Tag Archives: Mobile Devices

What’s New for October 22, 2013 – Social Media Traffic, Mobile Engagement, Responsive Sites

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Study: Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest Send More Referral Traffic Than Google+

Shareaholic released an annual report highlighting social media traffic trends for the period from September 2012 through September 2013.

According to this study, Google+ has driven less than one-tenth of one percent (> 0.1%) of all referral traffic to its publishers over the past year. The top three referring sites over the past year were Facebook, with 8.11% of referrals; Pinterest’s was 3.24% and Twitter’s was 1.17% compared to Google+’s 0.06%.

Social Media Trends 2013

The study also measured the growth of the social media platforms as referral sources over the same period and found that Google + was at just 6.97 % compared to (58.81%), Pinterest (66.52 %), Twitter (54.12%) and YouTube (52.86%).

Study: Over 50% of Engagement on Facebook Posts from Mobile Devices

ShopIgniter did a study encompassing more than 2,000 posts with 2 billion impressions in the first 6 months of 2013. The study revealed that 51.4% of engagement on Facebook posts was from mobile devices and the average conversion rate from Facebook traffic was 4.4%.

The engagement rates of different post types was also tracked, and showed surprisingly high numbers for paid posts for photos (5.785%) and offers (4.186%). Unlike search engine users, Facebook users seem to not mind sponsored posts. The full report is available at ShopIgniter.

Facebook Engagement on Mobile

Google: Responsive Design Does Not Technically Give Your Site a Rankings Boost

Even though Google does officially recommend responsive as the approach to going mobile, John Mueller of Google states that having a responsive design doesn’t give you more of a ranking boost than using either of the other two accepted approaches to smartphone optimized sites.

The key however, is that Google does not favor non-mobile friendly smartphone sites in rankings.

Google’s John Mueller said:

“No. Google currently doesn’t differentiate sites like that.

You may see indirect effects (smartphone users liking your responsive site and recommending it to others), but we don’t use that as a ranking factor. We are starting to use common configuration errors to adjust the rankings in smartphone search results though.”

Bottom Line: Google might have taken a little bit of a hit on this week’s review, between backing off of its clear endorsement of Responsive Design, if only a little bit, and finding that the naysayers who have said all along that users are creating Google+ sites because Google makes them as part of Google Local Listings may be right. Facebook comes through with shining marks on sponsored information that does not seem to “put off” users and gives a very targeted, effective platform for advertisers.

Eric Van Cleave is a Partner in Zenergy Works, a Santa Rosa, California Online Marketing, SMO and SEO Company.

Mobile Search – SEO Update From Zenergy Works

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Our weekly SEO Blog Post and mobile search updates are designed to share online marketing news with our current SEO clients and the world. Enjoy, and please give us your feedback on any subjects you would like to know more about.

Duck Duck Go Hits A Search Milestone on Monday, eclipsing 2 million direct searches in a day for the first time in its history.

DuckDuckGo

In a testament to multi-media promotion, the increase in direct searches from 1.8 million on Sunday to 2.2 million most likely was a result of the Bloomberg TV appearance by DuckDuckGo founder and CEO, Gabriel Weinberg in a segment entitled,  “The Search Engine that Vows Not to Track You.” The current news about a tracking scandal involving the major search engines and their tracking policies no doubt had a role in fueling the increased search traffic. To keep this in perspective, Google fields over a billion direct searches per day.

Google States it Will Begin to penalize rankings in mobile search for Sites that do not have a good user experience in mobile search.

Google’s Yoshikiyo Kato and Pierre Far discussed the change in a blog post:

To improve the mobile search experience for smartphone users and address their pain points, we plan to roll out several ranking changes in the near future that address sites that are misconfigured for smartphone users.

The 2 main problems will be when a user is redirected to a mobile website instead of a page with mobile optimized content for the subject matter that they are requesting, and error messages and blank pages that smartphone searchers receive on some website pages that are not mobile optimized.

New Study from Kentico States that Shoppers still prefer the in person shopping experience.

The following is a quote from Kentico’s ongoing Digital Experience Research:

“Our survey suggests that while shoppers like the convenience of shopping online via mobile devices, they still want as much of an in-store experience as possible,” said Kentico CEO and Founder Petr Palas. “While it may be impossible for businesses to provide mobile shoppers with a 100 percent in-store experience, they need to make mobile shoppers ‘feel’ as if they’re truly in their stores, touching their products, talking to sales reps and being catered to.

Kentico’s study went on to outline the following findings:

  • 85 percent of smartphone owners use their mobile devices to comparison shop
  • 45 percent of smartphone comparison shoppers will do so from the store’s actual location
  • 74 percent of smartphone, tablet and laptop owners say buying on a mobile device is often determined by the mobile site’s look and feel

Bottom Line: The online world continues to send mixed signals, but one signal is clear from the Kentico study: 44 percent of mobile searchers will not return to a website that is not optimized for mobile. With mobile search continuing to grow, and Google beginning to penalize sites that do not provide a positive mobile search experience, the time is now to make sure that your site is optimized for mobile search, preferably by using responsive design, is now.

Eric Van Cleave is a Partner in Zenergy Works, A Santa Rosa, California based SEO, Website Design and Development, and Online Marketing Firm.

Search Using Mobile Devices Continues to Increase in 2012

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Neustar Localeze/15miles/comScore has just released its Local Search Study. The 2013 study has a sampling of more than 3,000 U.S. adults that use the internet to search for local businesses and was conducted from December 4-14, 2012.

The number of searchers searching with mobile devices, such as phones, increased 26% from March 2012 (90.1 million) to December 2012 (113.1 million). The use of Tablets increased 19% between April 2012 and December 2012. Desktop Computer searches decreased 6% between November 2011 and November 2012.

The study says there was an 18 percent decrease in local searches from Desktop Computers from 2011 to 2012. The study also shows that the internet is replacing print yellow pages as the primary source of information for local businesses. The study shows that just 19% rely on yellow pages, a number that’s down from 21% in 2012.

mobile devicesTo explain the categories in the chart above, Portal Sites include Google.com, Bing.com, and Yahoo.com. IYP Sites are predominately SuperPages.com, Yellowpages.com, and DexKnows.com. Local Search Sites are defined as Google Local/Maps, Bing Local, Citysearch, Yelp, MapQuest and others.

Bottom Line:  Most local businesses are seeing only 5-10% of their traffic coming from mobile devices, and tablets are typically around 40-50% of that number. Many base the decision to hold off on creating a mobile website or responsive design based on that small amount of web traffic. The study above shows that the trend is continuing to favor searches on mobile devices, and while the majority of searches are still done on Desktop Computers or Laptops, mobile search must be acknowledged as a growing source of web traffic. Factor a mobile site or responsive design into your budget, if not now, certainly in 2013/2014.

Eric Van Cleave is a Partner in Zenergy Works, A Santa Rosa California based Local SEO Services and Website Design Company and Development Firm.

Cyber Monday Sales Figures

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Here are comScore’s final Cyber-Weekend e-commerce sales projections. Cyber Monday online sales were at $1.46 billion. The projected total over the 4 day Thanksgiving weekend was $2.86 Billion. Cyber Monday qualified as the largest single e-commerce shopping day in history in terms of total dollars spent.

 Shopping carts full of wrapped presents

Cyber Monday, first named in 2005, is the Monday after Thanksgiving when internet shoppers supposedly have faster internet connections in the workplace to make Holiday purchases. According to comScore’s projections, half of the sales on Cyber Monday came from shoppers making purchases from home. While comScore did not project any numbers for sales made from mobile devices on Cyber Monday, other estimates range from 13% from IBM to 22% by Adobe.

Bottom Line:  Online sales are up year over year about 10% for the Thanksgiving weekend.   Online sales resulting from mobile devices was over $650 Million, using the most conservative estimates.   More data will come for the overall Holiday shopping period, but clearly, ecommerce, and the use of mobile devices to access ecommerce, are on the rise.

Eric Van Cleave is a Partner in Zenergy Works, A Santa Rosa, California based ecommerce website development, SEO, SMO and online marketing firm.

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