Mobile SEOThe Impact of mobile on searchMobile SEO - The Evolution of Search

How and Why Search Engine Optimisation is going to change in 2011 and beyond

Findings discovered from 3 weeks of research by:

Eldad Sotnick-Yogevhttp://searchandsocialmedia.co.uk

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Table of Contents

1. Shift to Mobile 6. Videos in Mobile

• Evolution Apple has limits

• What people want Important considerations

• Difference between Mobile and PC2. What is Search on Mobile? 7. The “Local” challenge • Inside the Google patent

Google Places • Mobile specific signals

Advice for advertisers

3. What to consider for Mobile Search 8. Dispelling Mobile myths

Blocking Googlebot

4. Real SEO tactics You don’t need a mobile site

• Mobile KW tool• Link building• RSS feeds• XHTML• Other SEO tactics

5. UX tactics• Transcoding• Mobile OK• Good User experience

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The Shift to Mobile

The shift to Mobile has been announced a number of times over the years and few have heeded the call. Some facts from our research that lead us to agree that Mobile is the right future to pursue now.

According to Gartner mobile will outpace desktop computers by 2013, estimating that in just 3 years we’ll use 1.83 billion smartphones and only 1.78 billion PCs.

Realistically there are two factors that will contribute to the significant increase in consumer mobile use: speed and usability.

Forrester Research’s European Mobile Forecast predicts 3.5G will dominate by 2014 (54% of the market)

To confuse the issue, our definition of what mobile means is shifting. Apple now describes itself as a “mobile devices company.”

Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt, states that “while many people associate Google with search, it’s fundamentally an information company. The future of computing is mobile...businesses should have their best developers working on their mobile applications...the interoperability and security of mobile devices will be key factors for large businesses a few years down the road.”

Universal results are the fun results – because they often have more potential for interaction with the phone than they would on a traditional computer. You can click on a phone number to make a call, click on a map to get walking directions.

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The Shift to Mobile - Evolution

Search behaviour on mobile has clear patterns emerging that differ from desktop search

queries. Google maps for mobile have meant that we routinely

expect to find the restaurant we’re looking for

pinpointed on a map, click thru to the internet site to

book – what a wasted opportunity if that site doesn’t show on a mobile format – and get

directions to get there straight away.

The differences in consumer behaviour between static desktop and mobile searches means that advertisers can’t simply transfer a search campaign to mobile. They have to play by a different set of rules, and understand that their target audience is looking for different results from mobile searches.

Early benchmarks (from June 2008 report) show that mobile users are using more brand, location or activity oriented searches. Location (nearness to user’s query) and vertical product/business service category are factors in the SEs deciding which relevant results to show.

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The Shift to Mobile – What people want

Research into Query Suggestions for Mobile Search: Understanding Usage Patterns shares that:

As Google tries to save time by using predictive suggestions it can be important to target SEO for these predictive search phrases. Google’s research shares - the average Mobile search query is 15 character long,takes roughly 30 keystrokes and 40secs to enter

On mobile people are more open to query suggestions. The goal is to save keystrokes and users rated their enjoyment level higher and their workload lower vs. not having suggestions made present while typing. Enjoyment rose from 1.8 to 3.2 on a scale of 1 – 7.

100% of the users offered suggestions accepted at least one. Oddly enough they took 10 seconds longer to accept. This is deemed to them taking more time to process if they wanted to accept the suggestion. (When typing with no suggestions users took 20.3secs to enter their query, when typing with suggestions it took 30.1secs)

Correct suggestions were presented on average 1.4 times before they were accepted. 97.4 % of accepted queries were accepted from the dropdown list by the 3rd time they were shown.

Showing more suggestions may hinder the efficient usage of suggestions. Users do not seem to consider whether it take less or more keystrokes to accept a suggestion of accepting a suggestion.

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The Shift to Mobile – Difference between mobile and PC

Clearly Mobile differs from PC and there are certain elements that MUST be considered in order to best connect with mobile users. In general the differences come down to what the following chart shows:

However, one must consider that the

main factors come down to how users

interact with mobile vs. computers.

Success of a mobile search campaign relies on a

different approach, says Charlotte Rogers, client services director

at Efficient Frontiers UK:

“When on the move consumers do NOT want to

browse, they want to find. Searches are more specific,

more action based and more localised.“ ‘Find cinema in W1’ rather than

‘read film reviews for new releases.’

You cannot have as much content on the screen at any one time or you will adversely affect the loading time of the site on mobile devices. Some visitors are on contracts that charge for download sizes – so you have to come to a happy medium of quick navigation, search engine optimised content and quality links.

Review how m.maxim.com appears on mobile phones and quickly loads vs. autotrader.mobi. This is a good example of what people want AND how Maxim is presenting a different format to fit the mobile user.

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What is Search on Mobile? – it’s Google

It seems a little known fact...Google is dominating the mobile search space, according to Pingdom Google is now at 98.29% market share. Globally.

This has actually increased believe it or not, last year Google had 95.58% of the market

Google has a different search ranking algorithm for mobile devices, they judge websites based upon how they render on the specific model accessing the site. For example, if your website looks bad on a Blackberry Bold 9700, filled with errors and Incompatible mark-up, eventually you will slip down the page ranking for that specific model.

So when other Blackberry Bold 9700 users search (using Google – the undisputed mobile search king),you won’t be anywhere to be seen.

Neglecting that one phone model could affect the millions of identical handsets around the world searching the mobile web. Interesting hey?

Really makes you rethink SEO.

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What is Search on Mobile?

The meaning of mobile SEO changes depending on where “mobile” is placed in the definition It’s important to emphasize that the focus here is on mobile queries, as opposed to mobile search engines or mobile content. In the history of mobile search engine optimization, many have understood the process as “improving the volume and quality of traffic from mobile search engines” or “improving the volume and quality of traffic to mobile web pages”.

iPhone did not kill the mobile webGoogle reports 50x the search requests from iPhones than any other device...it has made mobile searching and browsing nearly mainstream.

A forward-thinking definition of mobile SEO must recognize this fact, and broaden the focus to mobile usersMany popular search engines index more than just mobile web pages given that many smartphone-equipped users are accessing many types of content. (desktop pages, smartphone pages, and mobile applications)

Mobile SEO is a hybridMobile SEO is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to digital content from search engines via natural search results to users entering mobile queries. Therefore, it is best to consider Mobile SEO as a hybrid that fits into both niches of Search Engine Optimization AND Mobile Marketing.

This type of optimization will focus on indexing any type of content that is relevant to a mobile user (mobile web pages, mobile applications, desktop web pages, images, feeds, etc), and optimizing it for mobile queries.

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What is Search on Mobile?

Mobile SEO vs. Desktop SEOUnlike previous types of SEO, mobile search is NOT inherently about optimizing for a specialized type of content through vertical search engines. Instead, mobile SEO is focused on an entirely different “mode” of search, or with the context in which the queries are entered.

There are types of vertical search engines that index mobile content such as ringtones and wallpapers, and optimizing for these search engines is often called mobile SEO. However, since this is only one aspect of mobile search, it is only one aspect of mobile SEO. Mobile SEO could also include optimizing different media types in so far as they are relevant to a user’s mobile context.

SEO best practices will generally make a site accessible to smartphone searchers. However, just because something is accessible does not mean that it’s optimized. In search, pages are indexed before they are ranked, so accessibility is an important first step...If good enough is acceptable to you, then make your desktop content accessible to simple users and you should be ok for mobile search. But you won’t be optimized, and you may not be prepared for the future of search.

For a page to appear for relevant searches.. content must be optimized for those searchesMultiple studies by search engines have shown that mobile search behaviour differs from desktop search behaviour: in frequency, category and intent.

In other words, mobile searchers have a different context than mobile users, and thus search differently. In order to account for these mobile searches, a marketer will have to use mobile specific tools like Google’s mobile keywords tool instead of desktop keyword tools. (Use the advanced search and tick mobile searches)

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What is Search on Mobile? – Inside the Google patent

Make your site more competitive for MobileThe easiest, most effective way to make a site relevant to mobile searchers is to create mobile-specific content that is tightly-themed for relevant mobile searches. It’s not absolutely necessary, but it could make a site more competitive for mobile searches than a site that doesn’t consider the mobile user experience.

Right now desktop results and mobile search results are not wildly different, especially if you access the mobile web search results through an iPhone or iPod Touch (app results are another matter entirely).

Inside the Google PatentGoogle representatives have often been quoted in the press as being on focused on improving mobile search results and a Google patent from last year reveals one way in which they could improve mobile search results that would change the mobile SEO game entirely: blended mobile search results.

The gist is that Google would improve a page’s quality score and ranking based on whether signals indicated that the content was mobile in nature.

In other words, the patent described a desktop ranking algorithm, and a mobile specific algorithm, and how the two would interact based on the perceived nature of the query. Mobile specific signals and desktop specific signals indicate that Google recognizes that mobile search users have different goals, and need different content based on those goals.

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What is Search on Mobile? – Mobile specific signals

Inside the Google PatentThe goal of mobile SEO in the long term is to concentrate on these mobile-specific signals and their relative importance in the mobile user experience.

There are signals that seem more important for mobile users than desktop users, but there are also signals that affect only mobile search results. Bryson Meunier shares 22 mobile-specific signals of the 50+ mobile indexing and ranking factors that he’s aware of that are not only mobile-specific, but have no equivalent in desktop SEO. In the future there may be even more.

Mobile specific signals that the Google patent reveals - the processSearch now by default presents a mix of generic pages and mobile pages. In this patent, Google explains how it would blend mobile search results – increasing a mobile page ‘s quality score so that it is displayed higher in the search results.

The search results include generic and mobile search results. The generic (desktop) and mobile search results each identify a generic and mobile resource, respectively.

The search result quality scores include mobile and generic search result quality scores for the mobile and generic search results, respectively.

The mobile search result quality scores and the generic search result quality scores are generated according to different scoring formulas.

Based on one or more terms in the search query, the search query is classified as a mobile query. As a consequence, one or more search result quality scores are modified to improve the sorting of search results that include both mobile and generic search results.

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What is Search on Mobile? – Mobile specific signals

- the process continuedIn theory the process is quite simple as Google attempts to pull in both mobile and generic webpages to show to mobile users.

Sometimes, if the number of mobile search results for a query is too small, Google won’t display mobile pages at all, since having too few mobile sites pages will decrease the relevancy of the returned results.

Google first determines whether to presentany mobile search results. It may do thisby determining whether the number of mobile search results produced by the search query is greater than a threshold number.

If the number of mobile search results is too small, then Google concludes that none of the results are sufficiently relevant to the user’s search query. When this occurs the results will present generic (desktop) webpages as the mobile search results.

The threshold number may be either an absolute number or a percentage. Google claims that it can increase the quality score of the mobile search results if it’s clearly a “mobile” query, that is, users willing to find content or information that corresponds to a need while on the go. If a query contains words that Google believes are “mobile”, for example: ringtones, games, wallpapers, or even chat, news, etc, it will make sure mobile pages are ranked first.

Query

•Google pulls mobile & desktop webpages

•Determines whether mobile results pass a set threshold

Modify

• Quality scores for mobile & desktop webpages are calculated

• Google decides if results should be re-ranked

• Results re-ranked based on mobile specific signals

Results

•May pull in results from other search engines and content types

•Blended search results are shown

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What is Search on Mobile? – Mobile specific signals

- the process continuedPart of the process is that each (mobile & generic) result is given a quality score. Yet, Google reserves the right to modify these scores based on the mobile specific signals that they may contain.

Modifying the mobile search result quality score comprises:

- increasing the mobile search result quality score if the mobile search result links to a mobile resource that links to downloadable content for a mobile device.

- ranking the mobile search results and the generic search results in an order, the ranking being based on the search result quality scores; and removing one or more duplicates from the order.

- identifying a first language of the search query; identifying that the mobile resource identified by the mobile search result is written in a second language; and decreasing the mobile search result quality score if the first language is different from the second language.

Google also explains how it removes generic pages that are not connected to relevant mobile searches:

- identifying a first mobile search result that identifies a first uniform resource locator; - identifying a first generic search result that identifies a second uniform resource locator,

the second uniform resource locator being the same as the first uniform resource locator;- removing the first generic search result from the order; and if the first generic search

result had a higher rank than the first mobile search result, moving the first mobile search result to the position in

- the order that the first generic search result occupied.

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What is Search on Mobile? – Mobile specific signals

Summary of the Google patent process The determination can be made using one or more signals, including:• whether the query is a “mobile” query, • whether the search results exceed threshold scores, • the number of mobile search results, • the properties of the mobile resources found in the search, • or the properties of the generic resources found in the search.

In some implementations, when the results mixer uses more than one signal, it will use the signals and modify the mobile search result quality scores – or remove one of the results completely from the mix.

Google also affirm that it may blend search results with results from other mobile search engines. For example, including search results from a mobile content search engine.

Generic search results may be blended with search results from other search engines instead of or in addition to being blended with mobile search results. Examples include:• search results from a local listings search engine for searching local listings, • an image search engine for searching images, • a carrier private content search engine for searching mobile web pages categorized as

accessible only to subscribers of certain mobile service plans, • a mobile news search engine for searching mobile web pages categorized as news, • or a mobile marketplace search engine for searching mobile content to purchase.

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What to consider for Mobile Search

A little bit of SEOMeta information seems to be important for mobile sites as they tend to contain a lot less content for search engines to devour...spiders still need to be “told” what the mobile site is all about.

If you are creating an XML sitemap for mobile content pages you do need to make amendments to the generated XML sitemap that is created. Take out all the priority and last modified bits and add in under the <loc></loc> parts the mobile indicator <mobile:mobile/>.

Submitting your RSS feed to RSS feed submission sites and directories seems to help. (Recall that the Google patent points to local business listings, portals and directories being pulled into the blended results.)

Best practices for mobile SEO are best practices in general web SEO, and vice versa.

Title tags, keywords, links and accessibility is going to be the same for search engines serving mobile users as it will be for desktop users. There’s nothing inherently different about SEO for mobile users.

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What to consider for Mobile Search

Did you account for...?To attract a mobile audience you’d better be good at it and make it an elegant user experience. Consider how much content they can consume in one go and how much can be rendered as you like.

Set clear goals – understand how your market uses mobile & define your goals clearly. What do you want to achieve from mobile?

Separate mobile campaigns so they are action-based, personalised and localised. These should have distinct goals, experiences and expectations compared to desktop searches.

Remember that mobile screens are on average 10x smaller and so navigation is harder. Mobile messages & sites should be clear, easily navigable and short. Make information accessible immediately.

Too much information will affect loading time of the site on mobile devices. Where can you condense images, shorten content or present a more mobile screen friendly version?

Customise advertising messages for mobile by making them short, clear and actionable.

The localisation of mobile search – can you offer up local results for local searches? Do you link to maps or other location searches?

The impact of geo-location technologies (Foursquare, Gowalla, etc.) and how – and if – these should be integrated into your campaign.

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Real SEO tactics

Google keyword tool – Mobile searches

Doing keyword research for mobile users is mobile SEO,and it’s relevant today for both mobile sites and desktop sites that want to be more relevant to mobile users. As long as searchers continue to enter different queries on mobile devices, mobile keyword research and content optimization-one aspect of mobile SEO that is not covered by desktop SEO—will not become obsolete.

You must tick this box to get the Mobile Search volume numbers

You can access the Google Adwords tool here – http://bit.ly/9FqW8F

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Real SEO tactics

Link buildingThe key here is relevancy. A web development blog’s research shares that placement in the mobile SERPs is quite fickle and is influenced particularly by inbound blog links. Yes blog links.

They theorize that possibly because blogs tend to be updated more frequently with unique content than a business website they may be considered more relevant. Their research performed a number of test scenarios which proved to be successful.

This same person also spoke about directory submissions and the results they shared are positive, yet they are based in the past. If the mobile SERPS are truly moving to showing quality results it is likely that the same SEO standards will apply and simple directory listings while helpful for a .mobi site will NOT be the best strategy for co.uk or other .com websites.

Can simple directory submissions help build links for a .mobi site? After using these sites he did see results in July 2009.Dmoz Yahoo UK Directory FreeIndexHotfrog Abigdir.comLittlewebdirectory.comThew3bindex.com Turnpike.net/directory.htmlRoask.com Webworldindex.com Wikidweb.comJayde.com Linkcentre.comOnemission.com/d.plVendora Google Maps Splut.com

One particular in the UK he suggest is freeindex.co.uk, a simple business listing site where your listing improves the more times you have someone comment, positively, about your site. According to his post, freeindex.co.uk listings tend to rank well in more niche areas in UK search and refers traffic well.

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Real SEO tactics

Link Building – RSS feedsThis same mobile developer shared that submitting his RSS feed to various RSS feed submission sites and directories created some positive results.

After submitting to 15 of the sites, he got 26 new inbound links and an increase in traffic of 6% from referring sites.(sites like rsshugger.com, Blogville.us and Scribnia.com all of which offer a variation of featured, paid and reciprocal listings and other formats of gaining exposure for your blog and RSS feed. A great example of a mobile directory is the Oh! Mobile Directory and ThumbsUp.mobi and http://www.linkbuildr.com/link-building-for-your-mobi-site-or-app/ . He also recommends to develop a feed - http://www.3ac.co.uk/mippin-mobile-website-feed-creator).

Other directories he mentions in a different post:http://dotmobietc.dirlink.mobi/http://www.searchgoesmobile.com/add_url.html Also remember that;http://mobilinks.com/go/submit Local business listings, portals andhttp://twilightwap.com/elite/go/submit directories may enter the search http://five-alive.mobi/index.php?suggestalink=yes results and give you anotherhttp://www.skweezer.com/dir.aspx chance to connect. http://www.surf-my.mobi/http://love-my.mobi/http://cremin.mobi/http://mobidomains.mobi/

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Real SEO tactics

XHTML - get your code rightXHTML Mobile Profile (XHTML MP) is a hyper-textual computer language standard designed specifically for mobile phones and other resource-constrained devices.

To validate this, your mobile pages must contain one of the following DTD (Document Type Declaration) or DOCTYPE depending on which version you wish to follow:<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//WAPFORUM//DTD XHTML Mobile 1.0//EN""http://www.wapforum.org/DTD/xhtml-mobile10.dtd"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//WAPFORUM//DTD XHTML Mobile 1.1//EN""http://www.openmobilealliance.org/tech/DTD/xhtml-mobile11.dtd"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//WAPFORUM//DTD XHTML Mobile 1.2//EN""http://www.openmobilealliance.org/tech/DTD/xhtml-mobile12.dtd">

It has been suggested to use the wapforum.org DTD. (The top one)

From here you can construct your mobile web pages using standard XHTML code and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to make your site look more aesthetically pleasing.

A great example of a well built mobile site for fast and efficient mobile viewing is Maxim Magazine’s site http://m.maxim.com/ – Notice how they use a simple design of four or so images with brief text links/descriptions which load up simple text pages allowing for speedy mobile surfing. Nothing too flash or pretty, just sticking to the basics.

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Real SEO tactics

Other simple SEO tactics to verify for your mobile site:

• Use correct headers and Title tags• Don’t block any unnecessary IP ranges• Use the correct robots.txt file• Simple, crawlable navigation – place your KWs here when possible (as well as in the

content)• Share some outbound links – while space is at a premium on smaller screens it can

show you as a more quality mobile property. Links should connect with partner sites that hopefully are also mobile SEO friendly

• Submit mobile site to DMOZ• Do not use frames or flash• Make everything concise to read for users & bots – page titles, sub-headers, content

extracts, images and body copy• Conform to the w3c mobileOK standards (these cover everything from CSS to correct rendering

of tricky content such as tables and images)• Use compliant mobile markup language• Create shorter fragments for all (SEO) content – Titles, URLs and metadata – recall the

smaller screen and what it can show• One way to ID your content to the bots is to use microformat and semantic markup

standards such as hCards (microformats.org)

Try to think aheadSearch results seem to be presented as location and category based design layouts to help compensate for the smaller screens.This raises the question can we think which content categories are being selected for “feature presentation.”

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Real SEO tactics

Other SEO tactics – words of adviceDon’t block the mobile site from being returned in desktop or smartphone results. It’s relevant to more than just the search engine’s mobile index. The search engines are in part to blame for this oft-recommended worst practice, as they have at one point called a certain type of mobile content duplicate content.

Prior to the iPhone’s release, back when mobile content was something very different than it can be today, the Google webmaster Central blog called out “forums that generate both regular and stripped-down mobile-targeted pages” as duplicate content. In spite of this, they have never (to Bryson Meunier’s knowledge) recommended that you block all mobile content from desktop bots—only that you redirect mobile users properly if you choose to redirect them and that you block carrier-specific mobile content, which they do consider duplicate content.

Granted, most sites are going to have smaller versions of their desktop content on their mobile sites, but if that’s all you have you’re not taking advantage of the unique properties of the mobile user experience.

If you want maximum visibility for your mobile content, and to be truly

optimized for mobile search, the best practice is to make it clear to the

engines that you have a mobile site, optimize it for mobile queries and

make it essential to mobile users, and then trust the engines to return

it when they think it’s relevant.

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UX tactics

User experience is the real key to success All the research aggregated points to one important fact – Mobile SEO is not about SEO it is about search engines being able to deliver relevant results with a quality mobile user experience.

If you’re trying to attract a mobile audience then you’d better be good at it and make it an elegant user experience. Consider how much content they can consume in one go and how much can be rendered as you like.

The way to present material is not similar to the desktop/PC methods you know – users are either on the move or sitting down (couch, train, bus, etc.). Users on the move tend to be performing location & time sensitive task related searches. Sitting means usersare more likely to be engaged.

In fact, the user experience is so important to the Search Engines that they are “transcoding” websites to help create a better mobile user experience.

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UX tactics

What is Transcoding?Transcoding is used to give Mobile Search Engine users a more uniform experience across the variety of handsets that exist. So Search Engines are imposing their own mobile web site presentation standards – they will take your content and repurpose it to the design, layout and format they feel is best for the user & mobile phones. There is also a process called user agent detection which is how the transcoding repurposes the material to specific handset models.

Transcoding is the re-formatting of a Web page into something that looks good and works well on a smaller mobile screen.

But what does transcoding involve?• Converting complex Web coding into wml, xhtml-mp, mobile-friendly html.• Breaking up large Web pages into a series of smaller pages• Resizing or converting images• Re-formatting page to increase usability

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UX tactics

What is Transcoding? An example of a transcoded website:

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UX tactics

MobileOK – verify your workMobileOK conformance merely demonstrates that a basic experience is available and interoperable with a large number of mobile devices.

The intention of mobileOK is to help catalyze development of Web content that provides a functional user experience in a mobile context. It is not a test for browsers, user agents or mobile devices, and is not intended to imply anything about the way these should behave.

The tests should NOT be understood to assess thoroughly whether the content has been well-designed for mobile devices. The Best Practices, and hence the tests, are not promoted as guidance for achieving the optimal user experience. The capabilities of many devices exceed those defined by the DDC. It will often be possible, and generally desirable, to provide an experience designed to take advantage of the extra capabilities.

MobileOK tests apply to a URI. Passing the tests means that when accessed as described in 2.4.3 HTTP Request, resolving a URI will result in mobileOK Basic conformant content that is delivered in a mobileOK Basic conformant manner. That is, the tests do not apply solely to content or document instances. Many Best Practices relate not just to the document (e.g. VALID_MARKUP), but to how it is delivered to a mobile device (e.g. CACHING).

See sections 2.4.2 HTTPS, 2.4.3 HTTP Request, 2.4.4 HTTP Response, 2.4.5 Meta http-equiv Elements, 2.4.6 CSS Style, 2.4.7 Included Resources, 2.4.8 Linked Resources, 2.4.9 Validity for specific coding suggestions Tests for mobileOK Basic are described in detail in Section 3.

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UX tactics

Google India shares some specific coding & UX detailsAnkit Gupta spoke at a Google India Searchmasters conference in 2009 and during his talk shared some specific User Experience elements that can help sites and their engagement on a mobile screen. It is not known whether Google considers these as mobile specific signals.

• Build your sites vertically not horizontally. • Mobile is a different network and has a slow connection speed (like 40kbps on older

phones).  • Keep the link density low – as its difficult to tap on a phone when links are closer

together. • Top of page is even more valuable on smaller mobile screens – use primary purposes

here (not ads). • Always use breadcrumbs or home if the flow of pages is complex give users an easy

way to get back.• Give prompt feedbacks on every small interaction with the website. Keep the user

engaged and let them know why they are waiting.• Have your site automatically adapt to different screen size & resolutions – don’t

hardcode.

What mark-ups, protocols & technologies are available to help build a mobile site?1. WAP/WML – 90’s based communication platform. 2. XHTML – a very flexible form of HTML created so developers didn’t have to learn

another language. 3. WAP 2.0/XHTML-MP – same but less scripts and delimiters are allowed. WAP enabled phone means you can view XHTML on the phone. Newer browsers are able to render things in XHTML, CSS and even some Ajax.

XHTML is the most popular format for search results nowKeep it semantic so use the format before the normal tags. Set the right doctype and encoding as this can be a reason that the bots reject the document.

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UX tactics

More UX tactics from Ankit & Google India• Do not use tables – they do NOT work on the XHTML front.• Do not use fancy form element – they do NOT get rendered.• Do not use multiple scrolls – scrolling is very difficult so use links to move users along.• Do not have links to unsupported doctypes. Verify that all the links connect to a set

doctype

All the above (and on the previous Ankit Gupta slides) is good for basic phones

How to take the next steps w/ Javascript and Ajax?Ajax and Javascript can be used to pre-fetch the most popular link that is clicked. You can also cache the data so there isn’t another request. You can have incremental fetch updates – fetch updates but not the whole page so the loading is faster. The lifetime of the cache can be based on how fast the data changes.

Use Ajax to implement a lot of user actions inline (try to save them clicks/steps – if you know the process where can it be condensed in the coding?)

Improve user experience with offline functionalities – Google Gears, Javascript and APIs let you do this. The point of these efforts is to eliminate blank screens for the mobile user.

Most popular browsers to build for – Windows (with Google Gears), Opera mini, Safari/iPhone, Netfront, s60 and Android. Each of these has its own rendering engine

Webkit, a rendering engine, was taking off in 2009 and used by iPhone, s60, and Android. It is open sourced.What it does is not render the site on the phone ; instead it does it “in the clouds” and then sends the site as an image to the phone. In effect, it is taking very complex XHTML page and renders it faster.

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UX tactics

Ankit & Google India – still have good stuff to share • Use YSlow to verify what may still need to be corrected on mobile websites. • Don’t just rely on emulators for your testing at an early stage. Test, at the early stages, with real devices and data plans. Animations using Ajax can get really screwy or even disappear.

• Keep the HTTPS pages as few as possible – only make secure what MUST be secure. • Set the right cache headers and use Gzip for the data. Good place to do this is when you compile the Javascript – uncompiled it may be 200kbps/compiled & Gzipped it is 5 -10kbps • Have set image sizes in the CSS to decrease the complication of calls to the server. • Google actually classifies a site as mobile friendly or not. This based on a lot of signals

which include: page layout, mark-ups, data use, encodings and whatnot.

• Google web transcoder – a tool they offer to transcode your site into a mobile friendly site.

You can give out links to the transcoded site. While this may cause a higher latency you can set the right cache hurdles and just cache the transcoded version on the server. It not only transcodes images and layout it also does this the outgoing links. So the other site will become transcoded. • There are 2 or 3 different HTML compliance levels – strict or transitional. Know which

type the phone models you’re targeting support before you build.• Verify your code in an HTML validator –one he mentions is at ready.mobi.• Do make use of the access keys.• Resize images based on device size. This is important for layout and latency.

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Videos on Mobile

There’s more than Images and Text Video is fast becoming the medium of the web and as such will be an increasingly important element to consider for a positive mobile user experience.

As the research we did was limited in this area, due to its technical nature, we’ve discovered some possibly conflicting information. Therefore, we recommend speaking to a developer before implementing the final decision and hope you find this content good information to enter the conversation.

To cover the majority of phone capabilities on the market you need to encode a particular video into 3 different formats within this. These are SQCIF, QCIF and QCIF HiQ all of the MP4 Codec.

Q.C.I.F – Quarter Common Intermediate Format

SQCIF – “Sub-QCIF” This is the standard size for low-resolution video files and streaming videos on mobile phones, the file size should not be above 250kb to be downloaded to the devices.

QCIF – This is the standard size for videos on a mojority of mobile phones, video cameras and digital cameras. For mobile websites the file size for QCIF videos should be between 250-500kb.

QCIF HiQ – This is a higher quality version of QCIF, sometimes referred to as CIF, but who cares either way, it is ideal for the top end of the mobile phone market like Nokia N95, Blackberry and iPhone etc. The file size can be up to 1MB and is dramtically different in sound and visual quality.

However, some of the other readings seem to conflict with this June 2009 posting

31

Videos in Mobile

Even Apple has limitsEven today, the video formats supported by the iPod, Apple TV, and iPhone are relatively limited compared to the number of formats available on the market. This means that just about any content that you want to view on these devices is going to require some conversion process.

The advent of these new devices has complicated the landscape even further, since more options are now available for both the viewing and encoding of videos, but with these changes come more considerations about how to encode video for the best possible viewing experience.

The iPod, Apple TV and iPhone will play back videos encoded using either the MPEG-4 or H.264 codecs. These are open-standard video formats, and not in any way proprietary to Apple, but at the same time do not represent a broad portion of the video content that is currently available outside of the iTunes Store.

Further, this does not represent the video standard that is used by most video recording devices, TV recording devices, or commercial DVDs. The result is that finding video content from anywhere other than the iTunes Store that is already encoded in an Apple-ready format is going to be difficult, and much of this content will therefore need to be converted.

These Apple limits also don’t mention three other important considerations that need to be taken into account when encoding videos for mobile:1. Resolution2. Bit-rate3. Aspect ratio

32

Videos in Mobile

Other Important considerations for iPhonesImportant considerations with video playback and the quality of the resulting file are the resolution and the bit-rate.

The resolution simply refers to the dimension of the screen image, in terms of the number of pixels wide by the number of pixels high (ie, “640x480”) while the bit-rate refers to the amount of data that is actually encoded to make up a single second of video playback, normally expressed in either kilobits per second or megabits per second. This is the same concept as bit-rates for audio formats such as AAC and MP3.

The table below provides an outline of the maximum resolutions supported, as well as the output quality of the device itself:

Another very important consideration when trying to decide on the optimal format in which To encode your content is the aspect ratio of the original source content.

Aspect ratio simply refers to the ratio of the Width of the image to the height of the image as shown on screen.

33

Videos in Mobile

Aspect ratio on iPhonesThere are three common aspect ratios in use for commercial video content today:

• 4:3 used for almost all standard-definition TV broadcast content. This is sometimes also referred to as 1.33:1.

• 16:9 used for almost all high-definition TV content (HDTV) and many theatrical DVD releases.

This is sometimes also referred to as 1.78:1. • 2.35:1 used for “Cinemascope” or “Panavision” movies on DVD.

The iPhone has a screen with a 1.5:1 aspect ratio (480 x 320), and no TV output capabilities at this time.

4:3 content will be pillarboxed by default, and 16:9 and 2.35:1 content will be letterboxed by default.

The iPhone implements a “zoom” feature to crop the image to fill the screen in either aspect ratio.

34

Videos in Mobile

iPhone and Android specsA final word from the forum Ask Slashdot (News for Nerds, Stuff that matters)

While it does mean you'll use up a little extra storage it is probably best to encode one version for each resolution.

H.264 tends to be the standard in video these days (especially for mobile devices since they tend to have h.264 decoding hardware).

By using one resolution per device (or at least for the more common devices and then a couple of fallback resolutions) you ensure the best possible quality for the largest number of users while also avoiding wasting a lot of bandwidth streaming high-res iPhone 4-res video to some other phone just because you didn't want your video to look like crap on the iPhone.

The iPhone 4 specifications http://www.apple.com/iphone/specs.html claims that the iPhone 4 supports AAC-LC and h.264 which Android also supports.So looks like you have an easy match for high quality as well.

The Android developers site has an excellent list of supported

media formats.

Http://developer.android.com/guide/appendix/media-formats.html

35

The Local challenge

It’s crucial to go “Local”Today if you search Google on your standard web browser for a product or service and add “in [your location]” to the search, you could be presented with an attention-grabbing map and a list of businesses relevant to your search, the location of each also identified on the map. That models what you’d get if you were searching ONLY for the product or service on a mobile browser that understood, using geo-location, exactly where you were.

What you are seeing is Google’s choice of the most relevant listings from Google Places. If you click on “Maps” you may discover that beyond the 3-7 local results presented on the first page many hundreds, sometimes thousands, of listings exist relating to that product or service within a reasonable distance of the specified location.

Google Places OptimisationPossibly – to make this work reliably you need skills and experience in both traditional SEO techniques and in running PPC campaigns. (This can be termed as Google Places Optimisation – GPO; and to be really effective these skills need to be married together. The beauty is that GPO complements your existing SEO / PPC marketing, potentially reducing PPC spend, and informing the SEO analysts about which phrases get you seen.)

Google Places Optimisation enables businesses to drill-down internet marketing to the lucrative and untapped potential of the local customer. Google Places Optimisation is the key to getting found in an increasingly crowded marketplace, whilst leveraging the increasing use of mobile browsers for search.

36

The Local challenge

Something scary...Today it is estimated that over 3 billion searches are requested of Google daily. With mobiles increasingly returning local search results this means that Google alone could easily return a phenomenal 1 billion local search results to mobile browsers, daily, by 2013!

Blog.Converseon.com stumbled across Google search results for a highly local term that spells trouble for anyone who has not spent time focusing on Local SEO. First of all it is important to understand that this local search layout is by all accounts a limited test; especially since no one has been able to repeat it.

In this case the local search utilized was highly localized which is the only way this sort of result should ever be triggered. The search was for “car rental nyc” and the results were jaw-dropping… nothing but local listings were in the results where the organic rankings used to be. – Link to screenshot - http://bit.ly/a6nbpj

So now what? Location, location, location. This long-time real estate adage rings truer today more than ever as a local business success criteria. Location-sensitive mobile advertising, however, has provided a few new wrinkles.

As the movie Minority Report helped depict over seven years ago, media now targets your every move and is ready to serve an advertisement at every corner.

Google has gotten into the act with its “Near me now” function. And this forces Mobile SEO to seriously consider Local Search optimisation.

37

The Local challenge

Google “Near me now” - a simple navigation to local merchants within the areaThere's nothing to install - consumers just need to access Google (in the U.S.) through a browser on an iPhone (OS 3.x) or Android-powered devices with version 2.0.1 or later. Finally, they just need to allow Google to access their location via GPS for the "Near Me Now" link to appear.

The emergence of many of these location-sensitive platforms is signalling an intersection of mobile and social. According to eMarketer, there are over 21.9 million U.S. mobile social network users (which constitutes 9 percent of all U.S. mobile users and 32 percent of all U.S. mobile Internet users).

Due to this growing trend, a large number of Facebook application developers have been busy creating tools that enable consumers to leverage their proximity to one another and add location-aware offers.

Advice for Advertisers - Start with the basics These applications deliver back structured data results - meaning your local business listing information is the most important building block.

As more local/mobile tools emerge, publishers will continue to monetize the space by charging advertisers for sales leads via clicks. But as consumers seek more direct connection in the form of telephone conversations, many are adapting a "click-to-call" functionality.

Advertisers who participated in a beta trial of "click-to-call" saw results ranging from 5 percent to 30 percent increases in their click-through rates, according to Meredith Papp of the Google Mobile Ads team. This comes as no surprise considering that the latest comScore/TMPDM Local Search Usage Study shows that consumers prefer to use telephone as their primary method of contact over clicks (additional data on preferred response channels for local search can be found here).

38

The Local challenge

So part of Mobile evolution is Local search?Everything we are seeing from this research highlights that Local Search is a big part of Mobile Search.

With geo-location and other Mobile Search quality score factors “built-in” to modern phones, and Google – the king of Mobile Search – so desirous to create positive mobile user experiences that they go to the lengths of transcoding your site, plus any additional sites you may link to - it’s obvious Local is Mobile.

AND this doesn’t even begin to account for the differences between PC and Mobile search users wants and behaviours, such as MSN’s study that shared “time to conversion” was cut down from PC searchers taking one week to complete a purchase vs. Mobile users taking one hour.

The many elements of Local Search optimisation and GPO (such as Attributes and Citations) are definitely crucial to consider and three articles are good resources to begin to explore the best practices for this niche of SEO.

David Mihm’s paper Local Search ranking factors http://bit.ly/dnLfmvClick Z’s articles Where you are, What you do http://bit.ly/apbzbm

How Citations help Local Search http://bit.ly/dkTX44

39

Dispelling Mobile myths

Two practices to avoid

Bryson Meunier warns:

“There are two things specifically that have somehow persisted as mobile SEO best practices, even though following them could actually make you less visible to mobile users. There may have been a time and place for making these recommendations in mobile SEO, as the landscape has changed dramatically even in the last five years. But if you hear them

brought up in 2009 and beyond, check the speaker’s business card.”

1. Block your mobile site from Googlebot

The idea behind this recommendation is one that makes sense in desktop SEO, where duplicate content issues abound. In desktop SEO, if you have two sites with the same content, and you don’t identify one site as the canonical site that should receive all of the link popularity, Google will identify one site as canonical and suppress the other one.

2. You don’t need a mobile site

With this argument, “mobile web” usually means WAP pages made for simple users. iPhone and other smartphone users have the ability to access full HTML web pages. Search engines on mobile devices will often show these to mobile users, so there’s no mobile specific content to index and rank. Hence, optimizing for mobile users specifically (which historically involves WAP pages and a dotMobi

domain) is a waste of time.

40

Dispelling Mobile myths

Blocking your mobile site from GoogleThe reason why this is harmful in mobile is that a different dynamic is often present in mobile search than desktop search. Mobile search engines return mobile sites in desktop results when appropriate, and desktop results are the default for most smartphones.

Mobile sites are not suppressed, but oftentimes appear alongside of desktop results, giving brands an additional listing on the page for navigational brand searches. If a webmaster blocks one version of the site from the index, particularly in Google, this will result in one less listing in the mobile search results; and one less listing in a condensed, more competitive mobile search result can make brands less visible.

This is also emblematic of another, larger issue in mobile SEO: allowing a mobile-formatted version of your desktop site to be your brand’s only mobile presence.  

If you didn’t invest in mobile at all, you could let users go to a transcoded or un-optimized version of your desktop site, which may not be usable on a mobile device but would probably show up in search results for certain desktop queries.

But if you wanted to optimize your site for search you should be doing mobile-specific keyword research, paying attention to the mobile user experience and including content that is of primary interest to mobile users, which is probably not available on your desktop site.

Add value to the mobile user, control mobile signals like sitemaps, domains/sub-domains, content-type , et al and leave the delivery to the engines for the most natural search visibility.

41

Dispelling Mobile myths

Blocking your mobile site from GoogleWhen it comes to mobile accessibility and white hat SEO, it’s best to ignore the commonly argued worst practice and follow these associated Mobile SEO best practices:

• Don’t block your mobile site from Googlebot and your desktop site from Googlebot mobile

• Don’t make your mobile site exactly the same as your desktop site, but smaller. • Consider the unique mobile context and build a mobile user experience that adds value

to a mobile user, using the queries mobile users will use.

You don’t need a mobile siteIf there were a number of well-optimized mobile sites available for a particular mobile query, it’s unlikely that any desktop results would appear, and the question of whether or not brands need a mobile site might look very different.

The question of whether or not brands who wish to be competitive need a mobile site is a resounding yes.

Of course it’s necessary to ensure that your mobile content adds value beyond your desktop site, but in general for the past several years mobile optimization has been nearly synonymous with mobile content creation.

If you create a well-optimized mobile site, an accessible desktop site and mobile apps, you will be more visible in search results than a company that only makes an accessible desktop site. Follow this best practice instead: Mobile optimization is mobile content creation. If you’re trying to target mobile users, search engines like Google will reward you for providing mobile-specific content.

REFERENCES

This report was developed during three weeks of research in November 2010 and has many websites/experts to thank

The following slides list where the information was discovered

REFERENCESSlide 4 http://www.efrontier.com/research/whitepapers/impact-of-mobile-on-search http://www.forrester.co.uk/rb/Research/western_european_mobile_forecast%2C_2009_to_2014/q/id/53717/t/2 http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/12/eric-schmidt-mobile-is-the-future-and-theres-no-such-thing-as-communication-overload/ http://www.seomoz.org/blog/mobile-carrier-search-results

Slide 5 http://www.efrontier.com/research/whitepapers/impact-of-mobile-on-search

Slide 6 http://mobithinking.com/best-practices/mobile-seo-best-practices http://www.maryamkamvar.com/publications/CHI_08.pdf

Slide7 http://www.seomoz.org/blog/mobile-carrier-search-results http://www.efrontier.com/research/whitepapers/impact-of-mobile-on-search

REFERENCESSlide 8 http://www.mobileinc.co.uk/2010/07/google-dominating-mobile-search-with-98-29-market-share/

Slide9 http://www.brysonmeunier.com/mobile-seo-faq-what-is-mobile-seo/ http://searchengineland.com/has-the-iphone-made-mobile-seo-obsolete-16655

Slide 10 http://www.brysonmeunier.com/mobile-seo-faq-what-is-mobile-seo/ http://searchengineland.com/has-the-iphone-made-mobile-seo-obsolete-16655

Slide11 http://searchengineland.com/has-the-iphone-made-mobile-seo-obsolete-16655

Slide 12 http://searchengineland.com/has-the-iphone-made-mobile-seo-obsolete-16655 http://www.seoprinciple.com/mobile-search-patent-how-google-would-blend-mobile-search-results/17/

REFERENCESSlide 13 http://www.seoprinciple.com/mobile-search-patent-how-google-would-blend-mobile-search-results/17/

Slide14 http://www.seoprinciple.com/mobile-search-patent-how-google-would-blend-mobile-search-results/17/

Slide 15 http://www.seoprinciple.com/mobile-search-patent-how-google-would-blend-mobile-search-results/17/

Slide 16 http://www.3ac.co.uk/local-seo-for-ifas#more-980 http://searchengineland.com/has-the-iphone-made-mobile-seo-obsolete-16655

Slide 17 http://www.3ac.co.uk/local-seo-for-ifas#more-980 http://searchengineland.com/has-the-iphone-made-mobile-seo-obsolete-16655

REFERENCESSlide 18 http://searchengineland.com/has-the-iphone-made-mobile-seo-obsolete-16655

Slide19 http://www.3ac.co.uk/directory-submissions-for-your-domain-seo#more-702 Slide20 http://www.3ac.co.uk/link-building-for-my-mobile-web-development-blog

Slide21 http://www.3ac.co.uk/mobile-web-development-the-basics

Slide 22 http://mobithinking.com/best-practices/mobile-seo-best-practices

Slide 23 http://searchengineland.com/dont-penalize-yourself-mobile-sites-are-not-duplicate-content-40380 24 http://mobithinking.com/best-practices/mobile-seo-best-practices

REFERENCESSlide 24 http://mobithinking.com/best-practices/mobile-seo-best-practices http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=125140

Slide25 http://mobithinking.com/best-practices/mobile-seo-best-practices http://brandingbrand.com/blog/making-sense-of-transcoding-for-mobile/

Slide26 http://mobithinking.com/best-practices/mobile-seo-best-practices http://brandingbrand.com/blog/making-sense-of-transcoding-for-mobile/

Slide27 http://www.w3.org/TR/mobileOK-basic10-tests/

Slide28 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05UMQjbce2o&feature=player_embedded

REFERENCESSlide 29 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05UMQjbce2o&feature=player_embedded

Slide 30 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05UMQjbce2o&feature=player_embedded

Slide 31

http://www.3ac.co.uk/encoding-videos-for-mobile#more-668

Slide 32

http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/the-complete-guide-to-ipod-video-formats-and-display-resolutions/

Slide33

http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/the-complete-guide-to-ipod-video-formats-and-display-resolutions/

REFERENCESSlide 34

http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/the-complete-guide-to-ipod-video-formats-and-display-resolutions/

http://bit.ly/bJEYpW - Ask Slashdot forum

Slide 35

http://bit.ly/bJEYpW - Ask Slashdot forum http://developer.android.com/guide/appendix/media-formats.html http://www.apple.com/iphone/specs.html

Slide 36

http://www.nmk.co.uk/article/2010/8/5/is-local-the-new-global-in-mobile-search-marketing

Slide 37

http://www.nmk.co.uk/article/2010/8/5/is-local-the-new-global-in-mobile-search-marketing http://www.stepforth.com/blog/2010/gamechanging-local-search-results-discovered-google/

REFERENCESSlide 37

http://bit.ly/a6nbpj

http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/1717639/mobile-the-future-location-sensitive-advertising

Slide 38

http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/1717639/mobile-the-future-location-sensitive-advertising

Slide39

http://www.davidmihm.com/local-search-ranking-factors.shtml http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/1705023/local-search-where-are-you-what-do-you-do-part http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/1712532/how-citations-help-local-search

Slide 40

http://www.brysonmeunier.com/less-is-not-more-in-mobile-seo-two-worst-practices-to-avoid/

REFERENCESSlide 41

http://www.brysonmeunier.com/less-is-not-more-in-mobile-seo-two-worst-practices-to-avoid/

Slide 42

http://www.brysonmeunier.com/less-is-not-more-in-mobile-seo-two-worst-practices-to-avoid/

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Twitter: @eldadyogev