2013 was a remarkable year for search engine optimization, content creation and marketing. Many new trends manifested over the past twelve months, giving webmasters, bloggers and content creators more flexibility in what they created and how they marketed it. One area that has seen consistent and exponential growth over the past few years is mobile, which continues to grow fairly predictably at a rate faster than that of Moore’s Law. In the past, it was easy enough to ignore mobile and chalk it up to a fledgling segment of the market. Over the next twelve months, however, mobile browsing is expected to hit 25% of all internet traffic, which means that a strategy that continues to avoid this medium is destined to lose out on valuable traffic, customers and more. In the following article, we will discuss the biggest mobile trends of the past year and how they can help you gain an edge in the new year.

Google’s Influence

There have been several changes in how Google interacts with its users over the past twelve months, from how it is pinging URLs of relevant results to your mobile device to the local relevance of select search results. One area of paid advertising that has been impacted and altered considerably is AdWords and its offering of enhanced campaigns. This paid service saw increases in many users’ campaigns of up to one-third, making it a target-rich hotspot for many who had previously ignored AdWords and the ability to target mobile audiences. In addition to this, services such as Google Now have seen a dramatic increase in usage due to its focus on mobile devices and the desire to provide information that is relevant, before a user even requests it.

The Power of Instagram

Another strong force in the world of social media and mobile over the past year has been Instagram, with a particular focus upon its new advertising platform. Several advertisers have reported that their monthly number of likes and followers have increased several fold after the utilization of mobile advertising through the popular social media platform, which displays your photos and content in the status feed of mobile users’ browsers. While this will certainly become more popular and the overall amount of benefit from each campaign is expected to drop as such occurs, platforms such as Instagram are paving the way for more currently ad-free apps to begin incorporating them in the near future.

Personalized Email

The final trend we will cover is one that email marketers will (or should) know all too well. Over the past year, more and more emails have been customized to not only cater to individuals’ personal information, but to also provide them with proactive updates and reminders that take into account their shopping habits or demographic profiles. These customizations can be a great way to quickly catch the attention of mobile users who do not browse email content as profusely as they do at home; when pinging URLs via email, having large photos and buzz words known to be of interest to the reader can markedly increase conversion rates.