Tips To Detect & Fix Mobile Search Leaks, Improve Your CTR

Hi Everybody,
Mobile marketers love the data Google announced recently at the “Think Mobile” event. First, they shared that one in seven queries (15%) now happen on smartphones — up from 10% six months ago. Second (and not quite so lovely), 80% of brands they surveyed admit to being unprepared to do mobile business (not a surprise, but it still spells o-p-p-o-r-t-u-n-i-t-y).

In interviews leading up to the event, Google also dropped this gem: Content and ads optimized for mobile see 11.5% higher click-through (CTR). This data-point helps Google sell mobile search ads, but it also acts as an objective benchmark marketers can use to complete their mobile ROI equations and figure how much they are missing.

1. First, Audit Your Mobile Click-stream

2. How To Detect Mobile Leakage

Whether you have mobile content or are planning, technology needs to put in place to successfully detect and direct smartphone visitors to the right content.

Here are a few ways you can detect, quantify, and begin to correct this problem, or at least limit its impact :

1. Set up a status code report that lists all mobile page requests resulting in a 301, 302, or 404 code. This can be overwhelming on a large site. Setup alerts to notify you if volume exceeds a certain threshold and deserves attention.

2. Log and parse referring URLs by keyword markets and referrer type to determine where mobile sniffer leaks are impacting the most, and to prioritize remedies and actions – whether that means shoring up logic holes, or hard coding new rules for critical campaigns.

3. Add proactive page intelligence. In a prior article, I discussed a mobile issue encountered at Zappos.