Read our Guest Blog by David Goldie of Mackerel Media
Early last year Tom Loosemore the Deputy Director at the Government’s Digital Service was asked the question:
“When will more people visit GOV.UK using a mobile or tablet than a PC?”
Tom responded:
“On Christmas Day 2014, if not before.”
In fact it actually happened far earlier than predicted, on the 12th of July 2014.
The shift to mobile has been happening at a fantastic rate, with some sectors already seeing the needle move to more than 50% of all searches, and traffic coming from a mobile device. What can you do to ensure that you feature in the mobile search results?
My talk at ETAG’s Tech Tuesday was aimed at helping businesses understand how they can help gain search traffic from mobile and capture more market share by having a strong mobile presence.
Armed with information from Google I explained:
- 67% of leisure travellers use a smartphone at some phase of the travel process
- 56% of travellers use their smartphone during their trip to decide what to do, where to eat, sleep… etc
- 83% of travellers have experienced a bad user experience on a mobile travel site, with only 23% of users pushing through when faced with this poor experience
I also covered that:
49% of all searches in the travel and tourism space are on a mobile device a Year On Year growth of 49% against a declining desktop space
The result is that:
- Mobile is happening now – the 50% will be passed this year
- It isn’t going away – The needle will never swing back the way
- Don’t be an ostrich – Address it now before the gap is so chasm-like that you will never bridge it
Once we discussed the various ways you can approach mobile visitors (Responsive being Google, Bing and my own preferred approach) we covered the 7 deadly sins of mobile SEO, and also for the businesses with a presence in the City we covered the top 10 positive and negative ranking factors in local search.
I really enjoyed speaking to the ETAG group, they are a passionate and inquisitive bunch! So much so that my next talk on the 24th of February; “Online travel portals, and how to compete with them” is completely booked out. Thanks for your feedback from the talk, and for your many questions throughout. See you on the 24th!