Mobile SEO involves optimizing websites for mobile searches which have different behaviors than desktop searches such as being more location-based, time-restricted, and featuring shorter searches; best practices include making sites lightweight, mobile-optimized, and location-aware while avoiding pitfalls like competing with desktop sites and relying only on redirects.

1. Mobile SEOby Early StageJune 10th , 2010Bart Van Den Kieboomhttp://www.earlystagegroup.com

2. Meeting AgendaWhatis Mobile SEOSome differences between mobile and desktopMobile search behavior is different than normal searchBest PracticesPitfallsMisconceptions

3. 1. Whatis Mobile SEOIt’s the same as classic SEO… well… almost…Some classic SEO-techniques are just not applicable (interlinking, lot’s of content)

4. 2. Somedifferencesbetween mobile and desktop

5. 3. Mobile searchbehaviourisdifferentthan normal searchVoice search (see Google search as application)

6. Visual search (Augmented reality, Google Goggles)

7. Search suggestion (is much more used)

8. Shorter searches (15 characters on average)

9. Location based

10. Time-restriction (no time to scroll or look on page 2 of the results)

11. Less clickthroughs (interlinking)4. Best practicesThe way to doSmall, lightweightand fast-loading site (< 20kb / page)

12. XHTML Mobile Profile 1.1 Doctype

13. UTF-8 character encoding

14. JPEG / GIF images (PNG kanook)

15. Content including "mobile"

16. On-site keyphraseoptimisationas usual (with a focus on short titles, and small amounts of body copy)

17. Regular technical SEO principles (meta, header, good content, etc…)

18. Create a “handheld.css” (except for iPhone)

19. Allow all user agents to see your mobile site.4. Best practicesThe way to doBuild a mobile sitemap (and link to it from robot.txt)

20. Also submit a site map to google

21. Include “no-transform” cache control in header of traditional site.

22. By preference have “1” site with different CSS-sheets but this is often not possible (for BNPPF for example)

23. Link from the traditional site to the mobile and vice versa (from the HP if possible). Use clear text-links!!

24. Do not forget AdSense and Adwords…

25. Use link relationships between desktop and mobile pages

26. Specify mobile and desktop site in your meta.txt5. PitfallsDo not doYour mobile site might compete with your traditional site

27. The mobile site is (still) outranked (in most cases) by the traditional website.

28. Use redirects after user-agent detection but with honesty (to avoid blacklisting)6. MisconceptionsI need to have a .mobi domain

29. Search engines treat mobile content differently (not yet actually)

30. If mobile content is detected it will cataloged as such but the SEO principles to index the page are almost the same.

31. Choose for an application or a regular site but do not do both? (wrong, apps are still popular and even show up in normal search results)6. WhatcanEarly Stage do for youWrite a best-practices guide

32. Audit the current code

33. Help you to set up a mobile adwords-adsense campaignContactsEARLY STAGEChateau NagelmackersSquare de la Paix 284038 Liègehttp://www.earlystagegroup.comBart Van Den KieboomMobile +32 478 325 374E-mail bart@earlystage.be