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After last year\u2019s SMX Advanced conference in Seattle, I wrote about how the pace of change seems to be accelerating in the search marketing space<\/u>. The evidence of that rate of change was certainly on display at this year\u2019s conference. The good news is that as marketers, the possibilities are nearly limitless. What\u2019s possible today for search marketers would have been unthinkable just a few short years ago. The bad news is more or less the same. With so many possibilities, come significant challenges, not the least of which is knowing where to start. Some of these changes and challenges are even redefining what search means. Let\u2019s take a look at a couple of the key themes from this year\u2019s conference.<\/p>\n
Mobile is Now Calling the Shots<\/strong> The mobile search stats being thrown around were quite dizzying. Jeremy Evans from Marin talked about seeing 34% of clicks across the board from mobile devices in 2013. Jaclyn Jordan from Wordstream talked about mobile CPC\u2019s being up 150%. But as Reid Spice from iCrossing pointed out, this presents some pretty serious challenges. The auction model on mobile is crowded, and with only two ads that matter on Google, that is pretty quickly pricing some folks out of traditional search spaces and into other channels, particularly in categories that have traditionally been very competitive. It\u2019s not surprising that Ad Age is reporting that mobile dollars are fragmenting significantly<\/a>, but what will this mean for the future of mobile search marketing<\/a>? How will the players like Google and Bing try to solve this problem?<\/p>\n Then there is the myriad of technical challenges that mobile poses to search marketers. Tracking users across devices continue to bewilder just about everyone. While there were some helpful tips and tricks on this issue, it\u2019s clear that no one really has it figured out. The same goes for creating mobile websites and landing pages. It was two years ago at SMX Advanced that Google\u2019s Matt Cutts announced that Google prefers responsive web design<\/a>, making it the de facto choice of SEOs. However, that technology is far from perfect or straightforward. As Cindy Crum from MobileMoxie pointed out, responsive design applications can result in very heavy code scenarios for mobile devices with large images and multiple server calls that can materially slow down page load times. We all know that’s very bad for SEO, particularly on mobile. There are ways to get at this by streamlining code and being clever, but the shine is no doubt coming off responsive design a bit, prompting more and more talk about dynamic (or adaptive) design options. The lack of clarity around this issue was underscored as Michael Martin from Covario and Jimmy Yu from BrightEdge presented seemingly directly contradicting stats on the SEO performance of responsive vs. dynamic design web content in back to back presentations.<\/p>\n What everyone seemed to be in agreement about, though, was that organic listing results differ significantly on the same searches between desktop and mobile devices, with Martin citing a 58% difference from their data. But Google (and now Bing) has forced desktop and mobile campaigns together, making it more difficult to craft discrete strategies for audiences that the organic algorithms clearly view as having very different intent and expectations. So, just to be clear, Google wants us to have one set of code (through responsive design) and one set of campaigns for audiences that it knows want very different things even when they use the same keywords. But, hey, no one said this stuff would be easy.<\/p>\n Predictive Search is Coming Fast<\/strong><\/p>\n \n Get exclusive insights into digital
\nThe talk track about mobile changed dramatically in the space of a year. No one is talking about mobile strategies as something you need to be thinking about. It\u2019s just assumed that mobile is a significant, even preeminent, part of your search program.<\/p>\n\n \n \n Stay Forward <\/h2>\n
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