Mobile SEO

According to a recent article at msearchgroove.com, AOL has great plans for mobile search.

As usual, the Peggys (MSG’s Peggy Albright and Peggy Anne Salz) offer a thorough analysis, illustrated by this tidbit:

Overall, AOL revealed substantial growth plans through 2009. The company intends to offer desktop and/or mobile services in 40 countries by end-2009 (up from 29 countries/regions where AOL offers its search services - in most countries this is desktop search - as of October 2007). Expect this to change as mobile gains traction across countries. In line with this trend, AOL told us it has particularly high hopes for the rapid growth of the mobile search/advertising space in these regions - and we are inclined to conclude they are indeed well-positioned to benefit from this growth.

They report that AOL is depending on the iPhone to fuel the company’s growth along with their customized search page for the Blackberry. AOL is also working on customized search products for the Google Android and Symbian devices.

Hopefully, the folks at AOL are serious about becoming a major player in mobile search. It would be a shame to go to all this effort just to make the company more attractive to potential suitors.

Last time I featured Cindy Krum’s position on the death of the .mobi, but Bryson Meunier is telling us to hang in there and Redirect Your dotMobi.

While acknowledging their role in promoting the mobile web, Meunier points out that having the same content on your mobile site and your dot com site may actually harm your rankings.

From an SEO standpoint, if you already own a dotcom domain, hosting your mobile site at the dotMobi might even hurt you, as doing so doesn’t’ take advantage of site factors like age of domain and link popularity that could help your site become more visible in search engines. As it is, there’s currently no evidence that dotMobi is a mobile search quality signal for the most popular mobile search engines or that dotMobi sites do better in search results. There is some evidence, however, that like any new domain in search results without the benefit of age and link popularity, they do worse.

His recommendation? Keep your dotMobi or mobile subdomain and permanently redirect it to your dot com domain. He even offers an excellent illustration of his way of thinking.

Krum and Meunier both have excellent points to make, and it will be interesting to see how this all plays out.

An interesting session at this week’s SES San Jose conference carried this ominous title: Mobile SEO: Death of the ‘.mobi’.

Unfortunately, my budget prevented my attendance at the meeting, however, an interview with Cindy Krum by Andrew published at Domain Name Wire,  gives us a pretty good idea of the meat of session. Krum was listed as one of the three speakers. She spends her working hours as director of new media strategies with Blue Moon Works, Inc.

While stopping short of saying the .mobi should never be used nor any mobile subdomain, she had this to offer:

… but I am convinced that .mobis have a limited usefulness which is quickly diminishing, as mobile browsers and mobile data delivery improve. There may still be a few instances where a .mobi is desirable, but for the most part you would be better off making your existing website work on mobile phones. Read the rest of this entry →

Bena Roberts is reporting that Jump Tap is about to launch a mobile keyword selection tool. Let’s hope it works much better than the one they had hidden at the at&t developer site.

Didn’t know about that one? I’m not surprised. It was buried so deep that Bryson Meunier made a post several months ago on “How to Find the Jumptap Mobile Keyword Tool.” Always up for a challenge I followed meunier’s six steps and found the tool (after signing up and passing off valuable personal information).

I put it to the test and found it somewhat lacking. All of the data returned was from September 2007, not exactly current, but somewhat useful.

Read the rest of this entry →

Mobile SEO workshop is in the works during IIR’s Mobile Content conference Nov. 18-21 in London.

Peggy Anne Salz of msearchgroove.com has been tapped to head up the workshop and she is recruiting “the best and the brightest mobile SEO firms and practitioners to participate in the five interactive sessions available.”

Salz identified the following topics for the five sessions:

• Identifying And Understanding Critical Factors In Achieving Search Optimisation On Mobile
• Analysing The Role Of Indexing In Mobile SEO
• Examining The Importance Of Mobile Web Analytics In Delivering Mobile SEO
• Dissecting The Anatomy Of Mobile Search Results
• Examining How To Overcome The Challenges Of Mobile Search Transcoding

She requests that anyone wishing to lead a session contact her peggy[AT]msearchgroove[DOT]com.

In addition, Salz is putting together “a list of thought leaders and firms specialized in mobile SEO and mobile PPC.” To be included in her list, shoot her an email.

Since most American SEOs are lagging way behind their European and Asian counterparts, this should be considered a “must attend” event.

David Mihm has posted a most excellent recap of the recent SMX Local/Mobile conference. It is so good, in fact, that any comments from MobileMan on what he has to say would not add much.

However, I will talk a bit about Yahoo! Local.

Right now, and for the foreseeable future, local is where it’s at on the mobile web, therefore, it is important to get your mobile website listed in Yahoo! Local. It’s simple to do and it could bring in the business.

At the Yahoo! Local web site, scroll down to the footer and click on the link for “Add a business” under “Local Resources.”

Fill in all the blanks for Business Name, Address, Phone Number, City, State, Zip, and, most importantly, Web Site URL. If you have a separate URL for your mobile site, you might want to list that one. If you use a script to direct visitors to your mobile site or your regular site, simply add the URL for your web site.

Next up is Categories. Type a few words in the box, and a list of suggestions appears. If your web site fits nicely with an existing site (and chances are it will), click on that one.

Don’t forget to click on the link for “Additional Information.” Here you can enter additional phone numbers, including fax and toll-free, credit cards accepted, hours of operation, and much more. Fill out as much as you can.

Type in the code to verify your submission and that’s it.

Of course, be truthful with your information. As it says at the top of the page: “All data is subject to review and may take some time to appear on the site.”

If your business depends on phone calls, you will want to optimize the numbers with the proper code. Check out scriptygoddess for the code to make phone numbers clickable. Note that the Apple iPhone uses a different code, so try it out first.

More teenage girls have mobile phones than their male counterparts, according to a report released by Multimedia Intelligence and reported by Sarah Reedy at Telephone Online.

She writes:

… last year 91% of 17-year-old girls in the U.S. had cell phones — higher than the 78% of 17-year-old boys that owned one. This disparity was exacerbated after the age of 13, when 57% of all teenagers had a mobile device.

The growth in teen girls’ mobile interest was steady from ages 13 to 17, whereas teenage males had a strong take-up only at age 13 and age 16. In 2006, one million 13-year-old teen boys had cell phones, more than 40% higher than the 12-year-old teen boy segment. Last year, that number grew to 1.6 million, almost 30% higher than 15-year-old males. Females ages 15 to 16, on the other hand, only had a difference of 6%.

What are we to make of this?

For one thing, as you optimize your web site for mobile, keep in mind that a large auidence out there are of the female persuasion and you might just benefit if you try to tap into that market.

comScore M:Metrics has issued a news release touting data that shows “iPhone users surpass all others in mobile media usage, with more than 80 percent of iPhone users in France, Germany and the UK using the device to browse news and information on the mobile Web, compared to 32 percent of other smartphone users.”

Sounds impressive, but what they don’t tell us is the numbers. iPhone still has such a small market share that the 32 percent of other smartphone users still probably greatly outnumbers the 80 percent of iPhone users.

How about releasing some meaningful statistics?

The latest version of Bango Analytics is “designed to help website owners measure the value of mobile sites by accurately counting unique visitors browsing their site.”

Here is how they do it:

Capturing an accurate picture of the number of unique visitors is more complex on mobile than on the PC web. Cookies aren’t reliable on mobile phones and IP addresses belong to the network operator rather than the end user.

For each individual that clicks on an ad or browses a site, a privacy protected Bango User ID is created, compiled through sophisticated WAP gateway profiling, data from browser analysis, session information and network interactions. This unique user ID enables Bango to distinguish between new and repeat users and therefore quantify precisely the number of unique visitors.

The new site analysis feature is easy to implement - one line of html code is placed in each page to be tracked without the need to install anything on the server. A site summary report provides a high level view on the key metrics for a mobile website, including unique visitor numbers so it’s easy to see how the mobile site is performing.

Bango Analytics operates as a hosted service, allowing mobile website owners anywhere in the world to connect their sites to the Analytics service in minutes and start getting results free of charge for up to 100,000 page visits per month.

In two separate polls Yahoo! Mail tops the list as the most popular mobile web destination. (After clicking the link, scroll down to find the charts.)

A poll by the Direct Marketing Association shows Yahoo! Mail followed by The Weather Channel, Yahoo!, Mapquest and Google.

The poll by Nielson Mobile has Google Search in the No. 2 spot, followed by The Weather Channel, MSN Hotmail and Gmail.

The DMA study shows those most willing to respond to mobile marketing efforts are:

• Males 15-30
• Heads of larger households
• Those with incomes over $60,000
• Data plan subscribers

Good info to keep in mind as you develop your marketing plans for mobile devices.