Mike The Internet Guy’s Blog

Speakers:
Cindy Krum, Sr SEO Analyst, Blue Moon Works
Gregory Markel, President Infuse Creative
Rachel Pasqua, Director of Mobile Marketing, iCrossing

Cindy Krum
-industry in its infancy
-different bots and crawlers
-slower connections and dropped connections
-very different results pages (check out the chart on BlueMoon’s blog)

Development Best Practices
-code in XHTML for best results
-use external style sheets
-use the link element to attach style sheets, (some don’t recognize @media or @handheld
-use a screen sheet and a mobile sheet
-use display none property to show only on web/mobile.
-iPhone ignores handheld media designation
-there is an iPhone metatag for display

Mobile SEO Best Practices
-follow traditional & Local SEO Best Practices (addresses, etc)
-submit your site to mobile search engines
-don’t rely on embedded images, objects, scripts, frames, flash, pop-ups, mouse overs
-test,test,test simulators and live (http://www.skweezer.net, http://www.opera.com/download)
-test transcoded and non-transcoded versions
-validate your site

Mobile Navigation
-JS navigation will appear in its entirety (not a good user experience) adjust with positioning
-use optimized internal jump links at the top (through mobile CSS)
-have a mobile sitemap
-make telephone numbers and emails clickable with tel tag and mailto tag inside hrefs

Gregory Markel
-no longer a WAP/MOBI world, true web browsers are we we are heading
-opera has a good resource for tweaking existing site to be mobile friendly
-also maybe mobile search is really about voice and not web browsers at all (Goog 411, Tell Me, 800 Free 411)
-.mobi has basically been ignored and disappeared, just check mobile search results on Google, Yahoo
-mobile is is a ‘one-web’ experience
-most companies taking a ‘m.’ subdomain extension in place for a mobile site (check youtube for example, m.youtube.com)
-data speeds are increasing, therefore making it better to take the traditional web ‘mobile’.
-provides many resources in his slides, will try to download soon

Rachel Pasqua
-2.3 billion mobile subscribers globally
-Is there a mobile audience? 22% of mobile users are according to iCrossing study
-The mobile users are strongest in 20-29 age group
-the users wanted maps/directions, weather, local information (entertainment), sports
-study showed users were going off deck to search (Google, or Yahoo)
-you shouldn’t try to squeeze all of wireline site into mobile site, you need to show content and context

When Building Mobile Site
-code to W3C standards
-seperate content from layout
-keep file size under 20k

Best Practices for Copywriting
-shorter copy, keyword rich opy 3-7% density
-use descriptive navigational links

Best Practices for coding and structure
-meta tags and on-page content is very important since links are less reliable in mobile
-but you should build links
-don’t place content in JS

Best Practices for Design
-streamlined design
-observe 3 clicks rule
-utilize handset access keys for navigation
-contact info in global footers
-avoid linking mobile site to non-mobile site (very questionable in my opinion)
-test on live handsets and live networks (same phone could be different via different carriers)

Getting Found
-84% of people expected frequently visited sites to have mobile version
-you need to avoid the transcoding trap, transcoded versions exist on Google rather than your site
-you can alert the engines by using mobile sitemap and also code in head section of site (see slides for snippet)
-you need to either use device detection with redirects, promote a separate URL, or …
-you can also submit to mobile sites (gave large list)

MMA will release best practices for mobile search soon

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