Mobile SEO: To be or not to be

When will it be the year of the mobile? Media people have been asking this question for several years.

More importantly, from my perspective, will mobile SEO become a major part of my role within Search? With what seems like a major reluctance to commission small screen pages and/or a convergence of browser developers shoe-horning the desktop web on to my small screen; mobile SEO is fast becoming a speciality that was never required.

The alternative is stiring up some debate here at my agency. Apple’s iPhone, alongside the eagerly awaited Google G1 [running Android], both offer a new solution to usability - the application.

Only last week; I was discussing with one of my clients, Robin Auld at Domino’s Pizza, the emergence of iPhone traffic exposed by their web analytics and how best to realise this opportunity. The solution, however, is not necessarily a simple web-based one. With a successful e-commerce business Domino’s will need to deliver the same, efficient user expereince across the mobile. And this is most probably where applications will win the day.

But all is not lost. The user will have to discover the application from somewhere. No doubt - SEO will retain the same important role - driving visibility across Search to an audience thirsty for mobile convenience. Fortunately the client agrees. Phew!

First Links Are The Deepest: In Any SEO Speak

Link reputation is critical to your search engine optimisation—the topicality and trustworthiness of the linking site, the backlink anchor text concentration and your link acquisition trends are all key off-page factors that influence your own site’s authority and hence its Web Search rankings. But are there any parallels that can be drawn on the Mobile Web?

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Yahoo! will transcode oneSearch click-through

Novarra - a leading provider of wireless platforms - have announced a partnership with Yahoo! Mobile to provide transcoding for their oneSearch service.

oneSearch is a search facility integrated into Yahoo! Mobile’s portal application - Go 2.0 - with a remit to “understand the type of search you’re doing and optimise the results accordingly” … based on what you’re actually doing in the portal.

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W3C Release Candidate Recommendation

Since the 2004 co-operation agreement - entered into by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) - both browser and content developers have been waiting for this progress milestone.

Last Friday, 13th July 2007, marked the release of the Candidate Recommendation for XHTML Basic 1.1.

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Linking Shortfall for Mobile Optimisation

The feedback from MoMoNY Mobile SEO panel discussion has been very positive — and as expected, brought to light some interesting topics.

One of the concerns raised — which is contributing to the low level of content discovery across the Mobile Web — is the lack of outbound linking by mobile webmasters. This prompted me to do some basic (non-scientific) comparisons.

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Mobilizing Your Website

Since declaring this blog open a couple of colleagues have suggested that I mobilize the site using an online service, so I thought I’d do a quick review of what’s currently available.

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Latest UK Mobile Local Search Figures

January - March 2007

Stumbled over some interesting figures released by m-spatial - a leading UK mobile local search platform - for Quarter 1.

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Mobile Web defined in terms of Markup Language

The ‘Mobile Web’ consists [ mostly ] of three types of Markup Language that we need to know about:

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Hoschka Calls For Concerted Effort

Over at the MWI Team Blog, Philipp Hoschka, co-founder and leader of the W3C Mobile Web Initiative, puts forward a coherent outline of the Mobile Web’s full potential.

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MobileMonday New York - June 25

A panel discussion dedicated to Mobile SEO will take place at Samsung’s Experience Center, New York, on Mobile Monday 25th June.

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