What will become of traditional search marketing now that apps are dominating mobile activity? Are mobile SEO and SEM going to disappear? Not necessarily. Mobile apps may offer alternative and convenient ways for users to search, however, Sastry Rachakonda, CEO of digital marketing agency iQuanti, indicates that users need a lot of information to navigate through browsers.
Rachakonda says “will people stop searching because of mobile apps? I don’t think so because they need information. SEO and SEM will still be there, but what will change is how SEO and SEM are done. Mobile data gives you the opportunity to largely improve the quality of search. The more data, the better search outcome you can deliver.”
While Rachakonda and other industry experts do not believe that SEO and SEM will disappear soon, they note that mobile apps, such as Amazon, Uber and Yelp pose a significant threat to Google, the number one player in search.
Although Google’s search app reaches 50% of the U.S. mobile market, Rachakonda believes that Google must do more.He says that “Google built a search engine primarily for desktop, but now search behaviors have changed. They are not the same as someone going to a search bar on desktop. I think Google is aware of this change, as it has been making lots of mobile efforts like encouraging HTML5 and indexing apps. Google may have forward-thinking business plans, but it’s difficult for the company to completely transform its business model.”
