May
11
Written by:
John Clark
5/11/2010 5:51 PM
Your Internet Life is About to Change: 3 Key Internet Shifts to be Aware Of
In hockey, one of the things that made Wayne Gretsky so great was that he now only saw where the puck was, he saw ahead to where it was going to be. That’s what he acted upon and it made a slight, skinny guy into a true force to be reckoned with.
If you are reading this then you are using the internet. How you use it is about to change drastically in the very near term. Now is the time to be skating to the right position to take advantage of it.
A large part of my job is to have a Gretsky like vision in order to help my clients take advantage of what is coming at them. They have everyday jobs to do and keeping an eye on the internet ball is probably not one of them. If someone is doing it for them then they get the best of both worlds. When it comes to Web Design, these are key considerations.
This is a quick summary of what’s shifting in 3 key areas. I’ll expand on these in subsequent articles in the next few days.
1. Shift in Search Engine Optimization Methods - Getting your website to rank well and be found
Looking at the image on the right can you pick out the search engine(s) from the bunch? Well, Google, of course you idiot. Everyone knows that. Well how about all of them? Everyone wants to win the equivalent of the Academy Award by being #1 on Google. While that might be a kudo, the game has changed. You now need to rank in all of these sites and all of them effect your Google rank.
SEO rank as a metric has become pretty meaningless. At any given moment you could rank #5 or #255 or #10 as it all depends on who is searching, where they are searching and their own personal search history or criteria.
Once upon a time (think pre-2000) you could simply put the right words and phrases on your site and in the header and you could rank well. Since 2000 and the birth of Google that changed to needing excellent content PLUS incoming links with heavy authority behind them to your site. If CNN linked to you, you had pretty good weight. If 100 other sites linked to you then it could bode well for you in search rankings. Now you need an added ingredient.
This is a futuristic look but this future is now upon us. Now you will need all of the above plus “Personalization” such as social media and your personal information. The number of followers you have on Twitter and the videos you post on YouTube are now a factor as well. To RANK important, you have to BE important. All these things contribute to it.
With over 400 million people on Facebook, how many are trying to find you in Facebook’s search engine? Are you there? Do you have a business page to be found that leads to your site?
More to come on this later.
2. Shift in How We Access The Internet - Demise of the PC era
This ties into MiFi which I’ll get into in a moment. This last week Microsoft announced that their Office programs will be available in free from as a Cloud app. Cloud apps are programs that are not on your hard drive but on the internet and you access them by logging in and working them on the internet just like off your hard drive.
One of the big obstacles to this has been internet speed, or the lack of it. While high end cable now brings you maybe 10-20mbps speed the shift to G4 level wireless access will be taking you to 50-100mbps. With that it will be just as fast to log into an online word processor or graphics editor and doing your work as if it was on your hard drive.
This leads to less expensive hardware needs - just get on the net with any device you have from an iPhone, iPad or brain implant and you are off and running.
This also is spelling the demise of Flash and Flash sites. HTML5 will replace it. Why? Because Flash requires a loaded program on your device to work and to do that drains battery power 4x as fast where HTML5 won’t. This is why Apple excludes flash from their devices as does your Blackberry. If you have a Flash site, you need to shift - phones can’t see it, nor iPads.
3. Shifting from WiFi to MiFi
What is MiFi? Instead of having a card you plug into your computer and pay $60 a month for or running to the local caffeine shop for internet access you will have it in your pocket.
With a small battery powered MiFi card, it will go into your pocket or purse, it can hook up to your G4 access like a mobile phone does and you will be come a walking internet access hub. Any device within say 35 feet of you can use your bubble area to get on the net. It moves with you. You’ll soon laugh at needing a Panera bread shop as the old days of dial-up or rotary phones.
Simply pull out your simple device costing a few hundred dollars and you are hooked to your Cloud apps and files, calendars and address book, grabbing your GPS directions and video chatting with your friends in France. Sprints device shown is $275, it's their MiFi 2200. You can also do a $50 a month plan on it making it free upfront on a 24 month plan. It is 3G now but 4G is coming.
Summary
The above are just the tips of the iceberg. You should be aware of them so you can plan accordingly. Your marketing strategies will be much more effective if you know where things are going.
Copyright ©2010 John Clark