Jim yu

According to eMarketer, global mobile ad spend is expected to double from $100 billion in 2016 to nearly $200 billion in 2019 — accounting for over 70 percent of digital ad spend worldwide. This explosion in mobile ad spend mirrors the rapid growth of mobile, which has changed the game for advertisers and consumers alike. Mobile is now not just about the device; it’s a lifestyle. People are mobile, not just their devices. Customers are making decisions based on mobile content that serves the right purpose at the right moment. Content, therefore, needs to address user intent and be accessible everywhere — across multiple device types, multiple platforms and multiple channels. Mobile micro-moments More Google searches now take place on mobile devices than on desktop computers worldwide. Because of this massive shift in consumer behavior, marketers have had to recalibrate their mobile strategies. The key to mobile success lies in understanding this behavioral shift. … [Read more...] about The importance of micro-moments: The mobile customer journey

The Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) Project was created to improve the mobile web experience; pages built with AMP HTML load instantly on mobile devices, allowing publishers to quickly serve users in their moments of need. Though originally created with publishers in mind, AMP has begun to spread to other types of sites as well. At the end of June, eBay announced that they had enabled AMP on eight million of their pages (They were the first major non-news site to do so). It has been widely anticipated that AMP capabilities will spread beyond news publishers, and this was a major step in this direction. These developments mean that more brands need to pay attention. As AMP spreads, webmasters will need to optimize their content so that they can provide the desired high-speed responses to the micro-moments of their prospects. Keeping mobile strategy in line with customer expectations Customers expect pages to load quickly. Even as far back as 2009, Forrester found that around 40 percent … [Read more...] about Mobile marketing AMPlification: Content, performance and measurement

SEO is now a digital marketing activity used by 94 percent of marketers, and it’s estimated that companies will spend just over $65 billion on SEO in 2016. Yet despite the increasing usage of and growing investment in this digital marketing channel, measuring the ROI of SEO efforts can still present a considerable challenge for marketers. For brands to maximize the impact of SEO, they need to be able to communicate the value of their efforts and show their CMO just how well SEO is performing. It is only with this evangelism that digital marketing departments will be able to secure the resources, funding and attention they need to drive forward toward marketing maturity and revenue-based success. What do the CMO and the board want to know? For SEOs to communicate effectively, they need to consider their audience. CMOs do not want to see slides with information about the latest Google algorithm update or the steps being taken to avoid duplicate content penalties; instead, they want … [Read more...] about Communication and board room metrics that matter

From algorithmic changes to evolving consumer behavior, the SEO market is synonymous with change. Each year, marketers must revise their strategies as they keep up with the latest developments in best practices. Customer expectations are also changing, as they begin to seek more from brands online, including personalized experiences. Over the past two years alone, we have seen enormous changes. For example, the Mobile Update in April 2015 took the marketing world by storm. We have also seen the introduction of RankBrain, changes in ad placement on Google’s search engine results pages, as well as the introduction of accelerated mobile pages (AMP). There has been an increased emphasis on personalization and integrated, multi-channel marketing campaigns as well. In addition to these rapid and dramatic changes, marketers have also noticed how increasingly saturated the field has become. Approximately 88 percent of B2B marketers and 76 percent of B2C marketers say that they use … [Read more...] about 5 ways to scale your enterprise operation

As mobile usage increases and companies develop mobile-friendly sites to ensure the optimal user experience, developers are working hard to make the mobile web as efficient and useful as possible. Last year, developers at Google created Progressive Web Apps, an interactive experience that has features of both a website and a mobile app. During a session at Google I/O 2016, Alex Russell, a software engineer at Google leading the project, stated that Progressive Web Apps “blur the line between Web content and apps, but they keep the strengths of the Web.” Essentially, Progressive Web Apps allow for app-like user experience on a mobile browser. Users can interact with mobile web pages that have the look, feel and functionality of an app — including push notifications, offline accessibility, and the ability to add a shortcut to your device’s home screen — without having to visit an app store. And they don’t just work with Chrome, as other browsers are … [Read more...] about the mobile experience and SEO

As we begin 2017, the fusion of the search and content marketing disciplines has become increasingly more evident. A full 89 percent of B2B marketers (PDF) say that they use content marketing, as do 86 percent of B2C marketers, according to the Content Marketing Institute. Additionally, over 70 percent of marketers in both groups plan on producing more content in the new year than they did in 2016. However, content only has real value if it is found and optimized, and if it converts with effective search marketing. Search is the key driver that opens up opportunity in 2017 Research from BrightEdge (my company) found that 51 percent of traffic to websites comes from organic search. Additionally, another 10 percent comes from paid. This means that over 60 percent of the traffic on your site arrives from the search engine results pages (SERPs) alone. While organic search is the primary driver of website traffic, the role of ads cannot be overlooked. Google has recently been taking … [Read more...] about Seizing opportunity, evangelizing success, achieving overarching growth