SEO for Mobile Websites- Part 2
12th September 2008 by Joe Bursell
Now that we’ve covered the key elements of mobile search (browser technologies, screen size and search intent) we can delve a bit deeper into how to optimise for mobile search.
The slickest method for creating a mobile site is to create a mobile-dedicated style sheet to present the site in the right format for their device/browser. For guidance have a look at w3c’s advice. Typically the mobile css can be implemented like this:
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="handheld" href="mobile.css" />, in the <head></head>.
So, now we understand how to make site’s work for mobile, what can you do to optimise them?
Here are some mobile SEO tips and techniques:
* Use a Google Mobile Site Map
* Link with relevant, good quality mobile websites
* Set up a "send to phone" option on your main web site, so that the link to your mobile site can be delivered direct to a ‘phone.
* Implement some mobile analytics to measure the site’s performance- regular analytics tools just don’t work- for a variety of reasons, all related to the inability of mobile browsers to handle cookies, log files, or even JavaScript.
* Create and promote a mobile bar code for your site- many mobile devices have code readers- scanning the code reveals a URL, or whatever information you want to encode in it- here’s one for this