Is your website optimized for mobile devices? Even though the latest service providers and phones, like the iPhone, the G1, and the BlackBerry Storm, can handle large amounts of data, images, and even special features like JavaScript and Flash, there are an entirely different set of concerns for mobile devices, and this audience is becoming hard to ignore.

Why should you care?

• The mobile marketplace is still young. Now is the time to get ahead of your competition. Mobile users tend to navigate away from websites that are difficult to use and will go to the competition.
• Mobile web searches shows a desire to take immediate action. That means that your mobile customers are much more valuable. You should not be losing them due to lack of usability.
• You may be sending out emails to people who will be opening your website on their phone. What do you want it to look like?
• The share of your customers searching for your services or viewing your website from their phones is only going to increase in the near future. Currently, 75% of all mobile search is done on iPhones, which only have a 10% market share. This disproportion is likely to correct itself as other phones catch up with the iPhone.

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Last week we attended Search Engine Strategies New York, the online marketing conference and expo, and one theme that kept coming up in various contexts was the concept of real value. Different industries talk about it different way: in economics it’s “utility”, in customer relations it’s “satisfaction”, but the idea is the same: businesses and consumers alike are paying more attention to each dollar that they spend and how it benefits them.

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One of the things that I kept hearing over and over again at SES New York, was that if you are running a social media marketing campaign and it’s not working, just stop it and do something else. If you have a corporate blog and it’s not getting you any attention, start over. If your Facebook page has 10 members, all of whom are part of your extended family, shut down that page. There is no use in sinking time and effort into social media activity that is not delivering results for your company.

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Hi everyone,

Alhan and I just got back to the office after three days at the Search Engine Strategies New York Conference and Expo. We’ll be writing more about the takeaways from that experience a little later. But first I wanted to point out something I noticed this morning:

One technique to avoid unwanted clicks and the charges associated with them is to write ad copy which will “filter” unqualified users by discouraging them from clicking. Above, on our own AdWords creative, we use the filter “$5K+”, which gives users a clue about the level of our services.

Another New York firm, Avatar, has been doing the same thing (“$20,000 and up”), but now they’ve added a second filter on the same ad: “Currently NOT Hiring”.

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