I must admit, I was a bit surprised by this number – 2.7. This is the number of hours per day people in the U.S. are spending on the mobile internet according to a recent study from Ruder Finn, a leading PR agency. I will freely admit I am a slight blackberry addict, but I sincerely hope I am not reaching this level of mobile web addiction. And even though I question this number (it’s unclear to me how exactly this was measured), the rest of the study, which focused on intent of mobile users, had some very interesting findings with possible implications for web developers.
First, people are not turning to mobile internet for educational/informational purposes. Instead they are using it for social networking and transactional things, such as banking and shopping. This means that when thinking about tailoring your website for mobile use, if you are a purely informational site, your main audience is probably not on the mobile and investment in a fancy mobile site may not make much sense. Simple is often better.
Another interesting finding was that social networking was more popular on mobile internet than desktop access (91% of mobile users compared to 71% of desktop users). For web strategists who are considering incorporating social networking into a site, this is certainly something to keep in mind.
ReadWriteWeb had a good post on how the mobile may in fact be a better tool for socializing online and how mobile internet makes online social networking more “cool.” It allows people to live their normal life and still connect, share and interact with people in real time – without having to be behind a glowing computer screen.
It’s also worth noting that over 60% of mobile users are now downloading at least one mobile application a month. As I said in an earlier posting, web developers and strategists increasingly need to think about what app could work for their organization – it will soon no longer be a luxury. And with this new research in mind, you may want to make that app one that allows for easy transactions or quick interaction with your organization.
P.S. It’s time for us to start doing some research like this in the Middle East!
Being nice to Google...
Search engines play an increasingly important role in directing users to web sites. “Search Engine Optimization” (SEO) refers to steps in web site design to improve indexing and ranking by search engines. This post describes the quickest and easiest ways to ensure optimal search engine results.
Google and other search engines keep their algorithms secret. That said, it is well understood that search engines rely heavily on two factors: “keywords” and “links”. In order to improve search engine results, your site should pay attention to these two factors:
Keywords
Search engines index all words on a site, and match search terms against those words. Site designers should decide appropriate keywords for every page on a site (“keyword” can also refer to two and three-word combinations), and make sure that those keywords are included periodically on the page (although not excessively) and that they are included in prominent places, especially the page “title” (words at the very top of browser, taken from the page <title> tag), and in initial, prominent headlines on the page. It is fine to focus on several keywords per page. You can use this keyword generator to find suggested keyword combinations.
Links
Search engines place great importance on the number of sites linking to your site (which are treated as “votes”), and the quality of the web sites linking to your site (if those sites themselves have many sites linking to them, they carry more weight). You want many other sites to link to you, and you especially want the most important sites in your sector to link to you. There are two ways to get sites to link to you. First, you can ask the site manager directly, potentially even suggesting where on their site they might put a link. Asking for links is much easier if you are aggressively linking to other sites, either from a “related resources” page or from text throughout your site. Second, there are a number of important third party sites where you can place links directly — online community sites, blogs, wikipedia, events sites, and many others.
You can see which sites currently link to you via a Google search using the format “link:www.mysite.com”.
Other SEO Factors
- Site structure: Search engines like text. Search engines generally don’t like flash, images, frames, non-standard URLs, or non-standard html.
- Dynamism: Search engines take note of sites that are updated frequently and visit those sites more often.
- Instructions: You can include a robots.txt file to instruct search engines as to which parts of the site can and can’t be indexed.
- Notification: You can submit your URL on the Google Add URL Page. Google also has a richer “sitemaps” service which facilitates full and frequent site indexing.
- Consistent URLs: You should use only one URL for your site.
- Monitoring: It is important to periodically monitor key search services to make sure they are appropriately indexing and displaying your site.
Other Resources
* Search Engine Optimization: Wikipedia article
* SearchEngineWatch: Extensive resources and advice
* PageRank: Wikipedia article on the principal web site ranking algorithm used by Google
As newsrooms across the globe are shrinking, reporters are increasingly stretched to cover everything that is going on. While a lot of news outlets have made the decision to be more local-focused, they are still stretched and often fail to cover topics that matter to me. Today when I am looking for a restaurant recommendation I tend to read a friend’s blog (she is a chef and a true foodie). When I want to know the latest on my favorite sports teams back home I tend to check a fan’s blog (Let’s Go Buffalo Bills!) since he seems to have better inside scoop than the local newspaper. And if I want to know how the local political races are leaning, I log on to my favorite political junkie blog.
Outside.In totally gets the importance of blogs in providing valuable local content. The site, which is attracting a large number of investors and has just linked up with CNN to provide content for its website, creates a newsfeed for local communities, aggregating information from traditional media and the blogosphere. Outside.In currently has more than 4,000 bloggers covering more than 50,000 neighborhoods across the US (sadly nothing international yet).
The founder of Outside.In, Mark Jospheson, recently did an interview for Econsultancy’s blog. The most interesting comment he made was about how the local news market is now really an ecosystem. His point is that bloggers are no longer “outside” news sources, but instead are an integral part of the media market. If I were a journalist, this would make me nervous.
The Outside.In model seems like one that has great potential for growth worldwide. As more “writers” share their insights online, the quality of non-professional content has skyrocketed. I think this is especially in terms of local news and very specialized topics – like my friend’s cooking blog. Qatar Living does a solid job of sharing local information in a forum format, but there is certainly room for more in-depth insight from the blogosphere – if they are allowed to be open and honest.
