The mobile web is marketing’s next frontier. Our growing dependence on cell phones, coupled with the increasing affordability of smartphones and the quickly evolving sophistication of mobile technology, is changing the way people access information. Search engine optimization for the mobile web is poised to become the next big marketing tool in the quest to lure potential customers to your website.
Laptops and wireless technology freed us from the rooted immobility of desktop computers. Mobile technology has increased our mobility. In the past 20 years, U.S. cell phone use has increased from 34 million to 203 million. The majority of America’s 20- and 30-year-old consumers use cell phones exclusively; they no longer have telephone landlines. Worldwide, more than 2 billion people own cell phones and the number is growing exponentially every year.
The increasing sophistication of mobile technology has greatly expanded the capability of the average cell phone and led to the development of computer-capable smartphones. Apple’s iPhone, the BlackBerry and a growing number of similarly-featured competitors now allow us to tap into the Internet while we’re on the run. Mobile searches and multimedia search engines for mobile applications tripled in 2007. By 2010, the mobile market is expected to be worth $3.8 billion, tripling to $12 billion by 2012. In the near future, search engine optimization (SEO) efforts will focus on tapping into the vast marketing potential of this quickly emerging consumer market. SEO for the mobile web is the wave of the future.
Today’s challenge is to create industry-wide standards and technology platforms that will allow for the consistent and universal application of SEO techniques to mobile technology. As an industry, we’re finding that the application of current Internet-based SEO techniques to the specific requirements of mobile technology and the mobile web require a little tweaking. To become an effective marketing tool, mobile search optimization will need to provide the same consistent and measurable results achievable by Internet SEO programs. The day is soon coming, however, when mobile search optimization will join traditional Internet SEO and social media marketing as part of a comprehensive Internet marketing program.
Keep watching this space. As a leader in the SEO industry, Increase Visibility will let you know when all the kinks have been worked out and mobile search optimization is ready to roll.
