Esther C Kane

Why you should seriously begin considering adding a .mobi to your Internet campaign.

If you’ve been reading my newsletter, TheSEOLady for the last few months then you know that I’ve been talking and promoting that every website owner should have a .mobi website in addition to their regular .com or .net or .org websites.

Last week, in The Economist, there was an article titled The Meek Shall Inherit The Web. The article is about mobile web trends. To give you a summary, the article speaks of the growing number of mobile internet users in developing countries. In 2008, “…China overtook America as the country with the largest number of Internet users…”
The great majority of these users access the Internet via their mobile phones or other mobile units.

“…the number of mobile phones that can access the internet is growing at a phenomenal rate, especially in the developing world. In China, for example, over 73 million people, or 29% of all internet users in the country, use mobile phones to get online….China also has some 600 million mobile-phone subscribers.”

The numbers are so impressive that Google’s division in China is “…redesigning its products for a market where “most Chinese users who touch the mobile internet will have no PC at all.” Well, what can I tell you? If Google sees these mobile web trends as an important factor, who am I to argue? If I want my clients to survive on the Internet, one of the next steps in the Internet campaign process is to introduce their websites to the mobile web.

The article also stated, “It is not just China. Opera Software, a firm that makes web-browser software for mobile phones, reports rapid growth in mobile-web browsing in developing countries.”

Is your website mobile ready?

Maybe you’re saying to yourself, “It doesn’t matter to me, I’m not selling anything in China.” Well, the point is that USUALLY, the trend in technology or IT is that Europe and Asia begin the “new trends” and the rest of the world follows. So, in my humble opinion, it seems that it’s just a matter of time, maybe 2 -3 years, maybe less before mobile web in the USA is just as used or surpasses the use of Internet access via PC’s.

So, if you haven’t already begun the process of securing a .mobi domain name, do so or contact your web designer or SEO company to do it for you!
Then take the next step and develope a .mobi version of your website. Link to it from your regular website and you’re set. Ready for the mobile web!

If you have any thoughts about mobile web trends, let us know!