I have split the Blog into three main sections:
1) Best practice for Mobile SEO.
2) What to do when you can’t follow best practice.
3) The future of Mobile SEO.
Mobile search engines have different indexing algorithms compared to their desk top equivalent. These algorithms are getting more and more advanced as mobile and tablet usage increases.
Googlebot-mobile, for example, uses different user agents that can imitate different mobile handsets. Search engine results on Google can be different dependant on which handset makes the query, or more specifically which browser the query comes from. If certain pages don’t render well for particular devices it can affect their ranking at that granular level. One of the strongest signals that mobile search engines use over standard ones is "bounce rate". It is a good natural indicator for determining the quality of the mobile rendering when this data is compared to the user agent.
Mobile SEO Hint #1 – Ensure that your site renders on a wide range of phones quickly.
Mobile SEO is not fundamentally different to SEO for desk to devices. All of the best practice advice is just as relevant. There are just some extra ingredients to remember when specifically targeting SEO for mobile devices.
The Key Considerations:
Mobile Site Map
Google can handle specific mobile site maps and has a specific tool for creating them.
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=34648 . Reference this mobile site map in your robot.txt file as you would the standard site map. Google can use this as a guide, I would also monitor it in webmaster tools for any errors it may throw up.
Mobile Style Sheets
If you use a mobile style sheet you can change your existing site page templates so that they render better on mobile devices. The "display:none" attribute to hide content that is not needed or not suitable for a mobile device. Most mobile phones will automatically pull in a mobile style sheet called “handheld.css”.
Just remember the "display:none" does not change the page mark-up. If you have a huge image in your html and use your mobile style sheet to hide it, it still gets loaded by mobiles it just doesn't get displayed.
I always recommend from a purest SEO point of view, not to have a separate mobile site, but to use CSS to modify the existing site to be more suited for a mobile device. This process uses all of the SEO value your site has developed. Therefore, there are no dangers of duplicate content.
I did say most phones will use the “handheld.css”, of course Apple do their own thing. I-phones can render most site pages well but if you want there to be a difference between what is rendered on an Apple device and your desktop device, you will need to create a style sheet specifically for this and name it “iphone.css”. The “handheld.css” will work for the Ipad 1 & 2 with the following slight tweak:
<link rel="stylesheet" media="only screen and (max-device-width: 1024px)" href="../ipad.css" type="text/css" />
Coding
The best practice of coding for mobiles is to stick to strict XHTML. Although it won’t guarantee success, it will give you the best chance of rendering across the widest range of handsets. Javascript will work on some phones but I would be very careful with it, flash of course is still a big no no.
It is some times the case where the best practice SEO site is not always possible. I.E; large poorly coded sites, sites that don’t use external style sheets, or other internal reasons. If you have no choice but to create a mobile take in the following considerations:
Creating a Mobile Specific Site
The risk of a mobile site is that your new sub domain or domain is going to be competing with an established site, most probably with better authority online. It is unlikely at first that the mobile site will out-rank the desk top site on mobile devices.
A simple PHP script that detects the user agent can redirect mobile users to the mobile site. I personally don’t like this, and always click on the option to view the non-mobile site version if it is offered. I use an Iphone4 and find the vast majority of sites render well and this is simply not needed. Although Google has said it will not treat this script as cloaking, it has historically been used to trick search engines so use carefully. Using this will mean however that your mobile site will have little SEO value, but mobile users will see your mobile site over the desk top one. If you are running this script it is worth considering the canonical attribute to pass any mobile page value back to the main (non-mobile) site.
This technique will work well, unless your PHP script is deemed as dodgy by the search engines and you have to remove it. You will then be left with a mobile site with no SEO value. Your risk but it is not a huge risk.
Using Mobile Specific Platforms
From an SEO point of view, stay way from having your mobile site being a sub domain of another TLD. E.g. Yourwebsite.mobile-hosting-domain.com.
This maybe a cheap option, but it is cheap because it is bad for the following reasons:
1. You are building up the domain quality for the mobile-hosting-domain.com site, not your own.
2. If you ever fall out with mobile-hosting-domain.com you will loose your domain. They will most likely not 301 redirect any of your migrated pages and you will be back at the beginning for not only your mobile site, but also its value on the web.
3. Major duplicate competing content worries between mobile and desktop site.
There is the possibility of relying on user agent detection to push mobile users to the mobile version of your site and then
The Future of Mobile Search
Personalisation – Phones are rarely shared unlike desktop computers. In my opinion mobile algorithms are going to really feature personalisation as a strong element.
Geographical – Although you need to set your location in Googles mobile search I doubt this will always be the case. If it is a mobile search query, your location will be a very important factor in the results that are returned to you.
Applications – Major sites such as Ebay, linkedin, Facebook and Urbanspoon all have search results within their own applications. Applications are important for users that have regular and very specific queries, but I am not sure how valuable they will be with more generic queries and searches.
Twitter: @MartinMcAndrew
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