The Power of Mobile (& The Importance of An Apology)

If you're one of those people who has been unconvinced about the power of mobile as it pertains to the future of marketing and communication, last week's Apple Maps apology from Tim Cook should be all you need to make you a believer.

Even though a little more than half of the U.S. population owns a smartphone, Cook's apology for the underwhelming app shows that mobile devices are a key component in our daily lives. We spend approximately two hours on our phone each day according to a study from O2, and the marketplace is competitive.  Phones utilizing the Android operating system (48%) currently outnumber Apple's iOS (32%), and Samsung recently launched the below commercial to tout the superiority of the Galaxy S III compared to the iPhone.

Cook recognizes the simple truth that customers have options, and Apple can't afford not to meet customer satisfaction. In an analysis of Cook's apology, a USA Today article observes:

All of this suggests Apple is moving quickly to compete with Google on the latest and greatest features. But it also raises questions about the purveyor of premium devices as it ages. 

Steve Jobs brought Apple from a niche company with a cult following to a mainstream giant with a new role, says Vivek Wadhwa, a fellow at Stanford University. "With this come many responsibilities-like listening to customers and taking responsibility for their satisfaction. This is exactly what Cook is doing."

Smartphone usage/ownership will only continue to grow in the coming years, and I imagine that two of the factors that will drive this surge will include cheaper access to devices through contract renewals and phone upgrades and diversified data plans to reduce cost. As a result, mobile devices will play an increasingly important role in communicating with consumers. It was noted in my internent and interactive marketing class, the mobile delivers on the promise of the right message, to the right person and at the right time. Executives like Tim Cook know this, just as Steve Jobs did before him [Jobs apologized multiple times for a variety of reasons]. Isn't it time we all recognize the current and potential power of mobile?

My SEO Experiment with the iPhone 5

In case you missed it (and I'm sure you didn't), this week’s biggest tech news was undoubtedly Apple’s announcement of the iPhone 5, and with Week 2 of MKT 595 focused on SEO, I decided to conduct my own SEO experiment to answer the question—what do search results look like for the term “iPhone 5?”

Using search.yahoo.com and google.com to conduct my search, the top organic search results in both instances appeared as follows:

As you'll notice, CNET is #2 on Yahoo! and #1 on Google (following the News Results) with Apple.com nowhere insight other than paid search. In fact, Apple.com does not appear on Page 1 organically until below the scroll. And while I certainly don’t know all of the ins and outs of why Apple.com is so low while CNET is so high, I do have two ideas based on this week’s readings and materials. 

For starters, the file name for CNET’s webpage is cnet.com/iphone-5; this is in stark contrast to apple.com’s URL—apple.com/iPhone. And entering the following URLs—apple.com/iPhone5, apple.com/iPhone-5 and apple.com/iPhone_5—all take users to a “Page Not Found” page instead of being redirected to its iPhone page. In my opinion, the lack of the redirects is a huge missed opportunity by Apple.

The second factor that may be contributing to the search results can be found “under the hood” in the coding of each site. While the title and description of apple.com/iphone and cnet.com/iphone-5 both include the word “iPhone 5,” Apple’s website shows no sign of keywords. Meanwhile, CNET’s code appears as follows: <meta name="keywords" content="Apple iPhone 5, Apple iPhone 5 review, Apple iPhone 5 reviews, Smartphones reviews, Smartphones"/>. In fact, the word itself (iPhone 5) is used more than 50 times on the page containing CNET’s review of the device—with plenty of links to other CNET content—and only 20 times on Apple’s website. Given CNET’s prominence within the technology community (as evidenced by the number of comments and social media shares for their iPhone 5 review page) and the number of times iPhone 5 is used, it’s no doubt that it ranks so highly.  

Now, I'm sure there are other factors impacting these search results, and I’m not suggesting that Apple—or its marketing agencies—don’t have a firm handle on their digital presence. Apple's brand is so strong that it doesn't need to be the top result on the page to  sell the iPhone 5. As we know, pre-orders sold out in an hour. Instead, this search test shows the importance of SEO during a product launch. If you're making headlines as a new company or a company who doesn't have Apple's brand recognition, it's important to make sure you have SEO tactics in place to make sure your website ranks towards the top of the page in order to drive traffic to your website.