The concept of “mobile Web” began badly. There was a sense of progress in the technology, but the business model lagged. The early mobile Web crammed the functionality and content of websites designed for large monitors onto digital displays the size of playing cards. In effect, they tried to tape a desktop to a phone.

That missed the key point: With mobility, access is no longer an issue. Maybe it took high-bandwidth wireless to see, but access had become truly ubiquitous–anytime, anywhere–from devices as varied as smartphones, Blu-ray players, refrigerators and the backs of airplane seats. The business model is no longer about sticky websites, but ubiquitous brands available to constantly connected consumers looking to perform specific tasks.

With no need for that desktop clutter, enter the app to get the thing you need. Data-driven and laser-focused apps find the restaurant that serves paella within a 10-block radius, deliver the three-day weather forecast for your city, find the next flight out and then check you in, or provide baseball scores or the daily crossword puzzle. In short, apps grant wishes by accessing the specific corporate information available through a company’s application programming interface, or API.

Like other new technologies, apps and APIs enable new ways of working. The Associated Press came up with a mobile app with updates of World Cup scores; the app garnered a record number of downloads. Best Buy ( BBY - news - people ) allows app developers to draw on product specifications, details and ratings to create apps that can search TVs, laptops and GPS devices. Other apps monitor price reductions or specials, sending alerts to bargain-hunting consumers via e-mail, Twitter and other services.

The New York Times allows developers to work its trove of data into smaller pieces of content into Twitter feeds, spotlighting local voting records of local congressional representatives, bestseller lists for use in shopping over the iPad, even data-driven visual art based on word frequency.

Apps are so versatile because each app sits atop the rich set of underlying data, services or both. It is up to businesses to leverage that information well, putting the right stuff in the API. Whereas old models relied on more comprehensive compilations–an entire newspaper, a complete product catalog, the whole phone book–apps access pieces of data or functionality one relevant, contextual action at a time.

• Getting Big In The YouTube Age

• Why Businesses Need Mobile Apps

• Keeping Tabs On The Under-Banked

• Building A Hospital Out Of Bits And Bricks

• A Wealth Of (Visual) Information

• Data Visualization In Medicine

Successful businesses tend to make apps natural extensions to their businesses, whether it’s selling workout apparel, facilitating airline travel or providing in-home entertainment. Apps allow businesses to leverage nearly infinite resources of information and services by satisfying one highly targeted need at a time. This avoids brand confusion and builds brand strength.

Businesses that expose their data or services via an API provide the building blocks for developers to use in creating myriad new apps.

This is not a “build it and they will come” scenario, however. Attracting and working with developers involves learning. Developers are an audience, a constituency that you must learn to engage, but they are not your customers. While a consumer might be motivated by the immediate need to find a taxi, a bargain pair of sneakers or check the scores of his favorite baseball team, developers building an app for you are motivated by very different things. Sometimes money–a share of the profits or ad revenue they can get for their app in an app store. Sometimes from the notoriety of having written elegant code or built something great. What really helps developers is giving them access to your treasure trove of underlying apps and services in way that makes their job easy.

Do not confuse giving access with giving away control. A well-documented API with clearly articulated rules of engagement provides the basis for a win-win scenario. These rules of engagement form the basis for creating myriad micro-channels and a framework for extending the core business. Companies must learn to adapt and leverage the new opportunities in apps, which can extend their businesses, quite literally, into the hands of millions of consumers.

Oren Michels is CEO of Mashery.

For search engines that crawl the web, links are the streets between pages. Using link analysis, the engines can discover how pages are related to other pages and in what ways. Since the late 1990′s links have also served as a stand-in for votes – representing the democracy of the web’s opinion about what pages are important and popular. (Some refer to this as the reasonable surfer model). The engines themselves have refined the use of link data to a fine art, and incredibly sophisticated algorithms create nuanced evaluations of site and pages based on this information.

Professional SEOs attribute a considerable portion of the search engines’ algorithms to link-based factors (see Search Engine Ranking Factors). Through links, engines analyze the popularity of a site & page based on the number and popularity of pages linking to them, as well as metrics like trust, spam, and authority. Trustworthy sites tend to link to other trusted sites, while spammy sites receive very few links from trusted sources (see mozTrust). Authority models, like those postulated in the Hilltop Algorithm, suggest that links are a very good way of identifying expert documents in a given space.

used by search engines

Before embarking on a link building effort, it’s critical to understand the elements of a link used by the search engines as well as how those elements factor into the weighting of links in the algorithms. We don’t know all the attributes measured by the engines, but through analysis of patent applications, papers submitted to information retrieval conferences, and hands-on experience & testing, we can draw some intelligent assumptions. Below is a list of notable factors worthy of consideration. All of these issues, and many more, are considered by professional SEOs when measuring link value and a site’s link profile.

Global Popularity

The more popular and important a site is, the more links from that site matter to the search engines. Getting lots of local, topic-specific links is great, too, but to earn trust and authority with the engines, you’ll need the help of some powerful link partners.

Local/Topic-Specific Popularity

The concept of “local” popularity (first pioneered by the Teoma search engine) suggests that links from sites within a topic-specific community matters more than links from general or off-topic sites.

Anchor Text

One of the strongest signals the engines use in rankings is anchor text. If dozens of links point to a page with the right keywords, that page has a very good probability of ranking well for the targeted phrase in that anchor text. You can see examples of this in action with searches like “click here” and “leave,” where many results rank solely due to the anchor text of inbound links.

TrustRank

In order to weed out massive amounts of spam (some estimate as much as 60% of the web’s pages are spam), search engines use systems for measuring trust, many of which are based on the link graph. Earning links from highly trusted domains can, thus, result in a significant boost to this scoring metric.

Link Neighborhood

In many papers on spam detection and information retrieval, using the sites that link to a domain as well as the sites that domain links to has an impressive knack for spam detection and filtering. Thus, it’s wise to choose those sites you link to carefully and be equally selective with the sites you attempt to earn links from.

Building links is an art. It’s almost certainly the most challenging part of an SEO’s job, and, for many sites, the one most critical to achieving long term success. Many companies can afford to hire SEOs to help make their websites search friendly and search optimized, but a robust backlink profile is an extremely high barrier to competition.

1.  Editorial AccumulationLinks that are given naturally by sites and pages that want to reference your content or company. These links require no specific action from the SEO, other than the creation of citation-worthy material and the ability to create awareness about it to relevant communities.
2.  Manual Suggestion & ApprovalEmailing bloggers with links, submitting sites to directories, or paying for listings of any kind fit into this group. The SEO must create a value proposition with the link target and complete that transaction manually (whether it be filling out forms for submissions to a website award program or convincing a professor that your resource is worthy of inclusion on the public syllabus).
3.  Self-Created, Non-EditorialHundreds of thousands of websites offer any visitor the opportunity to create links through guestbook signings, forum signatures, blog comments, or user profiles. These links are typically quite low in value, but can, in aggregate, have a significant impact. However, automatic methods of generating these links is certainly spamming, and even the manual creation of such links is frowned upon by many site owners and search engines. Exceptions abound, and for those sites that offer these options and don’t use the rel=”nofollow” attribute on outbound links, there can be opportunity.

As with any marketing activity, the first process undertaken in a link building campaign must be the creation of goals and strategies. Sadly, link building is one of the most difficult activities to measure, particularly from a search engine optimization perspective. Although the engines internally weigh each link with precise, mathematical metrics, it’s impossible for those outside of the engineering teams at these companies to extract this data. Thus, as SEOs, we rely on a number of signals to help build a rating scale of link value. Along with the less-measurable data from the link signals mentioned above, these metrics include the following:

Page Ranking for Relevant Search Terms

One of the best ways to determine how well a search engine values a given page is to search for some of the keywords and phrases that page targets (particularly those in the title tag and headline). Pages that rank well for relevant queries tend to be more valuable than those that don’t.

Google PageRank

Despite much maligning over the years for accuracy and freshness problems (Google only updates their toolbar PageRank data every 3-5 months and sometimes manipulates the values intentionally to discourage spam and over-analysis), there is still value to looking at the number reported. This is discussed more in this blog post onPageRank Correlation. Pages with high PageRank do tend to pass on more link value than those with little or none. Be careful with those that have PageRank “unranked” ( a gray bar) as these may be highly valuable pages that simply haven’t received visible PageRank since the last update.

SEOmoz mozRank

mozRank (mR) shows how popular a given web page is on the web. Pages with high mozRank (popular) scores tend to rank better. The more links to a given page, the more popular it becomes. Links from important pages (like www.cnn.com or www.irs.gov) increase a page’s popularity, and subsequently its mozRank, more than unpopular websites.

A web page’s mozRank can be improved by getting lots of links from semi-popular pages or a few links from very popular pages.

SEOmoz Domain Authority

Domain authority (or DA) is a query independent measure of how likely a domain is to rank for any given query. It is calculated by analyzing the Internet’s domain graph and comparing it to tens of thousands of queries in Google.

Google blogsearch

Google Blog Search is the only property controlled by the search giant that offers accurate backlink information. While this only shows links from blogs and feeds, there’s still great value in seeing which sites/pages have earned authority and attention in the blogosphere, as this can be a useful predictor of the link value they’ll pass.

Yahoo! Site Explorer Reported Inlinks

Yahoo! Site Explorer is a valuable tool for seeing the links that point to a given site or page. Using this tool, you can make estimates about the relative link popularity and importance a page has based on who links to it. Typically those pages/sites with more powerful and important links will pass on greater value through their links.

Number of Links on a Page

According to the original PageRank formula, the value that a link passes is diluted by the presence of other links on a page. Thus, getting linked-to by a page with few links is better than being linked-to by the same page with many links on it (all other things being equal). The degree to which this is relevant is unknowable (and in our testing, it appears to be important, but not overwhelmingly so), but it’s certainly something to be aware of as you conduct link acquisition.

Potential Referral Traffic

Link building should never be solely about search engines. Links that send high amounts of direct click-through traffic not only tend to provide better search engine value for rankings, but also send targeted, valuable visitors to your site (the basic goal of all Internet marketing). This is something you can estimate based on the numbers of visits/page views according to site stats, but if you can’t get access to these, services like Google Trends for Websites,Compete, Quantcast, & Alexa can give you a rough idea of at least domain-wide traffic, from which you can estimate page-specific popularity.

It takes time, practice, and experience to build comfort with these variables as they relate to search engine traffic. However, using your website’s analytics, you should be able to determine whether your campaign is successful. Increases in search traffic when accompanied by more frequent search engine crawling and increases in referring link traffic correlates with a well-managed, intelligently structured campaign. If you see traffic from engines like Bing and Yahoo! are rising while Google stays constant, it’s possible that you need to seek more authoritative, better trusted links (as Google is the most “picky” of the engines when it comes to link evaluation).

Many sites offer directories or listings of relevant resources

• You can find hundreds of these on SEOmoz’s Directory List or use the search engines themselves to find lists of pages that offer outbound links in this fashion (for example, try searching for allintitle: resources directory at Google and notice the millions of results).

Get your customers to link to you

• If you have partners you work with regularly or loyal customers that love your brand, you can use this to your advantage by sending out partnership badges – graphic icons that link back to your site (like Microsoft often does with their partner certification program). Just as you’d get customers wearing your t-shirts or sporting your bumper stickers, links are the best way to accomplish the same feat on the web. Check out this post on link requests in order confirmation emails for more.

Build a company blog and make it a valuable, informative and entertaining resource

• This content and link building strategy is so popular and valuable that it’s one of the few recommended personally by the engineers at Google (source: USA Today & Stone Temple). Blogs have the unique ability to contribute fresh material on a consistent basis, participate in conversations across the web, and earn listings and links from other blogs, including blogrolls and blog directories.

Create content that inspires viral sharing and natural linking

• In the SEO world, we often call this “linkbait.” Good examples might include this Peak Season Ingredient Map from Epicurious, this Interactive Graphic Explaining Hand Signals Used on Stock Market Trading Floors from the New York Times, or this Video of an iPod in a Blenderfrom Blendtec. Each leverages aspects of usefulness, information dissemination, or humor to create a viral effect – users who see it once want to share it with friends, and bloggers/tech-savvy webmasters who see it will often do so through links. This high quality, editorially earned votes are invaluable to building trust, authority, and rankings potential.

Build content that can be shared through a citation-based licensing agreement

• If you have photos, videos, graphics, charts, raw data, or text content that can be licensed out with a system like Creative Commons’ Attribution (or Attribution-ShareAlike), you can leverage the power of the web’s penchant for information sharing while receiving links back to your originals and your site each time someone uses your material.

An Aside on Buying Links

Google, Yahoo!, and Bing all seek to discount the influence of paid links on their search results. While it is impossible for them to detect and discredit all paid links, the search engines put a lot of time and resources into finding ways to detect these. This includes sending anonymous representatives to search conferences and joining link networks so they can see who else is involved.

As such, we at SEOmoz recommend spending your time on long term link building strategies that focus on building links naturally. You can read more about this at this blog post.

Be Unique

One of the easiest ways to stand out in the App Store is to create an app that is unique. Sure, that makes sense. Yet still thousands and thousands of apps are uninspired, shovelled out by tired developers looking for a quick buck.

If you want to stick it to the man, make sure that you are either:

1. The first developer in your category of product, or
2. Reinventing the existing category with something unique.

If you’re just improving something that’s already available, your battle to market it will be uphill.

SPIN AN EXISTING CATEGORY

At this point in the history of the App Store, very few apps create new categories. So unless you’re sitting on a revolutionary new idea, focus your attention on a unique spin of an existing category. So many things can be re-imagined with little effort. Look at your competitors and flick on your child-like consumer filter. What cool feature for this category is missing? How can you take advantage of the iPhone’s interface, accelerometer, GPS or multi-touch functionality to create a package that delivers a unique experience in this category?

A unique feature will make your app stand a head taller in the crowd and raise eyebrows. And that’s exactly the effect you want if you intend to sell apps in the App Store.

• Think, plan and build with the intention of creating something unique. From the conceptual drafts to the final marketing, keep iterating the unique aspects of your product.
• Ask yourself if you are merely improving on someone else’s idea. If it already exists in the app store, the battle to market it will be uphill.
• Try some shortcuts to create something unique, such as mixing categories; thinking of new ways to use the accelerometer, GPS, proximity sensor and multi-touch gestures; storytelling; etc.
• If you’re competing in a saturated market, do the exact opposite of the leader.

Be Tweetable

Getting people to talk about your app is imperative for success. The more people talk, the more exposure your app will get, which will hopefully translate into sales. If your app is unique, you’re halfway there—people will talk about it just because of its uniqueness. But how do you encourage people to start up conversations about your product?

LEARN TO PITCH

I’m sure you’ve pitched your app to at least a dozen co-workers and puzzled family members. You know the ins and outs of your elevator speech, the highs and lows, the big sells of your product and the hard-to-understand parts. If you want your app to succeed, you will need to teach that pitch to the rest of the world.

BE INTERESTING

Make the conversation about your app easy and engaging. Make it so that people want to tweet about it. Tweetability—if no one has yet, I’m trademarking that word—refers to how well a product or message would move on Twitter. The Twitter network, with its millions of users, has a particular personality and disposition. Despite the diversity of people using the service, talking about it like a homogenous mass still makes sense in many ways. Some of the most successful apps are easily shared through social media. Imagine the twittersphere chattering in chipmunk voices, “Hey, guys. Check this out!” Instantly gratifying app + high tweetability = free exposure.

Even if your app isn’t instantly gratifying or playfully humorous, you can still compose a tweet that is highly tweetable. Just think of what you would retweet yourself. How would you sell your app in 140 characters?

• Play to your strengths. Write good copy. And have a solid, useful and attractive landing page.
• Find the human angle. Are there any amusing and beneficial reasons why people would use your app?
• Have a memorable tagline. Sum up your app’s purpose in one line.

Awesome app is a weather-forecasting app. This is a classic scenario: a re-thinking of an established category. I can’t think of a more tired and saturated market than weather apps, making this an excellent example of being able to re-invent and compete if we have the right frame of mind.

UNIQUE SPIN

The Awesome app reverse-engineers the trend of offering up increasingly detailed and advanced weather data. Instead, it trims down functionality and focuses on the very playful and human idea of exploring the weather visually, by swiping through a virtual forecast. It builds uniqueness right into the very concept and goes in the opposite direction of the market leaders.

EARLY HYPE, BIG LAUNCH

Prior to launch, the website for Awesome app presents a “Coming soon” page that collects close to a thousand confirmed emails. A teaser video of the interface generates some buzz and earns the app a nomination in the App Star awards. The app launches at the end of December 2009. The release newsletter goes out; a more elaborate version of the website, with video and screenshots, goes up; and the developers make as much noise as they possibly can in their networks.

REVIEW WEBSITES

As soon as sales get a lift from the early launch hype, emails are sent out to various review websites offering promo keys. Reviews started flowing in, and chatter about the app is monitored on Twitter, where developers offer help and follow up on questions. A “Making the app” video is posted that gives existing customers something to enjoy (and that humanizes the team), highlighting user recommendations.

The website for Awesome app gets some wind of its own by being featured in various design blogs for its modern use of CSS animations, contributing hype that doesn’t have anything to do with the app itself.

PICKED UP BY LARGER WEBSITES

A week and a half after launch, larger websites such as TUAW started showing interest. And coverage peaks with a TechCrunch article, which ripples out to LifeHacker and other major websites. More than a month in and we’re still seeing continued interest in the app; it has gathered hundreds of five-star reviews in the App Store and has been featured in both “New and noteworthy” and “What’s hot.”

WHAT WORKED?

What worked for Awesome app was a combination of the marketing rules discussed above:

• It was sufficiently unique in a crowded market to spark interest and be seen as a “good story.”
• The idea of a “visual weather forecast” was easy to convey and was presented in a way that gave it high tweetability.
• It was completely the opposite of what leading competitors were doing.
• The team started hyping early with a “Coming soon” page. It was appealing enough for people to tweet about it, and it eventually attracted visitors not only because of the app but because of the design of the website.
• A press package with everything you could want was freely available on the website, making it easy for blogs to write about the app.

Parting Thought

Not a single dime was spent on marketing it, yet the Awesome app reached tens of thousands of people. If you have a unique product and apply some of the ideas above, you too can secure free exposure for your beloved app. It’s a rather democratic and honest process because you are required to re-invent apps by adding unique features. Marketing then becomes all about making it easier and more interesting for people to talk about and share your creation.

As with most other things in life, there’s no surefire way to create a successful app. But keeping in mind some of the things we’ve talked about here—both at the conception and the execution stage—will put you in a position to build awareness of your application much more easily.”