Mobile (.mobi) websites are becoming more popular everyday as it is a on-the-move online business tool. Search engine optimization for mobile websites are busy exploding.
Online marketing for mobile websites are not very different from standard Search engine optimization practices. A couple of mobile specific practices can keep your mobile site optimized.
By optimizing your mobile site for search engines you gain an advantage of this new trend. Here is a couple of tips to optimize your mobile website.
Create mobile friendly content
Don’t overpopulate your pages with images, complex menus and use flash. Remember, mobile websites will be viewed in mobile browsers and flash is not compatible with all the new mobile phones. If you have a complex menu system it will be difficult for the user to browse to all your pages. Keep your menu structure easily accessible.
Get indexed by mobile search engines and mobile directories
There is a couple of good mobile search engines and directories available. View below a couple where you can get listed on.
- http://mobionly.mobi/
- http://find.mobi/
- http://mstart.mobi/
- http://www.mobinomy.com/
- http://dir.mobi/
- http://m.mobilewebsite.co.za/
Accessibility
Make sure your mobile content is accessible and user-friendly by following these standards w3c mobile standards and dotMobi web developers guide.
Keep it short and simple
Exactly the same as the heading. Keep the site navigation simple and don’t over populate the content of the pages. The whole website should be easy to read and navigate.
Valid XHTML code
Use only valid XHTML 1.0 code. WML is already phasing out as a programming language and valid XHTML 1.0 is a clean language making it easier for search engine crawlers and bots to view.
Mobile Sitemaps
You can upload your mobile sitemap to Google “Google mobile sitemaps” and “Yahoo mobile submit” to view how many of your mobile website pages are indexed. Anyone knows about MSN?
Normal SEO practices
All the normal on page and off page SEO practices applies to a mobile website as well. Correct title tags, heading <h1> tags, keywords, meta descriptions, etc must be applied as well to the on page SEO factors of. Link building is always a must.
Mobile websites are increasing by the day and if you optimize your mobile website correctly you can enjoy this new technology trend. If you would like more information regarding the development of mobile websites, contact us or leave a comment below.