|
|
The SEO's Guide to Building a Great Mobile Site |
The SEO's Guide to Building a Great Mobile Site Posted: 21 Jul 2013 07:34 PM PDT Posted by Kristina Kledzik If you're a regular reader of the Moz blog, chances are you've heard about the importance of investing in mobile. You've already formed an opinion on whether or not you'd like your employers/clients to build a responsive site or keep a separate mobile site, and you've started hinting that great mobile sites are worth the investment. The problem is, how can you make that happen? In my experience as an SEO consultant, in order to effect change, you have to:
Using that framework, in order to get a mobile site built, you have to explain the necessity of creating a solid mobile site, investigate the options of responsive versus separate mobile sites (or a combination of the two), and guide the build and implementation of the mobile site. This is your guide to making that happen. Why you need to invest in mobileMobile isn't a small amount of internet traffic anymore:
Source: http://www.slideshare.net/kleinerperkins/kpcb-internet-trends-2013 Mobile internet usage has grown dramatically in the past few years, and as cell phones and data plans get cheaper, mobile visitors will become more crucial to online success. It's easy for site owners to push aside the 10% of visits that were coming from mobile last year, but what about the end of 2013, when 20% of internet traffic is projected to be mobile? (Also, do you notice how there's a spike in mobile internet usage every year in December? Aim for a November roll out of your new mobile site to make sure that it's up and ready for the influx of mobile visitors you'll get after the 25th. Bonus points for devising a mobile-specific marketing strategy in early January.) All right, so a lot of people are using their phone to go online. But how does that translate into conversions? For ecommerceThere has been a lot of discussion about mobile conversions, mostly because:
According to Google, 35% of mobile visitors in 2012 have made a purchase on a smartphone. Keep in mind that only two thirds of all internet users have made online purchases, meaning that mobile visitors are really only about half as likely to make a purchase as a desktop visitor (and these stats back that up). And by "half," I mean that-glass-is-half-full: mobile visitors are half as likely to buy online as desktop users already, and as the web becomes more mobile-friendly and people get more used to relying on their phones for purchases, that number is only going to increase. For offline companiesWhat if you're working for a company that doesn't sell its products online? That almost makes mobile more important. 70% of shoppers used a mobile phone while shopping during the 2012 holiday season, and 62% of those shoppers looked at the store's site or app. Giving visitors a great user experience can actually increase offline sales. If you're working for an offline retailer, consider building a site that will aid in-store sales, offering things like coupons, reviews of in store items, and more product details. For informational sitesLast, many companies that provide articles and content rather than products think that visitors wouldn't want to spend the time reading their long form content on a mobile device, assuming that mobile visitors only read sites "on the go." But The New York Times put the effort into creating great mobile sites, and now one third of its traffic is coming from mobile devices. Mobile visitors will be able to read your content sitting on the bus, riding up elevators, and waiting in store lines. Convinced yet?If not, look through the masses of statistics on Karen McGrane's State of the Mobile Web - Sources post and find what speaks to your situation/site. There's just too much information out there for some of it not to be pertinent to you. Once you've put together an epic presentation on the importance of a mobile site and convinced the right people, they're going to need some guidance planning the new mobile site. Too many optionsChoosing how to build your mobile site can be confusing and stressful, mostly because there are so many different options. You could build a separate site, with separate URLs. You could build a separate site that is served in place of the main site when a mobile visitor tries to access the page. You could build a separate site that is a (smaller) mirror image of the main site, or you could build a mobile site that is completely different. Or, of course, you could build a responsive site. The reason there are so many options, and therefore too many choices, is that you're trying to answer two very separate questions with one answer:
ContentThere are really only two ways you can build your mobile site: Either it has the same content as your main site, or it has different content. Before you worry about the technology, or what exactly it will look like, you have to decide what your goals are for the mobile site. Are they the same as your primary site, or are you focusing on different conversions? Or (and this is an acceptable answer), are you considering building/improving your mobile site because the statistics at the beginning of this post freaked you out? The key here is to figure out if visitors' goals on the main site should be the same on the mobile version of the site. This is partially determined by what you, as the business, want your visitors to do, and partially by what they actually want to do. You should determine your business goals internally, but use your web analytics to see what mobile visitors are doing on your current site. If you and your customers want the same things from the mobile site that you do from the primary site, you probably want to build a mobile site with content that's identical to your primary site, unless you have the time and desire to regularly modify the mobile version. For example, SEOs who want to tweak their mobile sites so that they target slightly different search engine queries and browsing behaviors will want to build a mobile site that can be independently modified. TechnologyNow that you've decided what content you want on your site, you can start to look at how to make that come to life. ResponsiveIf you decided that you want to build a mobile site that has identical (or near-identical) content to the main site, you may want to consider building a responsive site. Some of the pros of a responsive design are:
Resistance to responsive sites"Building a responsive site would take too long/cost too much, because it would involve rebuilding the main site as well." To save money or spread the costs out over time, you can either build a separate mobile site, roll out the responsive site slowly, or do a combination of both. To "roll out the responsive site," identify the pages on your site with the most traffic, and make them responsive, doing as much as you can in increments until the entire site is responsive. A benefit of this is that you'll get feedback from customers as little chunks of the site become responsive, meaning that the problems won't affect the entire site. If you decide to just build a separate but identical site, use the same URLs for your mobile sites, but have your servers deliver the mobile version of the site to mobile devices (this is called dynamic serving). That way, you can start working on rolling out responsive design later and don't have to deal with broken URLs. "The content on my site takes too long to load on a mobile device." There are a few different types of content, so I have a few answers to this:
Separate mobile sitesIf, on the other hand, you've decided to create different content for your mobile visitors, you'll want to go with a separate site. Pros of separate sites are:
Resistance to separate sites
The only real resistance to separate sites is the idea that responsive sites are better. The cool thing is, building an awesome separate mobile site does not mean that you've passed by the opportunity for responsive, if that becomes the big thing. Mobile First, by Luke Wroblewski, theorizes that building a responsive site from a mobile site is actually easier, and in the end, lays a better foundation for a great responsive site. Make it happenI'm not a designer or a developer. If you are both, congratulations, you're awesome. Go read Responsive Web Design to build your new responsive site, or just start writing some HTML for your new mobile site. If you're an internet marketer like me, check out the guide that Bridget Randolph and I wrote on designing, helping with development, and tracking mobile sites: http://www.distilled.net/training/mobile-seo-guide/ Good luck!Getting a great mobile site built is still an uphill battle, but it's definitely worth it. For those of you that have built great mobile sites already, anything to add? For those of you that haven't, any questions I didn't cover? Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read! |
You are subscribed to email updates from Moz Blog To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 |
When you look people in the eye, you own the results. You're not wearing a mask, you can't easily leave town, this is your store, your house, your car, your place at the front of the classroom. When you can look people in the eye, you're doing something a million years old.
When our ancestors moved around exclusively on foot, it was unlikely that they ever traveled more than a few dozen miles from home. People were wary of strangers, and that was okay, because there weren't many. Reputation was truly a matter of life and death.
On the shiny, perfect, digital landscape of CGI movies and the internet, it's different. No one really died in the Matrix movies. The comics came to life (for a while, anyway). We don't mourn for the make-believe actors demolished by make-believe machines. Because it's not real. And on the internet, it's so easy to perceive that customer or that partner or that icon as the 'other', certainly not someone we need to look in the eye. We can leave a trail of wreckage without much thought, especially if we're anonymous.
So, when the conversation gets tough, we stop checking back on it. When we want to hide behind an alias or the asynchronous nature of email, we do. We check out.
Worse, when we want to deceive or lash out, it's easy to do. Hey, there's always someone else we can start over with, relationships and even reputations are disposable. We don't have to look you in the eye, it's dark in here, and we're wearing a mask.
Our experiment in fake has some really significant consequences. It turns strangers into actors on a screen, and sometimes we help them, but often, we become inured to their reality, and treat them with a callousness and indifference we'd never use in our village.
One philosophy is caveat emptor. Assume the worst. Assume you will be ignored or ripped off or disappointed. Your mileage may vary.
Another is carpe diem. Seize the moment to connect, to keep promises and most of all, to figure out how to look people in the eye or not promise you will.
Do we really need to add another layer of fake?
[You're getting this note because you subscribed to Seth Godin's blog.]
Don't want to get this email anymore? Click the link below to unsubscribe.
Your requested content delivery powered by FeedBlitz, LLC, 9 Thoreau Way, Sudbury, MA 01776, USA. +1.978.776.9498 |
Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis |
Idiocy vs. Common Sense in Detroit; Judge Rules Bankruptcy Invalid; What's Next? Posted: 21 Jul 2013 11:22 AM PDT On Friday, a Michigan Circuit Judge Rosemarie Aquilina ruled Detroit bankruptcy is unconstitutional. On Friday, a circuit court judge in Ingham County ruled that Detroit's federal bankruptcy filing violated a part of Michigan's constitution that protects union pensions. She ordered it withdrawn, a day after Detroit became the largest U.S. city in history to file for chapter nine bankruptcy.Idiocy The whole point of bankruptcy court is to resolve debt issues that cannot be paid. It is impossible for Detroit to meet its pension obligations and the only way to resolve the issue is in bankruptcy court. Common Sense In a common sense position, Michigan Governor Says Detroit's Bondholders Part of Bankruptcy Governor Rick Snyder of Michigan said today that the bondholders of the city of Detroit should expect to be "part of the process" of the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. historyIn contrast to the idiotic circuit court ruling, the statements by governor Snyder represent a fresh breath of common sense. 1. Bondholders knowingly took risks so they must take a haircut. 2. The funded assets of the pension plan cannot be touched 3. Bankruptcy court will resolve the unfunded portion What's not to like about that? And in regards to point number three, I would hope the burden falls on the highest pension beneficiaries (most likely city officials, police, firefighters) but also taking into account length of service, rather than something like 50% haircuts across the board. What's Next? I expect the circuit court ruling will be overturned with prejudice, the pension plans will take a huge haircut, boldholders will take some haircut, and the overall fairness of the final decision as to how pension haircuts will be applied is up in the air. Many other cities will follow Detroit's lead. Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific. |
You are subscribed to email updates from Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 |
| |||
If you run a media company (and you do--you publish regularly on all sorts of social media, don't you?) then it's worth two minutes to consider some basic groundrules, listed here for you to embrace or reject:
[You're getting this note because you subscribed to Seth Godin's blog.]
Don't want to get this email anymore? Click the link below to unsubscribe.
Your requested content delivery powered by FeedBlitz, LLC, 9 Thoreau Way, Sudbury, MA 01776, USA. +1.978.776.9498 |
Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis |
Drones are a Major U.S. Export and they Perpetuate War Posted: 20 Jul 2013 06:10 PM PDT Tired of perpetual war? So am I but US drone policy ensures perpetual war is her to stay. Blatant military waste is here to stay as well, and the all but useless F-35 project is a prime example. Those are my opinions, but they also the opinions of guest writer Robert Taylor. What follows is a well-stated guest-post courtesy of Robert Taylor and PolicyMic. I dispense with my normal indented block-quote style for this post. Drones Are Becoming a Major U.S. Export, and They Kill Democracy in Every Nation They're Shipped To President Obama's drone warfare policy is thankfully finally being discussed in the mainstream media. While the president's claimed authority to suspend the Fifth Amendment and order assassinations with no judicial oversight, even on American soil, is a disturbing outrage, the sale and spread of drone technology by the U.S. around the world also deserves attention. According to the Los Angeles Times, the United Arab Emirates plans to purchase $179 million worth of drones from General Atomics. The purchase still needs approval from Congress and it is yet unclear whether they will buy surveillance drones or if it will also include the weaponized Reaper drones. What is clear, however, is that this development highlights the continuing growth of the influence of defense contractors, the spread of weapons that help governments tyrannize their citizens, and the dangers of America's permanent warfare state that has made the military-industrial-complex perhaps the most pervasive aspect of American society. In President Dwight Eisenhower's famous farewell address, he warned the public about the threats that a large armaments industry posed to democratic process, constitutional liberties, and peace. Since then, the U.S. economy has been largely dominated by the perpetuation and exportation of weapons technology and a state of virtual perpetual war all over the globe. Fifty years later, the U.S. is by far the world's largest weapons dealer in the world and spends more money on "defense" than nearly the rest of the world combined. All around the world, many of the most cruel and vicious states receive their means of maintaining their iron fists from the U.S. government. American tanks and tear gas help quell protests in Bahrain, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia and all throughout the Middle East. U.S. fighter jets are a staple of many militaries in countries where a large majority of their populations live in unbelievable poverty. The cluster bombs used to flatten southern Lebanon and the white phosphorous mercilessly dropped on the Gaza Strip by Israel might as well be draped in the stars and stripes. Even the much-maligned Iranian government received nuclear technology from the CIA. It is only natural and predictable that the U.S. government's latest militarized technology is beginning to be exported. The problem stems from America's foolish embrace of a foreign policy based on empire and global dominance, perpetual war, and the corporatist economics of "defense contractors." The Pentagon's new F-35 program is the perfect example. While DC politicians play politics over a "sequester," the F-35 project will cost $1.5 trillion yet has performed so poorly in recent tests that the Pentagon has simply lowered the standards. It is big, bulky, and would be great against the Imperial Japanese Air Force, but it is completely useless in a world where enemies are increasingly stateless, decentralized and fighting fourth-generation warfare. Over-promising and under-delivering are staples of Pentagon contractors. The reason that these programs are so popular in Washington is simple corporatism and politics. As even Lockheed-Martin notes, the F-35 would provide over 100,000 jobs in 47 states, spread out to hit nearly every congressional district. The incentive for perpetuating these monstrosities is enormous. Unfortunately, the F-35 program is the rule not the exception. The bipartisan ideology of an interventionist foreign policy dominates DC, and weapons contractors spend millions lobbying for more weapons sales and wars that bring billions in returns; a self-licking ice cream cone of rent-seeking corporations and political power. The military-industrial-complex is the perfect example of Frederic Bastiat's "broken window fallacy" and the problems with government intervention into the economy. What is seen are the engineering wonders of massive military hardware and millions of jobs hitched to the Pentagon and its contractors. What is unseen, however, is the wealth that could've been created serving people's actual wants and needs in the free marketplace that was instead forcibly extracted from the people by the state and handed out to politically-favored corporations. For example, 85%-90% of large military contractors' profits come from government contracts. Each U.S. household pays over $1,000 per year in taxes to pay for the military-industrial-complex. The "shock and awe" 2003 carpet bombing of Baghdad might as well have been a Lockheed promotional video. While the defenders of this military Keynesianism claim that this policy helps create inventions and technologies, there is actually very little useful spillover into the private sector. If people really wanted this national security state and weaponry, they wouldn't need to be forced to pay for it. Unfortunately, from my libertarian perspective, it is very easy to highlight the horrors that unchecked state power unleashes but, very difficult to come up with answers and solutions. We can't un-invent drone technology, nuclear weapons and stealth fighters. But taking Lockheed-Martin, Northrop Grumman and General Atomics off of welfare would be a good start. What we can do is make it loud and clear as frequently as possible that we are sick and tired of a policy of empire, perpetual war, and corporatism that allows this system to exist. Our liberties, prosperity and peace depend upon it. End Taylor I don't know about you, but I sick and tired of a policy of empire, perpetual war, and corporatism. I also agree with Taylor that "taking Lockheed-Martin, Northrop Grumman and General Atomics off of welfare would be a good start". If you are a supporter of drones, the F-35 program, or US defense policies in general, hopefully the guest post by Taylor changes your mind. Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific. |
You are subscribed to email updates from Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 |
Facebook Twitter | More Ways to Engage