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With around 4.6 Billion phones currently in circulation in the world today, most with some sort of web browsing capability, there is untold potential, but is this an area  that we as search marketers have over looked or are we still afraid of the unknown?

I could ream off stacks and stack of facts and figures about the growth of mobile search, where it is now and where it will be within the next 5 years, but I’m not going to, because it’s supremely boring stuff, and I want you to keep reading. What I am going to do is tell you about the opportunities that are currently available in this market and whether or not we can exploit these.

The mobile web is still a new and exciting place, with a large expanse of the great unknown, both for marketers and the search engines alike, everyone is still finding their feet, everyone is still deciding what ranking factors should be considered. This is a good thing as the playing field for both parties is still level. But don’t expect this to be the case for long, I can see Google throwing out updates like they are going out of fashion. So the motto here should be “get in while the going is good”.

Though the ranking factors as yet are not all the clear, there will still be a lot of comparisons with the traditional web, links and keywords will still count for a lot. For the other factors, stick to what makes sense.

If someone is browsing on their mobile, chances are they are out and about and will want to find what they are looking for fast. This is where common sense comes into play, make your site clean, neat and easy to navigate and keep your most important content as close to the top as possible. The vitally important aspect will be Geolocation, I believe that this will be the key to the future success of the mobile web as a whole. It’s going to be a fact of life that the majority of mobile searches will have a location based query, nearest coffee shop, nearest cinema (list is endless). Phones these days can handle this with ease, can the search engines?

Now lets look past the ranking factors and onto what will really count, how can we make money from the mobile web. Will the old reliable likes Adsense work, lets look at the most common situation people will find themselves in when there are browsing on the mobile, and compare that to where we get most of out Adsense clicks from, the fundamental difference here is that when people are browsing from their PC, they are basically passing time so they will be more inclined to click an Adsense ad, when they are using the mobile web, they want answers they don’t want to click on additional links. Once they have got what they want they will go.

But all is not lost, I think there is a huge potential for affiliate programs, but only if they can grow to encompass traditional brick and mortar establishments, for instance lets say you can rank well for coffee shops on fifth avenue, someone clicks on your link to get to your site and they find the coffee shop they want, they click the convenient get directions link, then bam you hit the with an affiliate offer for 2 cups of coffee for the price of one. They take the coupon code you just sent them and scan it when they get their coffee, commission earned. But what if we could tweak this idea, lets say you find stores that are close that coffee shop  and sign up for their affiliate programs, and now  you know where this surfer is going and how they are getting their, and they just happen to pass by one of the stores who’s affiliate program you have joined, why not hit them with a special offer for this store as well, they are passing by and you could be doing them a favour.

I’m sorry to say that alot of this is theory still but it won’t be long before we all start to see a solid move towards mobile, if there is money to be made people will be there. I know I will, how about you?