable” and most certainly works very well in conjunction with SEO as an online marketing tool. This just highlights the fact that it’s more important than ever to optimise every element of your digital campaigns.

   Neil: Definitely, with Facebook overtaking Google’s traffic in the beginning of 2010. How can Google ignore such a website? Where there is traffic, there is value, and businesses are clamouring for ideas to expose their brand on Facebook. With incoming links being ‘eaten up’ by Twitter, it is becoming even more difficult to get incoming links to a website. If you can have a good following on social media platforms, you will notice that links will start arriving organically through personal blogs and networks you belong to.

Responses like these only serve to increase my confidence in SEO as a vital part of an online marketing campaign. If your business is interested in bringing SEO into your internet marketing campaign, consult an SEO specialist for more information and learn how SEO can benefit your company. When deciding on an SEO specialist, consider the following:

• How many years have they been running for, and in that time, how many projects have they successfully worked on?
• Can you speak to their clients?
• How hard is it to find their clients in Google?

Once you’ve chosen an SEO specialist that works for your company, don’t assume you’ll be seeing results the following day. SEO is a slow process and one that requires patience. But when the results do start to come, you’ll soon see that the wait was all worth it.

Online marketing has taken advertising to a whole new level. The online directory has replaced the telephone book. Your business advertisement will no longer disappear along with the newspaper but will instead be available online 24/7 to potential customers on the other side of the ocean.

It hasn’t always been this easy, however, and especially not in South Africa, where growth in the Internet occurs at a much slower pace than other more technologically-advanced countries.

Internet marketer, Derek Robson wrote an article in 2007 titled “Internet Marketing in South Africa”, in which he discusses the problems facing South African-based internet marketers. In the article, he states, “we [South Africa] are seriously lacking in internet technology” and he goes on to talk about problems internet marketers of the time were facing:

“As the internet is still relatively new to South Africa, we don’t have many experts or experience in the field. Those calling themselves experts, have limited knowledge and are too expensive, when compared to overseas competitors. Simple things like service provision, web hosting, design and site building, software, tools, optimization and advertising, are grossly overpriced. In most cases, they are bought overseas and resold here… There are no local, South African internet companies, for memberships, product sourcing, resources, search engine optimization etc, so we have to look abroad.”

Robson also discusses how the state-owned telecommunications company, Telkom, has the monopoly, leading to “very highly priced access and an indifferent service.” He compares South Africa’s internet coverage to that of the United Sates, referencing a small population of South Africans who have any form of access to the Internet and he says that this is largely due to the high costs.

We’re not in 2007 anymore…

In the years since Robson wrote this article, it is obvious that times have changed. A recent study conducted by World Wide Worx in collaboration with Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group tells us just how much.

The study states that the number of South African internet users has passed the 5 million mark for the first time. The number of internet users rose from 5.3 million to 5.6 million last year and a similar growth rate is expected to occur this year. World Wide Worx MD, Arthur Goldstruck, said that South Africa will continue to see strong growth in 2010, stating that we should reach the 6 million mark by the end of the year. According to the research organisation, one of the factors behind this growth is the landing of the new undersea cable on the South African coast.

This recent development will cause operators to begin to leverage the combination of undersea cable capacity and new fibre-optic networks to supply corporate clients and resellers with bigger, faster and more flexible capacity. Says Reshaad Sha, Senior Manager for Cisco, “The year ahead will see the proliferation of high speed connectivity materialising more widely than ever before.”

No longer do we live in a country where the state-owned telecommunications company has the monopoly. Instead, this new development will spark an 18% increase in the number of Internet access and service providers in South Africa.

More internet = more internet marketing

This rise in internet usage is synonymous with a rise in online marketing. South African internet marketing service provider, eTraffic states in an article on their website that there are a multitude of internet marketing strategies which can provide companies with great advertising for a much lower price and for proven better results. The article goes on to mention that search engine optimisation is one of these strategies.

The rate at which the Internet has advanced is pretty incredible and thus we are able to conduct online marketing campaigns that are lot more sophisticated than they have been previously.

However, one cannot deny that we are still behind “so called first world countries,” as Robson calls them, and still have catching up to do. Therefore I think it is imperative that we examine the trends and developments of internet marketing strategies in these countries and take notice of what internet users are searching for, i.e. what tools are growing in popularity?

SEO specialists, 1st Place, in an article titled “SEO for small businesses in South Africa” state that “SEO is ranked as one of the top ROI [Return of Investment] solutions”.

Of course SEO isn’t the only channel companies can use in their online marketing campaigns. PPC (pay per click) advertising is another popular form of internet marketing. Some companies might choose to conduct a social media campaign, but this cannot be measured as well as methods like SEO and PPC.

What are Americans searching for?

As I believe SEO and PPC are the most popular strategies used in internet marketing, I’d like to:

A – compare the popularity of the keyword ‘SEO’ as a search word versus that of ‘PPC’ in South Africa and;

B – compare the popularity of the keyword ‘SEO’ as a search word versus that of ‘PPC’ in the US and;

C – compare these two results to each other.

To do this, I have used Google Insights and searched for the terms; ‘internet marketing’, ‘online marketing’, ‘SEO’ and ‘PPC’. I have chosen to look for results between January 2007 and May 2010 and only in South Africa. This is what we see:

The South African graph looks rather sporadic and, although there are short periods where SEO slightly overtook PPC in terms of interest, PPC is more popular as a search term than SEO for the most part. For the second part of my investigation, I used the same keywords and time period but made the search specific to the United States. These are the results:

There is a steady rise in the interest in SEO as a search term and around March 2008, internet users in the US began searching for SEO more than they were searching for PPC.

From these results, if we are to look at the US as a trend-setter, then it is very possible that SEO may very well be the future of online marketing.

US company, USA SEO PROS, state on their website under the subheading “Consumers do not want paid advertising” that consumers want real, organic results and that they’ll find those within the regular, search listings. Also on their homepage do they state “Recent studies have shown that consumers are about 12 times more likely to buy your products and services after finding your site through organic search engine results than all other methods of advertising.”

It is without a doubt that SEO is a growing industry and that its potential as an internet marketing strategy shouldn’t be ignored. If SEO is increasingly gaining more popularity in the US, then I think it’s advisable that South African business owners get their foot in the door now so they can get ahead of the competition and gain market share online.