Mobile Search Optimization
Conference notes from the "Mobile Search Optimization" session at Search Engine Strategies New York '07
Speakers:
Gregory Markel, Founder/President, Infuse Creative, LLC
Cindy Krum, Blue Moon Works
Rachel Pasqua, Director of Mobile Marketing, iCrossing
[L-R] Rachel Pasqua (iCrossing), Cindy Krum (Blue Moon), Gregory Markel (Infuse Creative)
Intro
Just now we're starting to see the beginning of wide-scale adoption. Most search marketers aren't optimizing for mobile.
How to optimize existing site - not a WAP site, but the regular site...
The goal is device independence.
Mobile is an industry in its infancy - so you have to do some things like you used to - like submitting to search engines.
Getting in early helps.
People who use mobile now want to take action - they're not just surfing.
Biggest issues at the moment: different bots, different browsers, slow downloads.
Code Best Practices
Use XHTML - do good coding.
Rigid accessibility standards.
Must use CSS. External CSS helps with download times after first page. There's no standard screen size on mobile. Use percents, not absolute sites. Use the <link> - it's better than @media or @handheld.
Put the handheld style sheet after screen (traditional) stylesheets. Use "display:none" to hide things on one or the other.
Navigation Best Practices
People don't have time to learn your site. Be logical, consistent. Name buttons clearly (use good calls to action). Use text links for the main navigation on the main page (avoid Javascript navigation), have a site map. Nothing should be more than 3 clicks away from home page.
Put navigation below main content - helps you know you've come to a new page - otherwise all the pages look the same.
Use optimized internal jump links (#something). Remove them from traditional site with display:none. Put in a jump to the main nav. Put these jump links at the top of the page.
Good order:
- header
- jump links
- main content
- navigation
- footer
Basic best practices
Avoid frames and flash.
Keep URLs short and keyword rich
Avoid popups
Use optimized heading tags <h1>, <h2>, etc.
Plan for short searches and keyword selection
Minimize the file size
Submit to mobile search engines
Send confirmation e-mails since people may not be sure the action worked on a mobile device
Test on mobile devices and simulators
Validate with mobile code checkers
Initiate mobile visibility campaign (get links from mobile sites, submit to mobile directories, local directories)
Purchase mobile text links
Consider mobile PPC & banners
Mention mobile in press relseases
Offer RSS feed for mobile RSS readers
Social bookmarking
Think about what the mobile audience wants/needs
Make main address in footer make phone number clickable with <a href="tel:####">
"Send me this page" links
Optimized video and podcasts for mobile
Gregory Markel, Founder/President, Infuse Creative, LLC
Hard to monetize - put at the end of the ad budget.
Google Voice Local Search - radically superior tp text search. Currently locally oriented. Get your business into Google Local business directory...
Adoption has been slow because the experience is hideous. When people do search they wind up at portals. Travel and news are the only ones getting much traffic.
Definitive source of mobile traffic stats - M:Metrics
Like traditional search, generic terms are really popular.
Number of words per query - 2.3, 14.5 characters. On PDAs it's 2.7 words, 17.5 characters. 17% of searches are actual URLs
Need fastest possible page load...
Google will convert regular pages to mobile pages automatically (for better or worse).
Google Mobile Search has device simulation, etc.
For good user experience, keep to text and links with very minimal graphics (like 10 years ago).
What's 'above the fold' is very important.
Read Google Mobile's FAQs - they're quite good.
Rachel Pasqua, Director of Mobile Marketing, iCrossing
There are 2.3 billion cell phones compared to 1 billion PCs - so potential is huge.
Think about what mobile users want/need. Don't put everything on your mobile site. What they want and need the most are things like addresses and phone numbers.
People are still using carrier WAP decks, but moving away to things like Google.
In the US, 234 million wireless subscribers - 10% do search.
Searchers use main search indexes then the services try to transcode the regular pages into what the device can understand.
To avoid transcoding:
- Use <link rel="alternate" media="handheld"...>
- Create and submit mobile sitemaps
- Only Google has separate mobile index [ed: Yahoo! said they had one in the following session], but it's not the default index for mobile searches and is not well-rounded. Still it's a good idea to get your content into the index.
The carriers WAP decks are a "sticky net" and hard to get users past them.
Transcoding is only an interim solution.
Q&A
.mobi is not a great idea. Instead, get the .mobi domain and redirect it to your primary domain.
The SERPs are the same - little or no advantage/disadvantage for havng a mobile (un)friendly site, however this is starting to change.
The carriers know a lot of demographic information about subscribers and use that information as well as the user's location to target ads shown.
If you're wondering whether there's much demand for mobile services in your industry run a mobile PPC campaign and see what level of traffic you get.
Stick with "text/html" for a MIME type.
Tags: Mobile, SEO/SEM, SES-NY
Categories: Mobile Browsers, SEO/SEM
