Here are some articles written at the SMX event by our on site Editor Eric Chan
Mobile Coupons:
http://www.gomonews.com/g5-search-marketing-adds-mobile-coupons-to-local-marketing-platform/
Great Yahoo! insight:
http://www.gomonews.com/smx-local-and-mobile-yahoo-knows-local/
Yellow Pages and Local Search:
I am so excited! I have been working in Mobile Search since 2004 as an analyst and consultant. During that time my mind has been ticking with ambitious plans and ideas.
In April 2008, I put pen to paper and designed a technical masterpiece (even if I say so myself!). But I needed proof of concept. So I sent it to some key people at Mobile Search Engines in Sunnyvale and Seattle. I got the feedback I needed to realise my ideas.
I then started to seek funding for the venture in June 2008. I am delighted to announced that I have now partnered with Ireland's top technical powerhouses - The TSSG (www.tssg.org).
Basically, I had the idea and the marketing know how -but I didn't have the expertise to actually self-develop my ideas. The TSSG does and it will.
Something incredibly huge - made for Mobile Web and Mobile SEO will be launched. It can't be copied -but it can deliver the best optimisation for brands.
I can't say more than that just yet -but this blog will be used as a platform.
The new team is: Paul Savage CEO, Sinead Quealy COO, Niall Cusack CTO, myself as Founder, President and CMO and two more team members with two more members of the board to be unveiled soon.
Sinead and Niall will also be blogging here shortly.
The mobile web is blossoming but its fruit has been sour to taste. Why? Poor usability and devices have made brands cautious of moving to mobile. Technical advancements such as the iPhone and Nokia’s N95 are changing this – but there is still a lot to do.
Introducing Visibility Mobile
Visibility Mobile is a company which will fundamentally improve the usability of the mobile web. It will give brands better, more consistent visibility on the mobile web, transforming the end user experience. A groundbreaking new product will be launched under the GoMobileSEO.com banner at CTIA 2008 in September.
About Visibility Mobile
Visibility Mobile is a new Irish company that combines the competencies of the TSSG research group (www.tssg.org) in Waterford, Ireland with the mobile web expertise built up by Bena Roberts over the last fifteen years.
Bena Roberts President and CMO of the new venture is excited by the prospect of working closely with the TSSG. “Applying the expertise of the team in Waterford to the problems posed by mobile search and mobile search engine optimisation has produced amazing results” she states. “I can see this having a huge impact on the way that brands and their fans connect on the mobile”.
Paul Savage of the TSSG and CEO of Visibility Mobile said, “Pairing up Bena’s years of experience as an analyst and her work on Mobile SEO with the experience and knowledge depth at the TSSG has been very exciting. It will be great to unveil the results in San Francisco in September”
-Ends-
For further information, please contact Paul Savage at Visibility Mobile on +353 51 302923
We are delighted to announce that we are media partners with the SMX Local & Mobile event in San Francisco held on July 24-25.
The event looks really hot and key topics include:
• Targeting Locals in a Blended Search World
• Cracking the Code: Inside the Black Box of Local & Mobile Search Algorithms
• Local & Mobile Paid vs. Natural Options & Tradeoffs
• Blended Search in a Mobile World
• Neogeography: Opportunities in Mapvertising
• Managing a Local/Mobile Search Marketing Campaign
We even have a discount code: SMX10gomo
So anyone that wants to attend can save 10% on the existing price of USD 1195
Sign up here!
http://searchmarketingexpo.com/local/
Sorry this blog has been a bit slow - I am sitting on about 4 articles that I just need to finish and post.
I also realise that I am sitting on a few proposals for new business and your interest is very important to me (and I want it) -but my lack of strong response will all be explained soon.
But something HUGE is going on (read a few blogs below for a clue). More details the week around July 15 2008.
I got one of the first ever GetMobile (http://www.gomonews.getmobile.com) sites, earlier this year. I then ran a USD 200 dollar campaign promoting it. That was back in February. About six weeks ago I ran another campaign maybe USD 100 dollars. I didn’t notice much but suddenly, the gomonews.getmobile.com site is all over Google online.
It is moderately visible in the top 10 of mobile search engines. But, Google seems to absolutely love it.
I was surprised this week to find it coming out on top of results ahead of www.gomonews.com. I am trying a slow online SEO technique with GoMoNews.com. Basically, trying to avoid Google Alerts and fast placement on the top of the results. It usually takes about one week before my new articles get to or near the top of Google.
So this is where the transcoded or “juiced” mobile site comes in. I have a lot of RSS mobile sites that haven’t made it anywhere on Google online (only mobile search engines). Then, I saw a few press releases from Quattro Wireless (owner of GetMobile). They have a lot of very high quality brands on their network. The have juiced popular sites from GoMo to Playboy to TheInsider, Savvy.com, Fandango, Hollywood.com and MovieWeb.com
I suspect that it is the high quality of the sites that is making Google happy. All the sites are linked by the ad network that they are all part of. Also all the brand names seem to delivering a stronger brand presence. I found a couple of other sites that were juiced (Playboy) that were also ranking high. I suspect the whole online linking strategy is working with the juiced sites and optimisation is
So, it has taken nearly six months but the GetMobile site is loved by Google and beats the online GoMo News (in some circumstances) to the top of the page. With a Ready.mobi score of 4 - its really is optimised for mobile or online.
James Pearce from .mobi sent this to me today. I resisted printed it (thinking green) and read it over and over again. Its the latest research on Mobile SEO from dotmobi or what seems to be a new brand mobithinking.
http://mobithinking.com/best-practices/mobile-seo-best-practices
What did I think?
Yes. I agree with 90% of this. Well written - great resource (thank-you).
But.
So, now I have a secret. I have been developing a tool and working secretly with a senior executive at one of the world's largest mobile search engines.
What?
Well, I realised that I have been in Mobile SEO and Mobile Advertising since 2004 - only I never realised it. Only when I started optimising mobile sites did I realise a pattern.
Why?
Well basically, I think I am sitting on a hot potato that will make Mobile SEO (for want of a better word) cleaner. I can't tell you too much as I have now signed an NDA with a potential investor.
If I don't get funding then I will use this site as a benchmark for the concept. If I do - then get ready. supercharged mobile seo appearing at a mobile phone near you!
Plus
Everything that I create will be open source and I hope if I make it - that it is embraced by the likes of dotmobi and the W3C etc.
I had a very strange meeting with a mobile content company in London. I was very positive as the buzz about Mobile SEO seems to be starting.
But I was shocked when the company said, "we don't need Mobile SEO". I asked "why". He said, because we are on a mobile operator portal and that gets us traffic.
I said fine. I did a quick ready.mobi check and it came out as a very poor number 2.
Hmmmm.
No wonder operator portals have an inconsistent name.
Education seems to be necessary in Mobile SEO in the short term.
Anyone looking for exposure in Asia, India or outside of Europe and the US should use BuzzCity. Those that need EU or US exposure - BuzzCity is not quite there yet.
I ran a USD 20 ad campaign with BuzzCity. I got an impressive impression rate and steady click through rate -but despite having placed a hight PPC to target the US and Europe - I got virtually no eyeballs there.
So, I had to question the value of the mobile ad campaign as a business. If traffic is needed for Mobile SEO services (where mobile search engines track on popularity) BuzzCity is ideal.
Where sales are needed to drive a new business in the US or Europe - then BuzzCity should not be the first choice.
The screen shots below show some campaign results.
Above is a general overview of how the USD 20 was spent and where impressions vs clicks. I was extremely happy with these results as for such a small spend my click total of 942 was worth while. I remain to be amazed how cheaply this ad campaign was and am glad that the CTR is consistent and realistic.
The image above shows where my ad campaign got exposure. It was all in countries that I didn't want to target specifically. Once again this shows that global exposure is possible with BuzzCity.
So, I took a look at my mobi site where the traffic went and there was a considerable lift to tie in with the campaign. I didn't put enough money in to improve rank or have a knock on effect on the search engines -but with in the community where the mobi site is resident I noticed some activity. Traffic, drives traffic and curiosity. Which means that with a small spend the overall CTR was impacted in countries that were important to me as peers noticed that my site starting getting more traffic and wanted to see what it was and why that was important.
Once again more proof that social media plus Mobile SEO plus mobile advertising provides the most complete strategy available for mobile visibility.
Yesterday I deleted the original old feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/mobileseonews
The problem was that it wasn't working very well and then I created http://feeds.feedburner.com/mobileseo which is working. I replaced the newsletter as well.
We have 100 readers on the new feed but thee were 16 early adopers left on the original one. So - really sorry - but please upgrade using the subscriber to newsletter or subscribe to feed buttons on the left handside.
thanks bena
OK, we all know that mobile advertising works - but I am just going to re-inforce it. After having the worst month ever on GoMo News in March - I re-optimised the site in April. It was offline for a bit and then ran three campaigns in May - mixing online with mobile and testing a linking strategy.
I am not changing my mind to say that linking is vital for Mobile SEO - but for GoMo News - I did notice that pushing gomonews.mobi via gomonews.com and vice versa was very positive for the site. Organic hits and traffic kept on growing despite the fact that the value of the ad campaign (i.e. the price) reduced towards the end of the month - when traffic was at its highest.
Also I am amazed at the growth of http://gomonews.getmobile.com will schedule a call to find out more. I spoke to GetMobile earlier in the year and they said that they did have a mobile SEO agenda and perhaps it has started now.
I had to laugh as little old mobile advertising expert me -gets a phone call from Buzzcity's Malcolm from Singapore as I am setting up my ad campaign. He said, "Madam, I am afraid you forgot to add the URL - so I cannot accept your site".
I checked back and he was right. But what great service!
So - I paid USD 20 (the cheapest I have paid yet to set up as an advertiser) and created a mobile campaign for Mobile SEO News.
Setting up the as an advertiser is very simple. But instantly, I didn't like the fact that everything was ticked and controlled from he on set. I suppose for ease of us or to maximize Buzzcity revenue the PPC is set as is the placement on devices.
I have found in the past that some sites still using WML are running huge mobile ad campaigns of USD 10K and above and not realizing that the ads are all being served in Asia. The amount of times I have been asked why my site is viewed more in Asia than the UK is unbelievable.
But anyway - how was setting up as an advertiser on Buzzcity?
Well, it was cheap and fast and had a lot of value add thrown in. For example, landing pages and an opt-in survey. You can even instantly pay back users to complete the survey (they are rewarded in Gamma currency). I really liked that and thought that would be a great campaign winner for small brands or social networking sites looking to expand.
BuzzCity is a global network - but having a one price for all is not wise in this instance. It's best to have a lower PPC in countries that are not important or simply ignore them and set an average PPC for desired targets. Why? Because you don't mind paying more for the hits in the right location and a higher than average rate will make publishers more eager to accept you.
Buzzcity has a strong number of target channels. I ran one campaign for a mobile porn company using this route only and the results were impressive. But the quality of adult publishing sites is a bit dodgy. This means that campaign wasn't optimised for SEO results because if all the publishers are (how should I put this) on the lower end of the scale - the impact on the search engines and results didn't reflect the traffic that was being generated.
Does that make sense? Email me or call me if you want more!
All in all the set up was easy - I have set this campaign at a high rate so that we can see the results quickly. I know that BuzzCity is like an AdMob and burning 1000 dollars on the network in 30 minutes is done quickly. So, I will report back with some early results before running a longer more thought out campaign.
More on setting up a landing page and results this week.
Nice blog from mjelly mobile ringtone site we are going to optimise the mobile site for them.
You can read it here: http://blog.mjelly.com/2008/06/mobile-seo.html
Also we have some very exciting mobile advertising news coming up shortly! More from MoJiva and Medio this week.
Adshandy offers mobile advertising solutions globally. It's a German company and has quite a strong local brand name.
I tested it yesterday as a publisher and I started to set up as an advertiser - but I didn't finish the set up.
The publisher set-up was simple and the videos really help. But before the screen shots -first the concerns. There was zero optimisation for mobile keywords or optimisation for the ads. The set up is incredibly simple but this was a pure mobile advertising solution.
Again, what I am finding regularly is that mobile advertising providers are failing to take advantage of easy to implement tools and services. I know, I am using and running mobile advertising daily - so I am in a different position to many - but advertisers are shooting themselves in the foot and Adshandy is no exemption.
I want to optimise campaigns for clients and not just to set up an account simply.
But, back to the solution - setting up with Adshandy is simple. The home page once details are given is clean and simple.
Germany is a lot more relaxed than other companies with adverts and adult adverts. But what I found is that there is little or no education. I wanted to know where the ads were coming from what type of adult content and what is the difference between non-erotic and erotic. There needs to be more explanation and also some insight in to porn, erotic, nudity, risque.
I think it was MKhoj that also used blacklisted URL's which is just a bore. Keywords would be optimal here.
I also found the ad placement offer from Adshandy strange. With this service already clicked users don't have much choice on to which ads are placed or the CPM.
My problem is that its so easy - its a bit too easy. There was a lot of help (videos and FAQ) but they don't really help. They look good - but little else.
I found the same with setting up as an advertiser - so to be fair - I will wait a while to go back and try again - incase there are some updates in the pipeline.
Maybe I am judging harshly -but I am looking at everything now as a way of getting a better ROI or the best CTR for clients.
I found the set up as a publisher for Buzzcity Mobile advertising services interesting but not very structured.
Signing up as a publisher is like being a child in a sweet shop. There are several options, packs, pre-made tools and services that users can choose from. This makes it fun and you click around a lot, but it also makes it messy.
Although, after only a few hours of playing around on BuzzCity - I can see why traffic to the mobile social network is huge. All publishers get a free mobile page, instantly. On top of that there is an online ethic of "linking". Be it widgets, your blog name or your mobile site - users are encouraged to add links and create pages and get widgets - for the promise of an no brainer revenue share.
To set up as a publisher I used the new Mobile SEO winksite (www.winksite.com/benar/mobileseo)
So part one of the set up was simple, you log in to www.buzzcity.com and click publisher.
I didn't like this section as you had to decide if you wanted to serve display or text ads and classify the site very early on - without knowing the rest of the options available.
But what I did like in the next screen shot is the very clear "Default Ads". What this is, is that the default ads will go to the "myGamma Exchange" which will increase traffic to your site. So after I set my adverts to general and saved this - I went to find out what the Gamma Exchange was.
I didn't have to look to hard as the next section automatically leads you to the Exchange services. These are simply WAP pages automatically created for you to be put on myGamma for traffic driving and link building.
One is generic and one is personalised.
I quickly set the tabs to what was interesting to me and then I created a GoMo News & Strategy link to the site. I was advised to drive more traffic to my site by adding a reciprocal link from the Winksite back to this site - which I did very quickly.
I also added BuzzCity as a publisher with my new ID on the Winksite mobile site as well and shortly I expect to see some ads. I have already received several to approve.
But what is very apparent is the push on linking and link exchange from BuzzCity. I question whether this is a real Mobile SEO strategy -but it seems as though BuzzCity is growing by offering this service as traffic generation is vital for advertisers. The more MyGamma pages and the more cross links on each page the more traffic.
With a little bit more structure this could be very good. But uptake or success in the mobile search engines might also have an impact on the quality of the mobile site. If the traffic is coming from a low end personal MyGamma page it might not win in the "weight" or "worthiness" part of mobile search.
There is also room for improvement on selecting mobile adverts. Its nice and easy but its not clean and fresh or personal.
I am not going to make any strong judgments on this until I have signed up as a publisher - that is next.
This workshop will teach you the basics of mobile advertising. It will teach you the terminology surrounding mobile advertising and give you the ability to initiate a mobile advertising campaign.
The workshop is ideal for anyone involved in mobile advertising or marketing. The class will be interactive and ensure that any participants get the depth of understanding necessary to either discuss, master or undertake mobile advertising campaigns.
Lesson Plan
Introduction to Mobile Advertising (30 minutes)
Questions Addressed: What is Mobile Advertising? Why is it important? Why is it different to traditional Advertising?
What is the difference between Mobile Search, Mobile Advertising and Mobile Marketing?
Comprehensive Assessment of Mobile Advertising (30 -45 minutes)
Questions Addressed: So we know what it is – but how do we do it?
This is the most vital lesson of the day. It will teach individuals the basics of mobile advertising. From what is mobile ad inventory or PPC, CPM, CPC etc. But most importantly we will focus on keywords essential for successfully running a mobile campaign. These included contextual advertising, search advertising, targeted advertising, personalisation, recommendation and SMS marketing.
Interactive lesson (1.5 hours)
Note: Each student will need a mobile phone and a laptop for the interactive lesson.
We will all create a mobile advertising campaign.
We can use a real mobile site and real networks and step by step optimise the campaign in the most efficient and effective way.
Before this – we will look at case studies of big brands such as JumpTap, Google and Decktrade or Yahoo! in order to try and learn as we work. This should ensure that by the end of the lesson everyone will be confident about mobile advertising, mobile advertising terminology and the way in which mobile advertising functions.
Working Break or Working Lunch
Mobile SEO Workshop (1.5 – 2 hours)
This section is about the Mobile Internet. It will empower users to create and optimise mobile sites simply, easily and quickly.
Questions Answered 30 minutes
What is the Mobile Internet? Why is it different to online? What is a mobi site and which mobile search engines are there?
Why is the mobile Internet different and what are quick and easy ways to optimise it? Who are the players and what is the difference between a transcoded site to a mobi site?
Participation Workshop
This participation workshop will demonstrate specific ways to create mobile websites and then optimise them. It will ensure that anyone is confident in creating several mobile sites effectively indexing them and getting them onto Mobile Search engines.
We will address mobile keywords, meta tags and optimisation techniques, alt tags and the differences between mobile web sites at the moment.
Who Should Attend?
Anyone interested in Mobile Advertising from brands, professionals, start-ups, communication companies and PR agencies interested in social media optimisation.
If you are only interested in Mobile SEO we recommend you come to our unique Mobile SEO seminar - where we show you how top optimise sites, index, insert meta-tags etc.
Where will this take place?
June 17th London Victoria
How much will it cost?
Half Day Mobile SEO only GBP 295
Full Day GBP 595
Why Us?
We have been involved in Mobile Search and Advertising since 2004. We have run and managed several mobile advertising campaigns and consulted to mobile search companies or Web sites looking for a Mobile SEO solution.
We believe in learning via doing. Our workshops are interactive and based on structured lesson plans and real examples.
Well, so far its not bad on the Mo'Jiva new advertising network.
After a week - on one campaign (with zero personalisation) I have managed a 0.03% click through rate.
The number of impressions has amazed me 904903 (that was more than AdMob - in the three trials I did with AdMob last year). So I have only spent about USD 6 and over the weekend I am going to go in an re-tweek the adverts by setting times for pushing and channels.
Will draw some conclusions at the end.
I have been a huge fan of Medio Mobile Search for a long time. I love the work on T-Zones and also the T-Mobile ODP in the US is great.
So, I feel guilty not having the same thing to say about the Mobile Advertising part of the business. OK. Medio is playing catch-up in mobile advertising; but I feel the problem with MobileNow is the actually user interface of the set up page.
I took a look at this in December and decided to wait a while to allow for some changes and improvements -but very little has occured.
Well - hold on. That is not fair, there are a couple of good points.
Setting up as a publisher is quick, simple and very easy. It took only two minutes to set up as a publisher -but Medio seems to have a strick policy on which sites it accepts. Out of 3 only one of mine was accepted.
But when you set up an advertising campaign the interface is simply terrible. There is no help and you will have to be a professional to set the right payment terms for your campaign. I don't know any nice way to put this but the + that you have to click to open up the mobile advertising campaign has to go.
On top of that guidelines, help and more information can help the set up from the early stages. With a little bit of guidance (average cost, average ppc etc) users would have a better understanding of how to manage the campaign. This would drive the uptake of this as well. Looking at my Wapple site which serves Medio ads there is still an inventory issue as only 65% - 80% ads are served. OK, I know I haven't made it easy as I have set up the publishing site for two Medio adverts on the home page - so that might be an issue. Decktrade also seems to have the same issue and only the AdMob advert gets a constant 100% fill rate.
This is my least favourite page in the setting up (below). Compared with modern mobile advertising campaigns I would recommend that Medio complete eradicate this UI and start again. Also - a lot of the features and services are already ticked as "yes" which is annoying.
But it should be the service and the CTR not the UI that is important so I am about to run a USD 50 campaign and will report back.
I have had several calls recently about our workshops. The one most requested is on Mobile SEO and Mobile Advertising. So I thought I might find out about anyone interested in attending a class on How to effectively implement a mobile advertising campaign? This will be followed by a tutorial on Mobile Meta tags, mobile site efficiency and three simple steps for immediate Mobile SEO.
I am planning two half day classes (one after the other) in London in June. Anyone interested please email me (benagomo@gmail.com)
Winksite is a mobile Internet site online creator. In a number of minutes, users can create, optimise add advertising to and launch their own mobile site space.
At first, I thought Winksite was nothing new. Mobisitegalore, Zinadoo, Wapple all offer this service and I have successfully managed and created mobile sites with all of them.
When, I accessed Winksite I expected a similar interface to the other site makers. I didn't get it. What I got was a rich mobile site creation tool that made me create not one but two mobile site in a matter of minutes.
They can be found here: http://winksite.mobi/benar/gomo and http://winksite.mobi/benar/mobileseo
For the first site (gomo) I just used standard Winksite features. I changed the background and added a picture to the Mobile SEO site. This occurred with great ease and simplicity.
Then I found some features; which surprised me. There was a Mobile SEO button AND a Mobile Advertising button. I immediately thought, this must be how Winksite makes its money. By either pimping the mobile sites with its own adverts and generating revenue.
But I was wrong. To my surprise there was a note saying, "100% your revenue". Well, I nearly fell off my chair. This is the first example I have seen of this from from a free mobile site creator be it www.getmobile.com or www.zinadoo.com
So I checked it out. The screen grab below shows how easy it is. You can CHOOSE self-service from Winkiste or add your ID for several mobile advertisers. This was the most impressive choice of global mobile advertising companies that I had seen in one place. Buzz City was already on there - which I thought was great for the company as it is fighting very hard to become a leader not a newbie in the US market.
Then the actual interface for mobile advert placement is even simpler. I am about to set this up with mkhoj, admob etc. But first I am going to get a Buzzcity account as I have been eager to test these services outside of the mygamma marketplace. The examples of the ID from each provider is a must. This simplifies life for the heavy mobile campaign users.
On several occasions when I implement three different campaigns on the same day - I always spend ages double checking the ad-codes for the companies. Seeing what the code should look like makes a huge difference and makes sure that silly mistakes aren't made. (More from this and screen shots when all the adverts are in place).
The advertising looked good - so then I decided to look for some Mobile SEO tools. This was slightly harder to find, but is available in the Edit page section. I was eager to see how Winksite managed SEO services. I realised that mobile site map creation was automatic - which is great. The use interface is also a no brainer. See below:
What we think?
I have to say, I am impressed. I will be using this a lot more often and the more advertisers included the better. Stay tuned as I will be purchasing a new dotmobi domain to transfer this one to and lets see if there are any transcoding problems or issues this time and I will also follow up on the successful integration and revenue generation from the mobile advertising campaigns.
So, I started to optimise gomonews.mobi after comments from find.mobi and Wapple. The results have started to kick in after 24 hours.
I did some major changes yesterday and today my ready.mobi score has increase to 4. I haven't added a mobile sitemap haven't finished tweaking the site yet.
New RSS feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/MobileSeo
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