[Build Backlinks Online] Mobile Strategy for Small Businesses

Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'Mobile Strategy for Small
Businesses'

Posted by bridget.randolph
Note: This post is based on a presentation I recently gave at BrightonSEO. In
writing up the blog post, I've expanded on some of the points and included more
statistics. If you're interested in viewing the presentation slides, I've
embedded the deck at the end of the post.


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Mobile is huge.


I don't think any of us would dispute this, but in case you're not convinced,
here's a fun fact:


In 2012, the global Internet usage from mobile devices was 12x the amount of
data that was used for the entire internet in the year 2000.




A few more stats:

25% of UK consumers have made a purchase using their mobile device
69% of tablet owners make a purchase on their device every month
77% of smartphone users have researched a product or service on their phone,
with about half then purchasing the item in-store
and mobile accounts for 31% of site traffic on average in the UK

I think everyone can agree that businesses need to be mobile-friendly.

The problem

The problem is that people are doing it wrong. Even big brands are making very
basic mistakes. For example:


Forbes inflicts an interstitial pop-up ad every time someone visits its site
(although to be fair, they do this to desktop users as well, so they're just
doing it wrong all around).






The New York Times has a mobile site, but fails to automatically redirect its
mobile visitors, forcing you to opt in:






Starbucks took the trouble to design a beautiful responsive website, with
lovely big call-to-action buttons:




But when viewed on a smartphone, the CTA disappears below endless reviews
(which on the desktop version are collapsed on load):




Worse still, some companies haven't bothered to do anything. Including Apple.




In fact, only 70% of the top 20 UK retailers even have a mobile-friendly
website. And when it seems that even the biggest brands are struggling, how can
a small business compete?


Small businesses, unsurprisingly, are even less likely to have a
mobile-friendly web presence.


Only 60% of small businesses even have a website, and of those that do, only
half (so roughly 30% of all small businesses) are mobile-friendly.

Why so few?

Well, I believe there are two reasons:


1) They don't see the value.


But it's easy enough to show the value of mobile marketing and a
mobile-friendly web presence. You only have to look at the stats I mentioned
earlier, and many, many more which have similar messages. For instance, that 84%
of small businesses saw an increase in new business due to mobile marketing
efforts.


So the second reason seems more likely:


2) They do see the value, but they don't know where to start.


That's where I come in. In this post, I will cover the three main phases of
getting started with mobile:

Creating a mobile-friendly website (or making your existing site
mobile-friendly)
Search and discovery: making it easy for mobile users to find you
Reaching your customers where they are so they don't even need to be actively
looking

Let's get started.
Phase 1: mobile-friendly website

Your website is the most basic element of your online presence. It's where
your customers primarily interact with you. And so it's crucial to make it
accessible to all your visitors, not just desktop users.


Quick Stat: 61% of mobile users who land on a non-mobile-friendly site will
leave and go to a competitor's site.


There are three main approaches you can take to creating a mobile-friendly
website.

Responsive design: keeps a single URL, and all the content/HTML, and simply uses
different CSS to rearrange elements on a page to fit different screen sizes.
Dynamic serving (also known asadaptive design or RESS): keeps a single URL, but
serves different content (HTML) based on the visitor's user agent.
Separate mobile site (e.g.m.domain.comor www.domain.com/m): a completely
separate site, with different URLs.

None of these approaches is always the best, and your decision should be based
on three things: your goals, your technical capabilities, and your users' needs.


If you want more guidance on how to choose an approach, you can use the
flowchart I created with Kristina Kledzik for Distilled's best practice guide
Building Your Mobile-Friendly Website, or check out Aleyda Solis's post on State
of Search, and also her resources page.


Each business is different, and you need to carefully consider your options
when making this decision.


However, for a small business with a small website (and a small budget), I'd
usually recommend using a responsive template with a CMS like WordPress.


This doesn't have to break the bank; you can get all of these themes for under
$100:

Designfolio (from PressCoders): free, or $79 with support licence
Standard: $49 or $99 with support licence
Responsive (from CyberChimps): free

For more options, check out these premium WordPress theme providers:

Elegant Themes: ~$40/year with full support.
WooThemes: free-$70.

And if you don't want to use WordPress, check out:

SquareSpace: from $8/month(for the most basic service).
Wix: around $10/month.

If this still sounds too expensive, then start saving now; it is easily worth
this cost. In the meantime, if you do nothing else, make sure you have a
Facebook and Google+ page for your business, because they're mobile-friendly
already.




There's one final point to remember:


A mobile-friendly website is NOT a strategy. It's just a starting point. It
means you're ready for...

Phase 2: search and discovery

At this stage, you've got a mobile-friendly website, and you want to make sure
that people find it. There are three areas/tactics to focus on for this phase:

Mobile SEO
Local search
Social media
Mobile SEO

If you have a responsive design, mobile SEO is easy; you don't have to do
anything extra.


That's because the HTML stays the same regardless of what type of device is
used.


If you're using dynamic serving, you don't need to do too much; just make sure
you've set a Vary HTTP - User Agent header. This will indicate to Google that
you serve different content based on a visitor's user agent.


If you have a separate mobile site with different URLs to your desktop site,
it's a bit more involved (you're basically doing SEO for another site, as well
as indicating to Google that it'sa mobile version and not just duplicate
content). I wrote another post here on Moz all about how to optimize a separate
mobile site.

Local search

Once you've optimized your mobile site, it's time to think about other types
of search results.


If your business has a physical location and/or a location-based service area
(for example, a plumber who goes to customers' houses would have a 'service
area' which only covers a certain geographical radius), you should be thinking
about local search.




Local search is valuable for desktop results, and even more important on a
small mobile device because of the very limited screen real estate. You can see
highlighted in this screenshot how far below the fold the first non-local result
appears:




There are several factors for local search rankings, and I don't have space to
delve in too deeply here, but the rapid-fire overview is:

On-page optimization for location (using location-based keywords in your on-page
content)
Local business directory listings: Google+ Local is the big one here, but there
are several others, including Yahoo! Local, Bing Local, Yelp, Merchant Circle,
Angieâs List, Judyâs Book, and Kudzu
Note: Google+ Local isn't the same as Google+ (yet!): You should have a Google+
Local page and a Google+ profile page which you can then merge

Local link-building: seeking links from local sites (e.g. local news sites,
local government sites, local blogs, etc.)
"NAP" citations: like links for local SEO. NAP simply refers to anywhere on the
web where your business is mentioned with its Name, Address, and Phone Number.
The key with these is consistency; this signals that they all refer to the same
business.
Protip: use Whitespark's Local Citation Finder tool (from $20/month)

images: of your storefront/store interior and your products. By including these
images in your Google+ Local profile, they can show up in the Google Maps search
results.
Structured data:
Schema.org: /Place and /LocalBusiness
hCard markup
KML file for GoogleMaps

Social profiles:
Google+
Facebook

Reviews and recommendations: the most important here are Yelp and Google+
Local. Others include TripAdvisor, Yahoo! Local, Foursquare, and Zagat for
restaurants

For a great local SEO resource, check out David Mihm's report on Local Search
Ranking Factors 2013. He provides a lot more detail about the factors that go
into local rankings. I also wrote a post over on the Distilled blog about
optimizing for mobile-local search.


Does it work?


Case Study:


Coffee Corner, a coffee shop in Headcorn, UK, worked with agency Target Local
to implement a responsive site and local search optimization. Gareth Brown, the
agency's founder, said,


We managed to get them to the top of page 1 within 6 weeks, which took their
search traffic from 100 to just under 300 visitors per month. ...They're also
seeing visitors coming from their Yelp profile.


Now, 300 visitors/month may not sound like a lot...but effectively, their
monthly traffic tripled. That's a pretty good result!

Social media

Now, I've mentioned social media already, as a temporary stopgap for a mobile
website and as a factor for local search. But it's also a marketing channel in
its own right. And while it's not an exclusively mobile platform, 80% of people
who access Facebook daily do so on a mobile device. Twitter has a similar
percentage of daily mobile users.


So social media is a great way for mobile users to find and interact with you,
if you do it right.


First, remember: It's about conversation, not broadcast. A small business
doing this really well on Twitter is The Dolphin Pub.


Second, use the "dinner party test:" If you wouldn't say it to someone you met
at a dinner party, don't say it on social media.


Finally, if you're worried about not knowing what to say, you can make a
content plan and an editorial calendar for your social accounts, just like you
do for blogging (and you can promote your blog posts via social media!).


Now, all of those tips are just as useful for social media users on desktop as
for those on mobile, so here's a mobile-specific tip:


Make sure that the content you share via social media is mobile-friendly. If
four out of five people access it on a mobile device and it doesn't show up
properly, or crashes their browser, they probably won't share it. Make it look
amazing for mobile visitors!


So, now you've got a mobile-friendly website, and you've made it easy for
mobile users to find you.


Now what?


Now the fun part.

Phase 3: reaching your customers where they are

In this phase, you can reach out to your customers where they are, instead of
waiting for them to come to you.


I'm going to look now at a few ways you can bypass the search process
altogether:

Apps
Exclusive mobile content
Email marketing
Apps

Do you need an app? ...probably not. But:


if your business model relies on frequent return visits, it may be worth
investing in one. This is because an app sits on the home screen of a mobile
device, and therefore enables the user to access it directly without using
search engines or needing to type in a URL.


There are 2 types of app:

Native app (iOS, Android, etc)
Web app (HTML5 - effectively a website skinned to look like an app and be
accessible from the home screen)



As you can see, there are pros and cons to each. Generally speaking, a native
app provides a more tailored, faster experience but is more expensive both to
develop and to maintain. A web app is cheaper and easier to maintain, but also
less customized to the individual operating system and usually has little or no
support available via app stores.


An app is not for everyone, and it's also worth noting here that the Apple app
store currently has around 775,000 apps listed. So even with app store support,
it's hard to get noticed unless it's a really good product.


But if you think this is something that could work for your business model,
here are some fairly inexpensive tools and services to help you build an app:

Bizness Apps: from $59/month (native apps)
ViziApps: starts from 29/month (web app) or 99/month for (native app)
AppMakr: free native Android app (with ads), or for $9/month native iPhone and
Android apps (no ads).Premium option: $99 one-time fee for white-label version.

RedFoundry: contact for a quote

Apps can also come in handy for producing content,

Exclusive mobile content

This one's a bit tricky to describe, because really it could be anything. Be
creative with it!


Let's imagine a coffee shop that has a loyalty program with a stamp card: buy
nine coffees, get the 10th free.


They could create a loyalty app, offering people virtual "stamps" on their
mobiles, instead of needing to cart around a paper loyalty card. Then, when
people with the loyalty app were nearby, the coffee shop could use geotargeting
to send push notifications with a special offer: "We noticed you're nearby! Come
in for a coffee and get an extra stamp."


They could also provide exclusive offers more generally to their mobile
visitors; for example, "thanks for using our app! To say thank you, here's a
code for 20% off your next coffee."


A great real-world example of good exclusive mobile content is Chase Bank,
which allows mobile users to take a photo of a check with their smartphone and
deposit it into their account electronically. What's great about this example is
that it uses mobile device-specific functionalityâin this case, the camera
on a smartphone.


If you're not sure you need an app, there's also an easy hack for providing
exclusive content to mobile customers: Use check-in and coupon services like
Foursquare, Facebook, and Groupon.


Using the example of our coffee shop again: If they wanted to go this route
instead of creating an app, they could incentivize checking in with special
discounts and offers. "Check in at our coffee shop on Foursquare, and next time
we see you we'll give you 10% off your order!"


The added benefit of this approach is that it gives your business online
visibility and social proof, as opposed to an app, which is effectively a
"walled garden."


Bonus tip: This one's not strictly "mobile-only," but social media
competitions are another great way to reach a mobile audience since (as we've
seen) the majority of regular social network users access these networks via
mobile devices.

Email marketing

This one's pretty basic.


If you do email marketing, make sure you're using mobile-friendly email
templates.


79% of smartphone owners use their smartphone for reading email. This is a
higher percentage than those who use their phone to make phone calls. Stop and
think about that for a minute.


Your emails need to be mobile-friendly.


Here are a couple of fairly inexpensive email providers with mobile-friendly
templates:

MailChimp: from ~$10/month
Campaign Monitor: from $10/month or $5/campaign

If you don't want to use their full service, sign up anyway. You can use them
to build your email and then export the HTML to your preferred provider (of
course, if that provider already has mobile-friendly templates, so much the
better!).


Finally, a bonus tip: provide in-store wifi and you can collect customer data
such as email addresses, or (quick!) survey answers.


This isn't as intimidating to set up as it sounds.


MyPlaceConnect in the UK (mostly) and LessNetworks in the US are two providers
that I've come across who offer this service to small businesses.

Wrap up

Now, whether or not you decide to do ALL these things, there are a few
important things to remember:





Mobile is HUGE, and you need a mobile strategy.



So start with a mobile-friendly website, and build up from there. It's easier
than you think!


Here's the slide deck from the BrightonSEO presentation:






Do you own or work with a small business? Got any mobile tips, tactics, or
resources to add to the list?


I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments!
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