Mobile Strategy for Small Businesses: Trends to Follow

If you are under an impression that the age of mobile devices will soon go away then this could be the biggest mistake of your life.

Infact, mobile devices are gradually replacing the desktops. And to the utmost surprise, most of the web activity in 2013 is expected to drive in through mobile devices. Majority of web development and application development companies have reported that most of the onlinetraffic is coming through mobile devices. And this shows the increasing trend of mobile devices and its capabilities.

So, what startegy should small businesses follow in order to remain competitive? Mentioned below are the five trends that small companies should consider while deciding on their mobile strategy:

1) Mobile will be mostly used for local searches

Mobile phones are mostly used for performing local searches, which means, to find information in the neighbouring locality or within the user's zip code. Thus, mobile strategy of a small firm should be majorly oriented towards local users.

Firms should optimize their mobile websites for local zip codes and names of the neighbourhood. Also ensure that the information provided on some of the popular geographical search results such as Yelp, Google, etc. is accurate. Lastly, make sure that your address, directions to your address and your local map is easy to access.

2) People generally seek the help of mobile devices for video content

Mobile devices are mostly used to fetch video content rather than text heavy content. Video content is more popular on mobile devices due to its increasing video quality and data connection speeds. Firms can create simple videos relevant to their businesses and upload for mobile use.

Create a simple introductory video that can be played from the homepage of your website. It is even better to present a series of videos customized to common searches relevant to your industry.

3) Mobile will be constantly in use

Mobile devices will be used always. For a number of users, it is the only device performing a number of functions. So, consider the increasing usage of mobile phones while devising your mobile strategy. Ensure that all the mobile channels such as your app, your mobile website and social platforms are accessible by everyone, from all locations and at all times.

4) Mobile will be vastly used for social activity

Large number of users access socialnetworking sites from their mobile devices. While publishing content on social media channels, ensure that your content is mobile optimized – the size of the image is not too big, text-amount is reasonable and has a link to the website with mobile version. A mobile-friendly content has a larger user base and is more successful.

5) Mobile devices are a better promotional tool

Mobile is already used largely for creating sales and in coming days, it will be used as a promotional tool in the form of push notifications, mobile coupons etc. This means, small firms should seriously consider investing in mobile advertisement, mobile apps and providing different promotions to the users through various channels.

FOMAX is a premier global offshore software development and information technology company, offering systems integration, consulting and outsourcing solutions to the clients of various business verticals.

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Mobile SEO – Different ways to ensure optimization of brand content

The advent of KitKat and Google’s new Hummingbird algorithm has forced firms and brands to outstretch their search marketing plans and strategies.

The increased focus on relevant content and mobile engagement with content has raised the need of long term content and SEO marketing. As per the opinion of readers, SEO can be more clearly defined as:

The long term process of improving a brand’s visibility in search and social throughout the buying cycle of prospect is known as SEO.

Mobile usage is causing a drift in search strategies

The number of mobile devices on this planet is expected to exceed the world’s population in near future. As per the data available on Wikipedia, there are around 6.8 billion mobile devices in between 7 billion people.

The brand managers and marketers should consider the difference between the user discoverability and engagement with brand content between a mobile and a desktop.

Moreover, voice or a conversational search occurs more frequently on a mobile device compared to that on a desktop. The behavior difference between the two types of searches should be studied.

This type of behavioral difference shows that focus should be given to –

• Search keywords used
• Way of consuming the content
• Who is the searcher and who is using the content?
• Stage of buying cycle
• Difference in conversion rate

The use of mobile is increasing rapidly and mobile traffic to Google search engine will soon surpass the desktop traffic. Therefore Google is considering algorithm changes so that relevant results are given when a user performs any search through a mobile device.

Recent trends in mobile organic search

The data published by gShift shows the trend of organic search traffic across Yahoo, Bing and Google from January 2013 to October 2013. The figure shows that the organic search traffic from mobile devices has gone upwards from January 2013 to October 2013.

Companies can capitalize on this trend in mobile organic search in five different ways:

1) Consider mobile organic search behavior in your SEO/Content marketing strategies

Ensure that mobility factor has been considered for conversion measurement and keyword research while executing your SEO or content marketing strategies.

Enquire that how your service provider will consider the trends in mobile organic search behavior and how they will measure the engagement and discoverability of content on a mobile device versus a desktop.

2) Increase your keyword research and tracking

Keyword performance tracking has become much more challenging due to the difference in searcher’s behavior. Further, the search performed from a mobile device is different from that performed through a desktop. So, a large number of keywords should be monitored for position change and discoverability in order to understand which content is majorly being discovered for a group of related keywords.

3) Keep a track of mobile segments in Google Analytics

In order to understand the actions taken by a searcher on their mobile devices and their engagement with your brand content versus desktop, keep a track of mobile segments in Google Analytics.

"Mobile and Tablet Traffic", "Mobile Traffic" and "Tablet and Desktop Traffic" are the built in segments to choose between in Google Analytics. You need to create a new segment for analyzing the behavior of only desktop users.

After creating the new segment select both the desktop and mobile segments to know the conversion rate differences between visitors from each source and then take the action accordingly to improve your brand content.

4) Content-Level and Page-Level Web Presence Analytics are key

Discoverability of content, reporting on the engagement and understanding where optimization opportunities exist need web page or content level analytics. Such metrics include social signals, page-specific backlinks and conversions.

Then choose the desktop traffic and mobile traffic segments to know if your brand content has high conversion rate on desktop or mobile.

5) Human factors affecting optimization

Various human factors testing across different devices should also be considered. A focus group should be set up to understand how people interact with the web presence of brand from mobile device and desktop and what keywords are being used to find the brand.