SES Toronto: Smart Mobile Marketing
Posted on 17. Jun, 2011 by BLarson in Blog, mobile, Search Engine Strategies, ses toronto, SESTO, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing
The “Smart Mobile Marketing” session was a panel discussion, moderated by TopRank CEO Lee Odden. To begin the discussion, Lee opened with a question for the room of 80+, “How many people in the room have developed a mobile version of a site?” 3-4 hands slowly raise. And with that, the stage is set: There is a lot of learning to do surrounding mobile marketing.
The session panel consisted of 2 leaders and veterans of the mobile marketing industry, Deborah Hall and Michael J. O’Farrell.
Deborah Hall
Hall founded web2mobile 3 years ago, frustrated with the user experience when trying to access a site via a smart phone. One of the greatest challenges she noticed was the upload speed, or lack thereof, of sites.
Here are some interesting stats Hall shared regarding when users access their mobile device:
- 80% while shopping in stores
- 17% during movies
- 14% while on a plane
- 7% while in church
Maybe most interesting to mobile marketers, 17% of users have showed a store clerk an image of the product they wish to purchase! This stat is indicative of many of the fringe benefits mobile marketing offers brands. Although these 17% of users didn’t transact via their mobile device, they certainly were informed and aspired through mobile marketing.
To inspire the audience, Hall pointed out a few companies that are emerging as leaders in leveraging mobile technology and highlighted GetGlue. For those new to GetGlue, it is a social network for entertainment where users can check into locations as well as check into “things” (e.g. wine, Will Ferell movies, chess, etc.). The end result is a network where people can theoretically find people in close proximity with similar interests.
Michael J. O’Farell
O’Farrell’s professional experience with mobile predates text messaging and he is the founder of The Mobile Institute – a company that helps clients develop strategies for the mobile marketplace.
During his presentation he, similar to Hall, shared many compelling stats about the growth of mobile marketing. As the session opened for QA, O’Farrell and a crowd member pointed out an interesting benefit to mobile marketing revealed by data collected by Google on search habits: mobile use doesn’t dip. Unlike desktop search, where use on weekends, holidays and evenings drop significantly. That’s simply not the case with mobile, where users are consistent and unrelenting in their activity. These images tell the tale.
As the session continued, the next question needed to be asked. With a timid crowd, Lee thankfully stepped to the plate and asked “What are some tips for the audience on how they can get started?” Both O’Farrell and Hall agreed that the first step is research.
Google Analytics provides data on mobile traffic. Marketers should leverage these numbers to form a picture of their current mobile audience and prioritize their efforts accordingly. That is to say, a company with 3 visitors from mobile devices is not likely to invest the same resources into mobile as a company that has 30,000 mobile visitors.
The next step is understanding how your audience uses mobile. Google Analytics provides data on what Operating Systems (OS) visitors use. This is important and should have a big role in your mobile marketing approach, as different OS’s will require different specs for a mobile site.
Finally, get out there and try. O’Farell and Hall recommend a phased approach where marketers can dip their toes in the water by testing different mobile strategies. There will undoubtedly be some misses at the outset of any mobile marketing effort, but as mobile use continues to grow, there is no denying that it is time take the leap.
Canada is following the United States in adopting smart phones, with 50% of the Canadian population expected to own a smart phone in 2014 (55% is expected in the US).
To learn more, check out these top mobile marketing resources.
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SES Toronto: Smart Mobile Marketing | http://www.toprankblog.com
SES Toronto: SEO is Dead. No it’s Not.
Posted on 14. Jun, 2011 by Lee Odden in Blog, Marketing PR Conferences, Search Engine Strategies, ses toronto, SESTO, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing
Moderated by Jonathen Allen, the SEO is Dead. Long live SEO! session included a number of “salty dog” SEO experts: Terry Van Horne, Jim Hedger and Garry Pryzklenk.
Essentially, the key questions discussed in this panel centered around what is it that we’re doing as marketers that could be considered as SEO vs. Marketing. Other topics included: Google +1, personalization, evolving nature of SERPs, “Trust Rank”, analytics and other technical aspects of SEO were discussed.
Moderator: What does search engine optimization mean anymore? The thing about SEO is that there are many technical considerations. What ranking factors still matter? Should we still be considering tags, H1, Titles, etc.
Terry: Title tags are one of the biggest factors.
Jim: Beyond the URL the first thing the search engine will see is the title tag. You can gain a great deal of power from your title tag.
Jim: Being a great SEO isn’t being a magician. It’s about being a great marketer that uses SEO.
Terry: I’ve always followed the Document Object Model to identify what HTML attributes are important for SEO. Then you have other formats like RDFa and microformats.
Jim: It’s important to remember we’re writing for two audiences: people and search engines.
Terry: Spiders don’t buy anything
Jim: Titles help people navigate the website
Moderator: Is link building a SEO tactic or a marketing tactic?
Terry: Its a marketing tactic. I’ve been link building before I started doing SEO. If you look at link building without SEO then you’re pretty safe when it comes to Google guidelines.
Audience: How does personalization and Google +1 affect SEO?
Jim: Search engines will continue to innovate and change. Just because things change doesn’t make optimization any less relevant. We may need to change how we do things and use different sets of tasks, but you’re still doing things to make it easy for search users to find your content.
There’s not a lot you can do with personalization when it comes to SEO. Localization and personalization are very close to each other. Except personalization is mostly informed by your behaviors.
Garry: Social is an area where Google wants to move into for signals, but I don’t think they want to have a high reliance on any one source. Google +1 is their attempt to mitigate reliance on external social signal. It does have some correlation between personalization and localization.
Terry: The most important part of personalization, is that when people are logged in, Twitter becomes very important. Tweets can take up a lot of SERP screen real estate from . People say +1 is a ranking signal, I don’t believe that.
Terry: As far as personalization, I try to use personas and optimize according to customers. You’ve got to look at audiences, not just keywords.
Garry: Personalization and +1 is still new. We’re going to have to wait a little bit to see it gain some traction and see if it will have an impact.
Moderator: With Twitter, we know Google uses the firehose of data. With +1, content posted can appear on a Google profile and can also appear in real-time search results. Is that SEO or marketing?
Audience: Now that traditional SEO is changing, what are some of the key things we need to be looking at for the “new SEO”
Jim: What’s old is new. In the beginning there was Alta Vista. Search engines of that day were just about acquiring content. Content was king before links became commoditized by Google.
Today, quality content, making your sites accessible and usable is important. Usability is polite. Accessibility is the law.
Audience: The +1 is all user generated content. I don’t see anyone outside of techies ever using it. What do you think the shelf life will be? Also, what about Bing?
Garry: Buzz died pretty quickly because it was so similar to other services. With +1 it depends whether it gets traction or not.
Bing conversion rates overall have been very good with PPC. Bing is also a center of innovation and could be a real competitor.
Terry: +1 really is only known and used by techies. There’s nothing obvious about what will happen with +1 for users, whereas with other sharing buttons, you can tell it’s for Facebook or Twitter.
Moderator: +1 on PPC ads provides better demographic data for advertisers and can positively affect quality score. Google has a lot of data that shows if you integrate social, with display and PPC you get better overall lift.
Panel: Google is a bit naive about how they approach social. They have engineers deciding to make things that will be cool, but don’t really make an effort to explain to users why it’s important. Google +1 is a good example of this. There are many reasons why advertisers and Google would want people to use +1, but not many compelling reasons for people to use it.
Jim: Is SEO dead. SEO dies every day. We spell die wrong. It should be “dye”. SEO is dying, changing every day.
Audience: I’ve not seen having a mobile optimized landing page or site helps your Google ranking on a Google mobile device or search.
Terry: I’m of the opinion that “mobile” sites will be obsolete because HTML5 will improve. Mobile and website from a code perspective will converge.
Garry: Is an optimized site on mobile a great user experience when you have to pull back on certain features to accommodate mobile limitations?
Terry: If you’re looking at your users with mobile, you’ll give them a different experience than on the web.
Audience: When you’re logged in, it seems everyone has a YouTube or Gmail account these days. How many queries happen when logged in vs. logged out?
Terry: Since caffiene you’re pretty much always logged in.
Garry: If you’ve ever logged in, the cookie will persist whether you’re logged in or not.
Terry: Google is also pulling data from Chrome and the toolbar, whether you’re logged in or not. Keep in mind advertising networks like Google’s DoubleClick can read those cookies too.
Audience: Can you name the top 10 signals you’d advise someone to use that is a large player, software, international, high end. That already has #1, #2 ranking positions. What are your top 10 signals for the “uninitiated”.
Jim: Titles, description meta tags, text and links
Terry: Title, copy and links
Garry: Agree with Jim. Quality of content is king because that’s what will attract links.
Jim: Site structure and quality of site structure is also important.
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© Online Marketing Blog, 2011. |
SES Toronto: SEO is Dead. No it’s Not. | http://www.toprankblog.com
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