Mobile Search is the Next Big Thing
Everything you can do on your PC you will be able to do on your phone. When I say this I don’t mean it to sound like something that is going to happen in ten years because it’s already happening to some extent, and has already happened for techies that have already adopted the newest mobile technologies. For most of us though a mobile phone is just a phone. We might text with it, we might take an occasional picture with it, and maybe we even check sports scores and stocks; but it hasn’t really reached the level of our PCs yet. But it will.
As more people use their cellular phones to search the Internet it will become more important to make sure your business is ready. Mobile phones will do everything a PC can do but will do it differently. If someone searches for KFC on a PC they might be looking for nutritional facts, coupons, or company history. If they are looking for KFC on their mobile then they probably want to know where the closest restaurant is located.
To make sure your business is ready for the mobile Internet revolution there are a few things you can do now to make sure you are ready.
1. Get listed in Google’s Local Business Center. It’s free for a basic listing and you can provide directions, hours, a phone number, and other information someone looking for you would need. This will get you listed on Google Maps, another feature that is sure to be huge in the Mobile Internet world.
2. Get a free listing in YellowPages.com. YellowPages.com has over 35 million visits a month and this number will continue to rise. It is also a top Web site for users looking for local businesses. Go to Yellowpages.com and click on the advertise link at the top right of the page. Yellow Pages hope that you will be so impressed with the free results that you’ll add a paid listing.
3. Look for other local sites to market to geographically like local search engines, social networking sites, city information sites, and SEM (pay per click) opportunities for geo-targeting.
There is still a battle over a standard interface for mobile search, but once the standard is defined it will give mobile Internet use a giant boost. Mobile search is going to be the biggest thing since the World Wide Web exploded in the 1990s. As phones become more interactive and cheaper we will start to see the average citizen adopt and appreciate the value of mobile Internet search.