Positions:

SEO Check (£1.19)

This one is simple but effective. Check your positions, nothing more. It gives you the possibility of tracking international SERPs and keeps a history record of your positions, which may be quite useful. It has a nice interface too.

SEO Search Ranking (£1.19)

This one is not as nice as Seo Check, but it does the job. Nothing new here, move on.

Analysis:

SEO Adviser (£1.19)

This app will check the basic optimisation elements and obstacles depending on the keywords you tell him to check. And I don’t really like the UI. But it does the job.

SEO Automatic (£5.99)

Another analysis app. Very simple and intuitive, in fact, a bit too simple for my taste. If you don’t want to spend £6 on this, there is a free Lite version.

SEO IT (£1.79)

Quite a clunky app that will analyse any page you introduce. It can give you a quick link report, which is nice. And it is quite useful to analyse content. However, I was really put off by the interface of this app.

Analytics:

Analytics App (£3.49)

Google Analytics in your iPhone. As simple as that. It has a beautiful interface and you can easily change dates and add several accounts. Recommended.

BAM Analytics (Free)

Similar to Analytics App, BAM Analytics is Google Analytics in your phone. With a slightly uglier and simpler interface, it easily lets you drill down to goal conversions. A good free alternative.

SEO Stats (Free)

A very basic app that will tell you things like Age of the page, pages indexed, links reported by Google & Yahoo, and some other stats.

News:

SEO Post (Free)

Although it looks like a german app (in fact, it is), it also has a RSS feed in English. It pulls the most recent blog posts from the usual suspects. As a nice feature, it also plays Matt Cutts’ videos from the GWT Youtube Account. This app is not amazing, but it can do if you have some spare time on the train…

Other:

The Art of SEO (£2.99)

iPhone version of the book written by Eric Enge, Stephan Spencer, Rand Fishkin, and Jessie C. Stricchiola. It may be a bit uncomfortable to read, but it is cheaper than the book.

That’s all from me. Please note that there are more apps out there, but I just don’t think they are good enough to be in this list. In fact, some of the above do not deserve to be in this list either. There is a need for SEO apps for iPhone, so if you are a developer, now it is the time to get your hands dirty!

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SEO Apps for the iPhone

This map shows the popularity of different mobile browsing platforms country by country, with some interesting results.

Apple’s dominance can clearly be seen, with the iPhone and iTouch accounting for over half the market in the US, Canada, UK, France, Germany and Japan.

The Android platform has its largest share in the US and the UK, but has a much weaker share in other countries. This could change in the near future as new phones emerge that run Android, such as the Nexus One.

Docomo and KDDI are the largest mobile phone operators in Japan, and account for 12% of the mobile browser share platforms.

Canada seems to like the iPhone and iTouch, with 86% of mobile internet users using this platform to access the internet.

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Mobile browser market share map

60 million iPhone apps downloaded? Wow that must be representing a lot…

…of free ones. So how are those free apps monitised? Well, in a way there’s no suprise here; through advertising.

The advertising formats which are used on Apple’s smartphone are quite familiar to what we know and several ad network/platforms are already available:

• Text and rich media banners
• Microsites
• CPM, CPC and CPA advertising

That sounds interesting…but how does it work?

Usually, app ads are clickable banner, which either link to an iPhone-optimised microsite.

Example

Of course, as with traditional formats, analytics solutions are available for more insights (Impression, CTR, revenue etc…).

How lucrative can iPhone apps ads be?

According to a report from the mobile advertising company AdWhirl, iPhone apps can make between $400 and $5,000 a day on ads. However those figures only concern the top 100 (out of 100, 000 remember?) and the success story of developer Steve Demeter is rather rare. Therefore most of free iPhone apps don’t make money.

The future?

Apps advertising is still fairly recent and some trials have shown to be quite fruitless.

However yesterday’s acquisition only confirms the fantastic monetisation opportunity of this new format.

And as Gartner sees Google’s Android being 2^nd (ahead the iPhone) in terms of Smartphone OS market share in 2012, this move was indeed indubitably logical.

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Apps advertising: the new holy grail?

The Keynote led by Phillip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing, gave announcements of any specification upgrades to their Macbook and Macbook Pro notebook range, discussed the eagerly awaited new operating system – Snow Leopard which will be launched in September, the new iPhone 3.0 OS software update and of course the focus of the event this year, the launch of the new iPhone 3GS – ‘ the fastest, most powerful iPhone yet’

The iPhone 3GS – (S stands for speed) has been speculated and rumoured on many of the reputable blogging and news sites that follow what Apple is working on. This time they were almost spot on with their predictions which is very good news for us iPhone users because of the very exciting new features it represents.

iPhone 3GS Features:

Improved Performance

The main selling factor of the iPhone 3GS is its improved performance. The time it takes to launch applications, WebPages and email attachments is noticeably up to 2 times faster. That and with its updated 3D graphics should improve its user experience considerably and will obviously boost Apple’s marketing as a gaming device through the downloading of applications through their app store.

3MP autofocus camera

The Camera has been tuned up, now 3 megapixels to make it more competitive with other phones available on the market. iPhone users have been keen to see an improvement due to reviews of the iPhone camera in the past being sluggish with a poor ability to adjust white balance or focus. The new camera now has an autofocus with a built in feature that allows you to tap the display to focus on anything, auto white balance and a macro setting for photographing close up.

Video recording

The video recording option is another key feature of the new iPhone. You can toggle between the camera and video option, shoot footage at a rate of 30 frames per second, edit what you have recorded and share this.

Voice Control

Voice commands have always been in the background for Apple. It is built into their operating system but it’s the first time it has been incorporated into an iPhone. It will give the user the option of voice activated calls, as well as select songs from your iTunes playlists; you can even request it to play songs like the one you are listening to and automatically creates a genius playlist. Obviously this is fantastic for the app developers out there because they can make best use of this function and incorporate it into their own applications.

Digital compass

The digital compass is something that any Google map fanatic has been waiting for. Have you ever been somewhere trying to use a Google map and having no idea what direction your facing? Well this solves that problem. It gives you your latitude, longitude and precise direction – not to mention the benefits of having something so accurate that it is beneficial to any application (including gaming) that relies heavily on the iPhones accelerometer.

How might the new and improved iphone 3Gs impact the mobile web

The cheaper entry level price of the iphone is going to make it more accessible to a large number of people, noting the following statistics the iPhone will continue to impact the search and the wider online community radically;

/ A survey back in 2008 carried out by M:Metrics revealed that 84.8% of iPhone users accessed news and information on their phones compared to 13.1%  of the overall mobile phone market

/ 30.9% of iPhone users have tuned into mobile TV or a video clip from their phone, which is more than double the percentage that have watched on a smartphone

/ Google noted last year that the iPhone generates x50 more searches than any other phone on the market, they were so surprised by these stats they thought they had a technical fault!

Paul Towney, Icann mentions the impacts that the mobile web, spearheaded by smart phones such as the iphone is having globally…

“The mobile global internet is growing quickly to connect billions of people, devices and things. It offers much greater productivity and lower barriers to entry for users and businesses.”

In a world where we have traditionally seen internet adoption primarily in the western world the mobile web, being made more accessible by phones such as the iPhone will give billions of people in the developing world access to the web.

This empowerment of individuals, especially in the developing world, is transforming social, economic, and political relationships.

Improved performance when using the web is always going to be beneficial to the online community. Its allows those of us who commute or constantly on the go to browse, search, purchase and blog from wherever we are and we are more likely to do it, the faster performing such actions becomes. The limitations of speed and usability are a known factor to what stops a vast majority of people from using the mobile web. By improving this, it means we will be opening webpages faster, most importantly share or search information and content.

Incorporating different options when using the video function is great for the online community. It creates the ability to instantly share your videos by emailing them to others, uploading them directly to youtube and syncing them with your computer at home. The Facebook and Twitter applications that have been available on the iPhone for quite some time now are a great example of this – instantly uploading photos, updating your status and letting those around you know exactly what your up to. iPhone video is that next step.

The digital compass makes online sharing of your exact location that little bit more accurate. It gives you the ability to send your location via email to others and for anyone that good at map reading. They will find you pretty quickly

Voice control is going to be something we can potentially see being used in the search community in the not so distant future. Rather than typing our search queries and requests, we are likely to see this sort of feature being built into our search engines and being able to vocally ask for something, making search faster and definitely more personal.

The release date for this is planned for June 19^th and you can pre order with O2 already. It is debateable whether O2 will provide any discount or early upgrade options for existing iPhone users. It has already been noticed and discussed in great depth however following a twitter feed from O2 that they do not intend on offering such a service this year and that you would have to part with a substantial amount of cash to end your contract early if you are wanting to switch over (or alternatively purchase one as a pay as you go and use your existing contract). Understandably this has caused a heated debate as to whether or not it is fair to not subsidise the phone again – more on this to follow.

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The Buzz: iPhone 3GS

It is this issue that comes to mind whenever those behaviours, technologies, techniques, and ‘channels’ that point to what will be necessary in the future come up.

Enter stage left mobile. Quite startling data analysis has emerged  suggesting that mobile web traffic in the US is one third – and possibly a half – of ‘wired’ web traffic.

How important the iPhone has been in this shift (i.e. crucial) is irrelevant for our purposes. What’s at issue is the way that – as advertisers go thoroughly back to basics – they are in danger of being left behind by their customers [again].

While budgets might be shrunk, the amount of headspace we have at our disposal remains the same. And a good proportion of that space should still be devoted to understanding the way mobile devices are being used by customers, then the value brands might deliver as they do it.

The growth of mobile as a default access point to the internet is part of our changing digital climate, and that remains indifferent to the clemency or otherwise of the prevailing weather.

Post from: Connect

Remember mobile?

You can have a play with the interface here http://www.google.com/m/lcb

And here’s a sequence I tried out earlier starting with a search for ‘Brighton’

Post from: Connect

Google local surfing for mobile devices

Not because I’m on a high carb diet or I perversely eat an American Hot for breakfast, but because I was testing Google’s Voice Local Search and wow it worked first time and gave me results in under 2 seconds!

It worked from a busy, noisy street on my mobile when I asked Google to text the results to my mobile.

It also worked from my office when I wanted the results read aloud and also to be connected to the business identified.

So that’s it then – goodbye Yellow Pages, get a shave 118118 guys.

Is it now time for mobile operators to tear down the WAP decks, demolish the  walled gardens and just let Google and others serve search results anywhere we want them.

I’d love to hear what you think.

I believe it was time to do this a year ago and the actions of mobile operators have inhibted growth. Surely they can figure out some other way of monetising the sure to explode mobile traffic, rather than the archaic data pricing that currently exists.

Cheap broadband turbocharged mainstream search.

Voice activated mobile/local search without constraint if coupled with data tariff changes would send mobile search into orbit.

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The future of mobile search