12 ways to promote your mobile web site

So as more and more people are building mobile sites the question arises - how to get people to use it?  On the PC web there's a fairly well developed range of approaches ranging from pay per click search marketing, SEO and viral marketing.  However, on mobile, a lot of the usual tactics don't work as well or need to be adapted.  Here is a list of 10 ways you can get visitors onto your mobile site:

1. Mobile Toplists

Toplists are basically directories of mobile sites where your position in the directory is determined by the number of "hits in" e.g. the number of visitors that you send to the toplist from your own site.  The trick is to pick toplists which have enough traffic to make it worthwhile to add a link from your own mobile site and send them traffic to boost your site up the rankings.  Mobile toplists are a fascinating area of the mobile web and one that deserves it's own post (watch this space).  However, for starters, a couple of toplists with good traffic are http://surfwap.com, http://igloo.mobi and http://waptrack.net.

2. Mobile SEO

Mobile SEO is a real movable feast at the moment with Google changing the way it ranks mobile sites quite a bit recently.  However, it's still possible to get traffic from organic mobile search if you know what to do.  Good general SEO practice is still valid (use of URLs, h1 tags and page titles) but there seem to be quite a few mobile tricks you can use.  Follow a specialist mobile SEO blog like mobileSEOnews or Bryson Meurnier to keep up. 

3. Mobile Directories

Since the early days of wap there have been directories of mobile sites which you can submit your site to.  Over the last couple of years a load more have sprung up, particularly with the launch of the dot mobi domain.  Mobile directories have different policies for getting listed, some are very hard to get onto (a bit like Dmoz on the PC web) whereas others will list anybody.  To check out a good list of some of these directories have a look at this post over on the Mobility.mobi forums. 

4. Mobile Site Builders

Mobile site builders are a bit like the myspace or wordpress of mobile where you can easily build a mobile internet site either as a personal or business project.  Often these site builders create a community around the different sites, allow users to search across this community and can also rank in the mobile search engines.  Some of the major site building services are Pepperonity, tagtag and there are also some others which are popular overseas like wen.ru   If you create sites using these services  you are likely to pick up some traffic which you can then direct through links to your main site.

5. Promote your mobile URL

If you have a mobile site make sure you promote the URL on your PC website if you have one and on other forms of communication that you put out, including business cards, emails and so on.  It's not just the main web address that you should be telling people about, also reference your mobile domain (e.g. m.domain.com, domain.mobi etc.  

6. Link Exchanges

There are tens of thousands of small mobile internet site owners out there who are desperate to exchange links with you.  Ok, so a lot of them will have hardly any traffic but in some cases they will be getting thousands of visitors a day, for example, many of the small sites offering Bollywood and Indian mp3 downloads and so on can get huge numbers of page views.  You can find potential link partners on directories and toplists like surfwap.com.   One issue when exchanging links is the placement - often a link exchange will start off with a good position on the home-page and then get moved back into the site, or even disappear.  A great way of managing link exchanges is to use the free mobile link tracking service offered by Bango analytics - this lets you check how many hits per day your link exchange partner is sending you, if they also do the same you can both optimize link placement to balance out the hits you are sending each other.  

7. Recycle Admob credits

If you host admob mobile ads on your site you can recycle your earnings into ads on the network.  At the time of writing admob are giving a 20% bonus on any credit you send back through the system over a $50 limit.  So if you recycle $100 you get $120 credit for ads on the network. 

8. Mobile paid search ads

Just like on the PC web you can now buy ads linked to search results on the mobile search engines like Yahoo and Google mobile.  There are a few issues with this at the moment - firstly there isn't anywhere near the same volume of mobile searches as on the PC so you are left with much lower click volumes on search terms.   Its also harder to reach "long tail" keywords as users typically enter a much smaller number of words for mobile searches.  However, it's probably worth getting to know the ins and outs and foibles of mobile paid search now and start experimenting as it is surely going to get more useful in the future, particularly as mobile affiliate schemes and m-commerce develop.  If you are running premium mobile services already, then mobile paid search can still be an economic way of getting traffic. 

9. Low cost ad networks

There are loads of mobile advertising networks you can use - some of them have very cheap prices if you are happy to get a small volume of clicks per day.  For example, try using Buzzcity which can give you some cheap clicks, even for high cost countries like the UK. 

10. SMS shortcodes

SMS shortcodes allow users to text a number and get a link to your site sent back to them.  This is probably still the most effective way to push people onto a mobile site from a standing start - people like Jamba who spend millions of dollars a year on TV advertising for mobile services still promote shortcodes on TV rather than a mobile web URL.  Not so long ago it was very expensive to get a shortcode setup and running.  These days you can get one very cheaply or free from places like itagg or textmates.   Once you have a short-code you can promote it on flyers, websites and other places.

11. Tell a Friend Functionality

On the PC web 'tell a friend' functionality that fires up an email with a link to your site is quite common.  The difficulty with mobile is that you are trying to reach people on their phone so email isn't ideal.  One solution is to set up a similar system with SMS instead of email to allow users to text the site link straight to their friends phone.  However, sites that have tried this have run into problem, for example Mippin found that users were sending SMS with a link and using the text space or even subject line as a way of sending free text messages!  One option is to encourage users to send the a link to the site to a friend by letting them know they can do this in their phone menu. 

12. Bookmark button

Once you have people on your mobile site it can be quite hard to keep them there - there is no URL bar on mobile so often people won't know how to come back.  One way around this is to really push users to bookmark the site once they are on it.  For example, Taptu have a prominent link on their pages which says "If you like us bookmark us" and then takes you to a page with instructions of how to set up a mobile bookmark. 

Right that's it for now - resisting the temptation to go for a Bakers Dozen/ Lucky Thirteen - shout in the comments or @mjelly on twitter if you have any other techniques or tricks that work - let's share the knowledge and help build the mobile web!

Comments

[Bryson Meunier]

Great list! Thanks for the mention on the mobile SEO front. Best, Bryson

[james (mjelly)]

thanks Bryson

[Simon (We Love Mobile)]

Great list James! I think you cover off the main techniques that we know of, however, some extras to consider:

1. It's worth getting your site registered on the mobile search engines, such as google and yahoo and some of the smaller ones. Most offer a site submission service.

2. Depending on your site portfolio, you might also want to make your site accessible and discoverable via a PC browser (and do some standard PC web SEO to gain traffic). You’ll get more hits and if people like the content, they may visit the site on their phone at a later stage

3. Create an SMS template on your phone with your URL and a short message at the bottom. Every time you send a text, you’ll include the link - get your friends and colleagues in on the act – it all helps!

4. Don’t forget web PR. Send your site URL to bloggers (like WAP review) and ask them to review it. You can also post it on relevant forums – for example why not look at welovemobile.mobi (re-launching next week) ;)

[james (mjelly)]

Hi Simon - very nice additions - i love the one about using an sms template.

thanks !

JC

[Sarah at Bango]

James,

What an exhaustive list. One thing our customers use a lot is the Bango Web Trigger which kind of overlaps between two items you outlined above.

It sends a link of your mobile site to a user's mobile once you've capture their phone number off a web page. Really simple and used by brands such as WWE who have integrated it into the purchase flow - http://www.wwe.com/shop/mobile/

Cheers!

[Sony AK]

Very nice tips, I will try some of that nice URLs :)

Regards,
Sony AK
http://m.mobitrek.com

[Bhavin]

Txmob.com is a mobile search engine that allows users to search for mobile content, games, ringtone and other mobile downloadables.

Txmob.com only displays the best results that are suitable for your mobile phone enabling you to discover the best of the Internet on your phone

[SEO Company India]

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