Brands and retailers need to revamp their mobile search engine marketing and optimization practices for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and ensure that their mobile Web sites are prepared to handle the resulting spikes in traffic.

As the upcoming holiday season approaches retailers should design SEM campaigns around Black Friday and Cyber Monday and then ensure they do not lose any sales to poor mobile Web performance on the landing page. 

?Black Friday and Cyber Monday represent the few days of the year when most retailers have the most to gain ? or lose,? said Matt Poepsel, vice president of performance strategies at Gomez Inc., Lexington, MA.

SEM to drive site traffic
Mobile SEM refers to management of paid advertisements that show up on the right side of the page when Web users do a Google or Bing search. On mobile devices, the results appear above the natural listings.

Companies agree to pay a per-click price for these placements, bidding on ?keywords? in an auction process.

Each time a customer clicks on one of these ads, the advertiser has to pay Google, Bing or another search engine the agreed-upon per-click price set in the auction.

For holiday SEM campaigns specifically focused on driving Black Friday or Cyber Monday sales, retailers should use the same best practices they would normally use for driving mobile search traffic, according to Bon Mercado, a mobile product specialist at Google Inc., Mountain View, CA.

?Expand your keywords to make sure you cover all products that you are selling on your site,? Mr. Mercado said. ?Add holiday ?buzz? keywords to creatives and search queries such as ?best price,? ?free shipping,? ?sale,? ?reviews,? ?deals,? ?coupons,? 'Black Friday? or ?Cyber Monday.?

?Put the price in the creative,? he said. ?Add a sense of urgency by adding text such as 'Black Friday deal only,' 'today only' or ?for a limited time.'?

SEO to drive site traffic
Adam Whippy, SEO director at 360i, New York, said optimizing for mobile, regardless of the markup language, still centers around the core tactics one applies to traditional HTML Web sites.

Core optimization techniques such as title tag creation, proper use of Meta tags, sufficient keyword density in copy, the proper use of HTML page headings, and link development remain vital for greater natural search visibility.

?Retailers should look to build speedy, seamless experiences whether on mobile or desktop devices,? Mr. Whippy said. ?Technologies such as HTML5 and CSS3 provide the means to serve these audiences from a single Web site, and can offer the means to optimize loading times for mobile devices.?

Searching for local information such as business locations and directions is one of the most popular mobile activities, per Mr. Whippy.

Local directory submissions are important for brands to maintain accurate listings within map applications such as Google Maps.

Because mobile naturally aligns with a searcher?s location using GPS, more emphasis should be placed on geotargeted landing page development and customization.

?Google?s ?Caffeine? update has allowed it to crawl Web sites with increasing frequency,? Mr Whippy said. ?Retailers should consider building in promotional Black Friday/Cyber Monday messaging into their core landing page Meta descriptions.

?These would offer a way to differentiate themselves against competition in natural search results, and capitalize on Google?s increasingly nimble updating regimen,? he said.

Traffic is up. Can you handle it?
Retailers need to prepare their mobile sites for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. They need to ensure their mobile commerce sites and landing pages have the ability to handle the spikes in hits.

Driving people to a mobile-commerce enabled site that is experiencing long load times due to a surge in traffic is a set up for failure.

Marci Troutman, founder/CEO of Siteminis, Atlanta, recommends that retailers integrate their mobile Web offerings with current online marketing strategies.

?Let consumers know about the mobile Web site,? Ms. Troutman said. ?With the mobile Web quickly becoming the place to shop, search and find deals, retailers will be missing the large percentage of their customers that want to shop, research, find and browse their stores from the mobile Web. 

?Retailers need to realize that their customers are no longer sitting and browsing the Web as much as they used to, with the rapid growth of smartphones and feature phones having access to the mobile Web, and the amount of retailers that are realizing the need to have their sites mobile friendly, not just app friendly, customers are looking for their favorite retailers to be on mobile,? she said.

?They could lose customers several ways.?

For example, ad campaigns that do not have a click-through, and are built in HTML imagery that is not transferrable to the mobile email or Web can cause a retailer to lose a customer.

Additionally, marketing efforts with an email click-through getting lost in an abyss can be very frustrating to consumers as well, per Ms. Troutman. 

Mobile Web optimization is different from online Web optimization because of screen size, OS platform fragmentation, consumer dwell time and the carrier bandwidth difference.

Gomez?s Mr. Poepsel suggests that retailers measure the speed and reliability of their mobile Web sites to prepare for Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Measuring early will enable retailers to identify customer segments where performance is slow and take proactive measures to ensure that mobile Web site performance will be as fast and reliable as it can be when the holiday season arrives. 

?Retailers need to identify their key customer segments and optimize their mobile sites for these customers,? Mr. Poepsel said. ?Optimizing your site means making sure that site content loads quickly and renders properly on the screens of the most popular devices used by your customers. 

?For example, retailers should not be overly concerned with optimizing their site for the latest iPhone device if their customers are still primarily using BlackBerrys or Sidekicks,? he said.  

When it comes to loading content quickly, not only do retailers need to gauge the mobile Web experience from the true user perspective, but they can also benefit from leveraging new industry benchmarks that rank the mobile Web performance of major retailers across four major platforms, per Mr. Poepsel.

Industry benchmarks help retailers see if their mobile site is competitive or if it lags behind major competitors, placing both revenues and brand at risk. 

Because these are updated regularly, benchmarks can also provide a basis for measuring progress in mobile Web performance over time. 

Santa?s biggest helper
?It?s been said that the mobile phone is emerging as ?Santa?s biggest helper? ? and it?s true,? Mr. Poepsel said.

Last year, one in five shoppers said they intended to use their mobile phones to shop during the 2009 holiday season, according to Deloitte. 

Today, there are more smartphones than desktop PCs being sold ? and the use of mobile phones for holiday shopping is expected to rise again this season. 

Mobile phones offer retailers an excellent opportunity to influence customers? buying decisions in action ? while they are actually perusing a store aisle and want to do a real-time price comparison for the same product in a competitive store. 

Additionally, retailers will be ramping up their SEM and SEO efforts for the holidays, driving even more traffic to their mobile Web sites.

This means if a brand's mobile site is slow, it may lose the critical chance to connect with a customer and lure them away from a competitor?s physical store.

?Recent studies have shown that when given a choice, most mobile Web users rank speed as more important than functionality,? Mr. Poepsel said. ?So, in many cases optimizing a mobile Web site may mean ?lightening? certain mobile Web pages in order to preserve speed. 

?Remember, most mobile Web users are hungry for anything that makes their life a bit easier, especially during the holidays,? he said. ?So speed and proper rendering on mobile Web devices is absolutely essential.?

Q&A
Giselle Tsirulnik interviewed Laura Frizzell, vice president of media services at digital agency 360i, New York, regarding mobile SEO, SEM and how retailers should prepare their sites for an increase in traffic during the holidays.

Here is what she said:

What are some SEM best practices for driving people to your mobile Web site for Black Friday and Cyber Monday?
Separate out mobile campaigns by adjusting the settings within each interface so that the mobile campaigns target only mobile devices and the other campaigns only target desktops. This will allow you to better control bids and budgets. 

Since there are fewer ads per page, bids are typically higher but click-through rates are stronger. 

Therefore, it is important to make sure that bids are aggressive enough to show up.

Create specific mobile campaigns around key dates ? Black Friday and Cyber Monday. 

Long-tail terms are not recommended since people do not type long queries on their mobile devices.  

Make sure your mobile investments and budgets are in line with increased mobile search queries.

What are some SEM best practices for Cyber Monday and Black Friday-related search campaigns?
Make sure that you have dedicated landing pages for the holiday season. Create mobile ad copy for the holidays. Broaden keyword selections for the holidays as well.

Beyond driving traffic via Web, look to drive users into stores through local hyper-targeted ads that have offers and maps.

If doing click to call, make sure it is hyper-local to show the nearest location with a corresponding local number.

Additionally, leverage mobile search coupons to drive more traffic and potential in-store visits.

What should retailers be doing to prepare their mobile sites for Black Friday and Cyber Monday?
Sites need to be accessible for all platforms - Apple, Android and RIM.

Although it is not the perfect solution yet, developing your site in HTML 5 should help decrease the time and cost of developing across devices and ensure users of smartphones can access your site without issue.

Load time will be crucial so your servers better be prepared to handle increased amounts of traffic. 

Are there any best practices you have to share for retailers optimizing their mobile Web performance for this time of the year?
Make sure that the landing page reflects what is in the ad as quality score can be impacted.

What are some of the risks that retailers face if their Web site performance is not optimized for Black Friday and Cyber Monday?
Poor user experience can result in abandonment of the shopping or engagement process and can lead to lower conversion rates.

Final take
Giselle Tsirulnik is senior editor of Mobile Marketer
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