• You get a great looking website for your real estate business that is extremely easy to customize and that offers you tens of thousands of free add-ons ( plugins, in the parlance of WordPress) that enable you to extend your website’s functionality

Click on the link for more information or to check out a demo of AgentPress.

• You get a built-in blog that allows you to interact with your audience, establish yourself as an authority in your market, and multiply your opportunities for ranking in the search engines (every post you create becomes another page for search engines to add to their index, which is what they build their search results from)

And you get both – a great-looking website with tons of functionality and a built-in blog that can help you capture top search engine rankings – for a fraction of what you might expect to pay, as premium WordPress themes do not really come at a premium price. In fact, most premium themes won’t set you back more than $100.

AgentPress Theme for Real Estate Websites

And while there are many premium WordPress themes for real estate websites on the market, there is one that stands head and shoulder above the crowd: AgentPress by StudioPress.

Not only does AgentPress enable you to showcase your listings, it also enables you to build your brand by giving you the opportunity to showcase what you know about your business, your profession, and your markets. And an AgentPress real estate website with an integrated WordPress blog allows you to go beyond a static, one-dimensional presence on the Web that does little or nothing to differentiate you from the competition by establishing a dynamic, interactive, three-dimensional presence that takes your competition out of the picture altogether.

Because when you set yourself apart from the competition – in way that establishes your credibility and adds a highly personal touch to your presence on the Web that encourages people to get to know you, like you, and, ultimately, trust you – you really have no competition.

Key Features of AgentPress WordPress Theme for Real Estate Websites

Some of the key features of the AgentPress WordPress theme for real estate websites include:

• Search engine optimization – the AgentPress theme features SEO Settings and Options pages that makes it easy for you to take care of the SEO basics
  

  SEO Settings for AgentPress

• Custom property templates – the AgentPress theme was designed to make it easy for real estate agents to create listings for all of their properties with a custom template that allows you to input all key listing information, photos, videos, and so forth
• Custom sidebar “widgets” – WordPress “widgets” enable drag-and-drop customization so that you can easily and instantly create the look and functionality they want with their real estate website/blog
• Support – the AgentPress support forum is populated by people who are experienced WordPress users as well as experienced users of the AgentPress theme for real estate websites, which makes it a great place to learn about how to optimize your website and to get better results from your overall online real estate marketing efforts

Ultimately, building a real estate website with a WordPress premium theme is one of the best things you can do to market your business on the Internet. And the AgentPress theme for WordPress makes it quick, easy, and extremely affordable to do.

Find out more about the AgentPress theme for real estate websites by clicking on the link and checking out the online demo.

If you want to kick your real estate marketing efforts up a notch by adding some flashy video to your website, make sure you click on this link to learn all about what Animoto can do for you.

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• Organic web search results – organic web search results are those that you are probably most familiar with because they are what Google serves up in response to a search query on the Google.com homepage and can include a combination of news, videos, images, and so forth
• Local business search results – local business search results are the listings that appear on page one as a 3-pack, 7-pack, or 10-pack either, most commonly, above the organic search results or, occasionally, part way down the first page and are served up in response to search queries that contain a “geographic modifier” (such as a city name) or when Google’s algorithm detects a local intent (they also appear in Google Maps search results)

It’s important to distinguish between the two types of search results because the ranking algorithms for web search results and local business search results are completely different so the pathway to the top of web search results is paved with different factors than the pathway to the top of the local business search results.

Moreover, according to  Google, about 20% of all Google searches have a local intent behind them (that number goes up to about 33% for Google searches via the mobile web) so there is a lot of interest in local content. And many of those people who are looking for local content follow up their online research and comparisons with an offline purchase. In fact, according to a Google-sponsored, comScore.com study on the influence of online search on offline buying behaviour, 63% of people who make a purchase after online search activity do so offline.

Finally, while it generally takes a website to get to the top of Google’s organic web search results (you can also rank for alternative content such as YouTube videos, PR Web news releases, images hosted on Flickr, and so forth), the only way you can get to the top of Google’s local search results is by creating (or claiming an existing) Google Places listing.

Click on the link to contact me for a free and painless – relatively speaking  – consultation.

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It doesn’t matter if you do business primarily or entirely offline or not, today’s consumers use the Internet to find businesses to do business with. And that’s especially true when it comes to local business, as Google recently reported that 20% of all Google searches have a local “flavour” to them (that number goes up to about 33% when you look at Google searches via the mobile Web).

And those numbers are only going to increase as Google and other search engines continue to improve local search capabilities and consumers continue to turn to the Internet in general and search engines in particular – and away from traditional tools – to find local businesses to do business with.

Establish and Build Your Reputation

People generally prefer doing business with companies and people that they know or, at least, feel like they know. You may have framed mission and value statements hanging on a wall in your office, but do your customers really understand what your business is all about and what it is trying to achieve? Do they know what’s important to you as a company? Do your customers understand the values and goals that are important to your business? A blog makes it possible for you to highlight achievements and contributions you’re proud of – such as charities you’re involved with and community activities you sponsor – showcase customer problems your business’ solutions have addressed – all with the intention of building your brand and solidifying your reputation.

Grow Customer Relationships

You might have some demographic/psychographic data on the people who are buying your business’ products and services, but what do you really know about them? People who are interested in what you have to say on your blog are probably your best customers and the more you know about your best customers, the better you equip yourself to find more of them. The comment portion of every blog post creates opportunities for you to engage in dialogues with your customers in a unique way. While the majority of your marketing efforts are limited to one-way messages, blog posts open up two-way communications.}

Build Customer Loyalty

Your customers want to get to know who they’re doing business with. And the more they know you – and know about you – the more loyal they become. As you showcase some of the different services and solutions your business offers, your customers and prospective customers are exposed to new and different ways in which you can help them, and they end up doing more business with you. Creating content around customer success stories is a great way to solidify your relationships with those customers and also  to position different services and solutions in a way that helps to sell them without selling. And by offering the ability to subscribe to your blog – via email or RSS – you can keep your customer base up-to-date on your latest posts on auto-pilot.

Establish Yourself as an Authority

Without a blog, your website is simply a flashy online brochure filled with marketing messages. And, if you’re like many business owners, your website probably doesn’t generate a lot of business. By adding a blog you will be able to establish yourself as an authority on your niche through the content you post and the dialogues you engage in with customers. And you’ll start to see that your blog will become a source of business. Letting customers and potential customers get to know you, what you’re all about and all about the problems you’ve solved for other people will go a long way towards cementing you as an authority in your field.

Drive Traffic

Blogs are search engine magnets because search engines – like the people who use them – love fresh content. And while a static website offers up nothing fresh for search engines to consume, regularly updated blogs – whose posts are rich with high-value keywords – keep search engine spiders coming back for more. Every post creates an opportunity for you to capture new rankings in the search results and, with them, more targeted traffic.

Over the course of the next couple of weeks, we’ll spotlight some local businesses in different markets that have been enjoying success in their markets as a result of their blogs (if you’ve got a local business blogging success story and you’d like grab the spotlight, send me an email and we’ll see what we can do).

Interested in adding a blog to an existing website; or, perhaps, establishing your presence on the web with a standalone blog? Click on the link to contact me for a free and painless – relatively speaking  – consultation.

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And yet in spite of the obvious importance of SEO, the realtiy is that the vast majority of websites have never been exposed to even a bare-minimum level of SEO effort, meaning that they are potentially forfeiting top rankings – and the traffic that top rankings virtually guarantee – to their competitors

Why do so few people bother with SEO when it is so essential to a website’s success? Here are three possible reasons:

• Search engines employ extremely complex ranking algorithms

A ranking algorithm is basically a mathematical formula that comprises many different variables that evaluates and ranks web pages in order of relevance to a keyword query. Google’s algorithm is reputed to comprise around 200 different variables, which means, in a sense, that every time you create a website you’ve got to do about 200 things “right” (or at least “more right” than all of the other websites that are competing against you for the same keywords).

As if it’s not bad enough having to do about 200 things right every time you create a website, search engines do not tell you what those 200 things are. In fact, not only are their ranking algorithms locked up tighter than Fort Knox, there is speculation that they release misinformation about their ranking algorithms in an effort to throw off people who try to manipulate the system to achieve better rankings.

• Search engine ranking algorithms are constantly changing

Even if you knew what all of Google’s 200+ ranking factors were and if you were able to do all of them “right” every time you built a website, you’d still be behind the eight-ball because search engines are constantly trying to improve the experience for the end user so they are constantly tweaking their algorithms. In fact, it’s been reported that Google plans to introduce about 550 or so improvements to its ranking algorithm in 2010.

In spite of some seemingly significant hurdles, SEO is eminently “doable” if you follow two simple pieces of advice:

First, take care of the basics.

Find out where your website stands today vis-a-vis your top-ranking competitors for your target keywords. Hire a SEO consultant or, if you really want to be in control of your website’s destiny, invest a few hundred dollars in some SEO software. And then take action to close the obvious gaps.

Second, forget about chasing search engine ranking algorithms.

Think about end-users. That’s what the search engine algorithms are designed to do, so don’t you think you should too?

By taking care of the basics and focusing on the end user, SEO “happens” naturally; so, too, will better visibility in the natural search results.

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Since search engine visibility is a key factor in attracting targeted search referral traffic, the higher you rank, the more traffic your website will receive. Clearly, keyword research pays off.

Keyword research is essential to the success of any website

In order to ensure you get the most out of your keyword research – and, in so doing, increase the volume of targeted traffic to your website – make sure that the keywords your research identifies meet the following four key criteria (work through them in the order in which they appear):

1. Relevance

Your keyword research time and effort must focus on identifying keywords that are relevant to your niche because relevance is critical to both search engine rankings and to the satisfaction of your end users (which, in turn, is obviously good for conversions).

If the overall theme of your website or blog focused on golf, you won’t be doing yourself any favours if you target keywords that are not related to golf.

2. Probability to Convert

Your keyword research time and effort needs to ensure that the keywords you target are used by people who are highly motivated to take some form of action:

• Click on a link
• Download a report
• Subscribe to a list or a fee
• Request more information
• Call or visit your business
• Buy something online

As a rule, research has found that “long-tail” keywords – keyword phrases that consist of two, three or more keywords – tend to lead to higher conversion rates. The reason is simple: long-tail keywords are more specific than single-word keywords and often reveal a “probability to convert.”

For example, a long-tail keyword phrase such as “download free keyword research software” is obviously more likely to lead to a conversion than a shorter keyword phrase such as “keyword research.”

So even though search volume for long-tail keywords/phrases is lower than for more general keywords/phrases, people using them in their search queries are generally motivated to take action.

3. Search Volume

Unless, for some reason, you don’t want or need an audience for your website or blog, your keyword research time and effort must focus on identifying keywords that have a satisfactory number of people using them in their search queries every month (what constitutes “a satisfactory number of people” is, of course, up to the individual and depends on his/her objectives).

To determine raw monthly search volumes for the keywords you’re researching, head on over to Google’s Keyword Selection Tool and do the following:

• Specify the country or territory you’re targeting
• Select a language
• Enter the keywords you’re researching
• Enter the Captcha
• Click on the “get keyword ideas” button

After Google serves up the initial results, you’ll want to narrow the keyword ideas by specifying “phrase match” for match type because it will produce a much more useful number – for our purposes – than the default “broad match.”

Eliminate any keywords whose “phrase match” search volume falls well below the “satisfactory number of people” your keyword research says you need.

4. “Rankability”

The final criterion your keyword research must focus on is whether or not there is a reasonable probability that you can achieve a high ranking for the keywords you’re planning to target because the only way you’ll attract search referral traffic is if you rank at or near the top of the search results. Period.

While there are some fairly advanced ways to determine the “rankability” of the keywords you’re researching, in the interest of simplicity we’re going to go with a quick-and-dirty method that many people commonly rely upon: the number of other web pages that are “competing” for the same keywords that you’re researching. To do this,

• Navigate your browser to Google’s homepage
• Enter one of the keywords you’re researching into the query bar (make sure you do a “phrase match” search by enclosing the keyword in quotes)
• Click on the search button

If the total number of “competing” web pages – which will be displayed just below the query bar on the search results page – is less than 30,000, you’ve got a good chance of being able to capture a top ranking for the keyword for which you ran the search (it goes without saying that the lower the number of competing web pages, the better your chances are of achieving a top ranking for a particular keyword).

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• Maximizing its relevance to its target keywords
• Boosting its authority for the content on its pages
• Increasing its usability for the people who find it
• Improving its accessibility to the search engine spiders that crawl it
• Eliminating technical factors that impair its performance

In other words, SEO focuses on making a website better for users – relevance, authority, and usability are all about end-user satisfaction – and, at the same time, making a website better for search engines. And the people behind the search engines will tell you to focus on things in that order.

That is a lot easier said than done, however.

Complexity of Search Engine Ranking Algorithms

Search engines employ extremely complex algorithms that are meant to reflect both “user friendliness” – relevance, authority, and usability – and “search engine friendliness” – accessibility and technical factors – in order to rank the tens of thousands or millions of pages in their indexes that represent a fit to a searcher’s keyword query.

Google’s ranking algorithm is reputed to be made up of more than 200 different variables, each one of which is meant to address either user-friendliness or search engine friendliness (or, in some cases, both).

And the people behind the search engines are notoriously secretive about the variables that make up their ranking algorithms.

So not only do you have about 200 “boxes to tick” for every website you set out to optimize, you’re forced to make a lot of guesses about those boxes before you can relax.

And if you think you can ever really relax when it comes to your SEO efforts, think again. In their never-ending – and admirable -efforts to achieve greater “user friendliness” and “search engine friendliness,” the people behind the search engines are constantly tweaking their ranking algorithms. Google, in fact, is said to be planning about 550 improvements to its ranking algorithm in 2010.

At the end of the day, SEO requires a lot of extremely specialized knowledge, time, and attention – on an ongoing basis. But because a SEO effort can give a website’s rankings a dramatic boost in the search results – and there is a significant connection between search engine ranking and search referral traffic – it is well worth doing whatever it takes to develop the knowledge and to be able to invest the time and attention.

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AOL’s Controversial Data Release on Search Engine Ranking and Click Distribution

While search engines are fiercely protective of much of the data that are available to them – including anything that shows any connection between search engine ranking and click “distribution” (clicks on search engine results by their ranking) – there was one notable exception back in 2006 when the research arm of AOL released search log data on about 650,000 subscribers who carried out nearly 20 million search queries over the course of a three month period (it’s worth noting that AOL’s search engine was then – and is still now – powered by Google).

The data in the table to the right shows percentage of click distribution by search engine ranking for the first five pages of search results (click the image to enlarge).

AOL SERP Clickthrough Rates

As you can see, the top search engine ranking received 42.30% of the click distribution, while the second and third search engine rankings followed with 11.92% and 8.44%, respectively.

The top three search engine rankings combined for more than 60% of the total click distribution, while the top five search engine rankings – combined – received more than 70% of the total click through distribution.

All search engine results ranking on the first page – combined – received nearly 90% of the total click distribution, leaving about 4.5% for the second page and a little less than 6% for all of the remaining tens of thousands or millions of web pages vying for the same keyword.

Cornell University’s Eye-Tracking Analysis

Researchers at Cornell University have also made their contribution to the body of evidence on the search engine ranking-click distribution connection.

They employed eye-tracking analysis to explore the both click and attention distribution. While we won’t go into the science of eye-tracking or the mechanics of the study, suffice to say that search engine results ranking on the first page receive about 87.5% of the total click distribution – with the first result receiving more than 56% of the click distribution (image source: SEO Searcher).

Cornell_click distribution SERP

The researchers at Cornell also developed some interesting theory about why the top search results received such a grossly disproportionate share of the click distribution. Check out the Power of Defaults to read more.

The Bottom Line on Search Engine Ranking

No matter what source of data you rely upon – AOL, Cornell University, or even your own gut feel – the bottom line is that top search engine rankings outperform all other search engine rankings combined –  by a wide, wide margin.

And when you consider that the average monthly search volume for thousands of keywords and phrases is in the millions, the impact of a top search engine ranking can be staggering.

Make sure that you don’t leave your search engine rankings to chance. Give your website a boost by committing to a backlink-building effort.

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Click on the link to DOWNLOAD THE FREE WHITE PAPER “The Best of the Worst – How to Leverage a Little-Known Fact About Google and Take Away Top Rankings From Competitors.”

• 87% of home buyers use the Internet to search for properties
• 32% of home buyers first learned about the home they purchased through the Internet – compared with only 3% who first learned about the home they purchased through a newspaper or other print ad
• 87% of home buyers who used the Internet to search for a home ended up purchasing their home through a real estate agent

And every month, there are millions of people using search engines like Google to help them find the information they’re looking for. Even at the local level the monthly average search volume for key terms related to “Vancouver real estate” is high as you can see from just five search terms out of a total of 72 for June 2010 (taken directly from Google’s Selection Tool):

• 40,500 searches for “Vancouver real estate”
• 18,100 searches for “homes Vancouver”
• 9,900 searches for “realty Vancouver”
• 9,900 searches for “Vancouver property”
• 4,400 searches for “homes for sale in Vancouver”

And while there’s no way that all of these searches are carried out by present or future buyers and sellers, there is no doubt that a good percentage of them are.

Click on the link to DOWNLOAD THE FREE WHITE PAPER “The Best of the Worst – How to Leverage a Little-Known Fact About Google and Take Away Top Rankings From Competitors.”

Of course, if the people who use Google (and other search engines) every month are going to find your website, then it must be extremely visible in the search results. Specifically, it must be on the first page of the organic search results because organic search results get far more clicks than paid search results and first page of organic search results gets about 90% of all of the clicks for every search.

And while many real estate marketing professionals – especially those that are new to the business or are only just starting to really promote their websites on the Internet – may think that a top Google ranking is unattainable, the truth is that it can be a lot easier than you think. The reality is that Google can only work with what it’s given and what it’s given by many industries isn’t, by and large, very good.

In fact, many of the top ranking websites for key search terms rank where they do more by default than by design. They are, in effect, the “best of the worst.” This is as true of the real estate profession as many others.

This means two things:

• If your website currently has few or no pages ranking at or near the top of Google, it’s highly likely that you’re in a great position to be able to quickly and significantly improve your rankings
• If your website currently has a few or many pages ranking at or near the top of Google, it’s highly likely that you’re in a vulnerable position and need to take action to secure your rankings

The bottom line is that if you decide to simply take care of some of the fundamentals you can improve your rankings for keywords for which you’re currently not ranking well and you can solidify your rankings for keywords for which you are currently ranking well. And you can do this in relatively short order and minimal “heavy lifting” in most cases.

Click on the link to DOWNLOAD THE FREE WHITE PAPER “The Best of the Worst – How to Leverage a Little-Known Fact About Google and Take Away Top Rankings From Competitors.”

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The Local Business Center is even useful for businesses that do not even have Websites since the Google Local Business Center makes it possible for them to use the local business listing their presence on the Web.

Signing up for an account with the Google Local Business Center – and adding or claiming your local business listing – should be a top priority for your business for five key reasons:

Your Customers and Competitors’ Customers Search Google to find Local Businesses

The Google Local Business search engine – which you can find at either local.google.com or maps.google.com (maps is, by far, the more popular of the two) – gets an average of more than 50 million unique visitors every month.

That’s a lot of people searching every month for, among other things, local businesses to buy from.

And although it’s advisable to sign up for local business accounts at Yahoo, Bing, and other search engines, a Google Local Business account should be your immediate priority because, as you can see in the graph below, Google is the runaway leader in local business search market share, with more than double the local business search market share of maps.yahoo.com, maps.bing.com, and yellow.pages.com combined.

Comparison of traffic values for Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Yellow Pages local search

Of course, in spite of Google’s best efforts to promote the Local Business Center – and the utilization of maps.google.com – there are many millions of people who still use the google.com Website, even when searching for local business information. And, as you’ll learn in the next section, that gives local businesses an opportunity to capture some space at the top of Google’s “traditional” Web search results.

A Google Local Business Listing Can Take You to the Top of Google

Google’s launch of universal search in May 2007 meant that content from Google Images, Google Local Business/Maps, Google Video, and so forth could be integrated into its “traditional” Web search results pages.

This means that Google can – and often does – serve up local business listings as part of the Web search results even if location is not specified (it appears that Google’s search algorithm is able to detect “local intent”).

It’s increasingly common to find Google local business listings on the first page of search results – often at the top – as the “Google Local Business Seven-Pack” (a reference, obviously, to the fact that Google displays the top seven local business search results in a cluster of seven).

Google local business listings often appear above organic search results

Alternatively, Google may display a search query box at the top of the search results page that asks searchers: Looking for local results for keyword?

Google's local business search bar appearing within search results page.

Either way, a Google Local Business listing can put a business on the fast-track to a coveted position at the top of Google’s search results that may have been impossible to capture otherwise.

People Who Search Google for Local Businesses Take Action

A Google-sponsored, comScore.com study that looked at the importance of search in influencing offline buying behaviour found that 25% of searchers purchased an item directly related to their search queries, and that, of those buyers, 37% completed their purchases online while an even greater 63% completed their purchases offline following their search activity.

Google/comScore study of the impact of online search on offline buying behaviour

The study results underscore the fact that a Google Local Business listing is not only effective at driving traffic but, more importantly, it is effective at driving traffic that converts.

The Advent of Google Local Business Search for Mobile

As they continue to become more sophisticated and the browsing experience continues to improve, access to the Internet via mobile phones will continue to rise. In fact, Gartner predicts that access to the Internet via mobile devices will overtake PCs by 2013.

Google has clearly understood for a long time the synergy between local business search and the mobile Web, as some key developments suggest:

• Google’s July 2005 acquisition of Android Inc, a manufacturer of software for mobile phones (which triggered speculation that Google was looking to dive into the mobile phone market; the acquisition also eventually led to the development of the Android mobile operating system)

• Google’s September 2009 launch of an improved Local Search for Mobile that allowed users to, among other things, “star” search results on their PCs and have them automatically appear on their mobile phones; it also allowed users to search by browsing local business categories without typing (the video below offers a brief introduction to the functionality of Google Local Business Search for Mobile)

• Google’s November 2009 $750 million acquisition of mobile advertising company AdMob (on the heels of a five-fold increase in mobile search traffic over the previous two years)

• Google’s December 2009 distribution of Favourite Places decals to more 100,000 of the most sought-out and searched US businesses on google.com and maps.google.com (see the video below for details on Favourite Places)

• Google’s January 2010 entry into the mobile phone market that finally ended years of speculation about Google’s plans for the mobile phone market

Naturally, Google will continue to innovate in both the local business search space and in the mobile web search space. The key takeaway is that the businesses that get on board early will be the ones to reap the greatest rewards. And it all takes to get on board is to visit the Google Local Business Center and claim or add your local business listing.

The  Google Local Business Center is Easy to Use and It’s Free

If you’ve already got a Google account, you can simply sign in to the Google Local Business Center and get started right away. If you don’t have a Google account, all you have to do is sign up for one (you can sign up on the Local Business Center sign-in page).

The video below offers a brief walkthrough of the easy process for signing into the Google Local Business Center and claiming (or adding) your local business listing.

As Google continues to promote local business search, usage of local search by consumers will only increase. And considering that consumers who employ local search are buyers, don’t you think that you should sign up for Google’s Local Business Center and get your local business listing working for your business today?

Next Up: Google Local Business Ranking Factors

Getting listed with Google’s Local Business Center is the first step. After you’ve established your presence, you’re going to need to optimize your local business listing to ensure it has the best chance possible to rank at the top of Google’s local business search results.

We’ll look at the factors that can help – and hinder – a listing in Google’s local business search results in the next post.

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March 12, 2010 – 10:08 A.M

It’s official: Bill Gates is not the world’s richest man. He’s been beaten out by Mexican mobile tycoon Carlos Slim Helu. Does that mean that the PC’s best days are behind it, and the the real innovation in the future is mobile?

Forbes lists Carlos Slim Helu as the world’s richest man, because the stock prices of his telecom holdings, notably the mobile giant America Movil, have surged. The magazine says that he’s worth $53.5 billion, up a whopping $18.5 billion in a year. That’s due largely to the stock price of America Avil, which jumped 35% in the last year.

Gates is worth a mere $53 billion, and his holdings are up $13 billion from a year ago due to Microsoft’s price surge in the last year, when it rose 50%.

Is this a symbolic changing of the guard? Is it a final sign that the PC’s best days are behind it, and innovation — and wealth — are on the side of mobile?

Yes and no. Most of the interesting new apps are clearly being written for mobile devices of all kinds, not just for the iPhone and now Android, but for other smart phones as well. Location-based services have yet to come into their own, and when they do, the uptake will be tremendous.

And consider this: When was the last time there was a PC-based app that you just had to have (story continues below the ads)?

The innovation on PCs these days is not on the computer itself, but rather on Web-based sites and services and in the cloud. And if your PC can access those services, so can a mobile device.

On the other hand, the PC isn’t going away any time soon, and will remain the center of people’s tech lives and work lives. Processing power, a full-sized screen and keyboard, great graphics and a capacious hard drive all have their places. And what is a PC anymore anyway? What would you call a netbook, for example? An iPad? Are they computers? Mobile devices?

In addition, apps increasingly will be written for both PCs and mobile devices, and to tie them together. So the PC as a device will always be with us. But revenue growth, and therefore app development, are on the side of mobile and cloud computing, and the PC will go along for the ride.

Via Mobile tycoon tops Gates as world’s richest — does this mean the PC’s best days are behind it? – Computerworld Blogs.

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