Let's do a quick review on what SEO is and is not. SEO is not the efforts to help search engines connect potential clients with your website. SEO is the comprehensive ongoing strategy to help connect users with your companies information. As I've mentioned before, that's an important distinction. SEO is not merely web, and it's not primarily about your sight. It's about reaching your potential clients wherever they are. Guess what? They're mobile! OK, maybe not yet, but they will be, and a lot of them already are. If you are looking at any long term strategies, mobile has to be taken into consideration. It can be tough to know what is most important when planning Mobile SEO strategies. What's real? What's fake? What's hype? What's standard? Here's a look at the Top 5 Mobile SEO Suggestions.
1. Mobile Sites: Fact
What everyone knows:
Yes, you need a mobile version of your website. Yes, it needs to look good on a smart phone. Yes, it needs to look good on a tablet. Yes, you need to utilize mobile functions that may be lost on desktop users.
What no one else will tell you:
When you read mobile don't think phone. When you read mobile think tablet. Believe it or not, it's not the iPhone that is dominating the market. It's the iPad.
2. Moblie Marketing: Fact (unfortunately)
What everyone knows:
Only 22% of marketing e-mails are opened on average. Closer to 95% of marketing text messages are opened on average. In addition to that, text messages are opened 7 times faster than e-mails too.
What no one else will tell you:
Don't abuse this tool. It only works if it is treated with care. Don't SPAM Twitter, and don't send mass text messages. Communicate through mobile with people who want to hear from you.
3. Mobile Apps: Fiction
What everyone knows:
You've just got to have an app if you want to stay on the cutting edge.
What no one else will tell you:
Mobile apps are a thing of the present, not a thing of the future. They are a quick fix deserving only a small amount of resources. Instead of putting time and money into mobile apps, double up those resources into your website by adding functionality that would normally be found on an app. Not only do you reach more people now, you will not have wasted those resources when apps fall out of vogue.
4. Mobile Operations: (science) Fiction
What everyone knows:
Someday we'll be doing everything on our phones.
What no one else will tell you:
We will continue to do more and more on our mobile devices. The conveniences of life will be all the more prevalent as time passes. However, there are a few things that technology can't touch. Ownership and Reality act as technological drogue stones. Businesses will always want to own that which is proprietary, even if it costs them more. The more virtual our word becomes the more important our reality is to us.
5. Mobile Payments: Fiction
What everyone knows:
You can pay with your phone now. It's great. It's faster. It's safer. Everyone loves it.
What no one else will tell you:
You can pay with your phone now, but that doesn't have to be done through the development of a specific application. If you have a payment option on your website, your clients can pay with their phones. Period.
Mobile's going to be big, but you can't just stick the word mobile in front of a strategy and expect it to work. Take the time to estimate the value that your expenditures will have over the next 10 years. Will the value appreciate or depreciate? Remember, technology is moving fast. You don't want to waste resources on the things of present.