If you are serious about your search engine optimization and online marketing strategies; you should definitely be contemplating Mobile SEO. With cell phone technology providing the ability for subscribers to search, visit, view and buy online it is going to be crucial to ensure your site is optimized for mobile phones.
Requirements For Successful Mobile SEO
In order to really optimize your site for mobile users, the first step is to ensure your website is mobile compliant. What does that mean? It means that your pages are formatted for mobile cell phone users.
Mobile users are limited with time and screen space so your pages should be created to cater to these users. If you are unsure of what your site looks like when converted to the mobile web platform, perform a mobile search for your site and check it out. You will notice that much of your graphics, layout, bells and whistles are simply disabled, turned off and unavailable; when looking at your site through the eyes of a mobile platform, ask yourself a few questions:
- Is the information most important to your site at the top?
- Is your navigation still available?
- Are the font sizes correct?
- Does your page visibly look good?
If these answers are no, you are not ready for this newly emerging technology.
Mobile phone web pages are created in WML or XHTML and must be W3C compliant. There are new doc types available to place on your pages specifically for cell phone optimized pages, this doctype looks like this:
< !DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//WAPFORUM//DTD XHTML Mobile 1.0//EN” “http://www.wapforum.org/DTD/xhtml-mobile10.dtd”>
When optimizing your website for cell phones, PDA’s and other mobile devices you must think about the amount of space available on the users screen.
Mobile Search Marketing Tips to Consider:
Keep your content short and relevant
Create short titles
Make sure your pages are able to be scrolled through easily
How Popular Is Mobile Search
Right now the top industries who are benefiting from mobile search are currently travel, business and entertainment industries. Although mobile search is in it’s infancy, major search engines realize the potential of this emerging new venue and revenue stream. Recently Nokia Mobile selected Yahoo! to provide search results to their subscribers. Microsoft is the default browser and search engine for all windows mobile PDA’s and mobile devices.
A recent study conducted by the Mobile Marketing Association cites that of those surveyed, those who used mobile search most had an annual income of $50,000 to $75,000.
Mobile search technology is truly in it’s infancy and optimizing pages now can put your site ahead of your competitors; providing an incredible edge.
Your client’s site is now ranking for some great keywords and is drawing a decent amount of traffic. You have ample traffic and your clients are fairly happy. Could you be missing anything? As a Search Engine Optimization Professional working on the prestigious “Little Red Wagon” account, you couldn’t be happier. You have hit keywords relating extremely well to the red wagon industry but is there something you’re missing? Are you missing the “where” in your wagon?
Have a look at the initial strategies regarding the Little Red Wagon Account:
1. It’s a Red Wagon
2. It’s the CLIENT’s red wagon
3. Who Uses Red Wagons
4 Types of Red Wagons
5. Different Red Wagon Uses
6. Product Benefits: It’s Red, The Wheels Stay On, etc.
7. What’s missing here?
Pitch to Local Traffic Using the SEO Geographic Strategy
What’s missing is local traffic. SEO Professional Companies use local traffic to their advantage and enjoy the extra traffic (and conversions) this kind of marketing brings. However, it is amazing how many SEO companies miss this strategy completely. High local SE rankings are easier to obtain than broad search rankings. Even better, local searches are likely conversions.
Think in terms of where the product is available and add possible places where outlaying customers live. Optimize for: provinces, states, counties, major cities, small cities, towns and half a-dot on local maps.
Geographic Targeting, The Hometown Advantage
The h1 tag is a great place to introduce local and regional names that will draw the additional traffic you want. You can also use Google regional ads (shown only to specific states, cities, or region of your choice.) Think also about Local Pay Per Click Campaigns. PPC can focus your ad marketing to a ditch along Main Street, if necessary. When you target local traffic, you give your client additional rankings for less-competitive city, county or state searches. This really is “The hometown advantage.”
Don’t target all areas at once. Let each page target no more than 3 or 4 local regions. If your client has distributors or representatives in different counties or cities, their individual pages are ideal for geographic optimization. Be clear- don’t be overly repetitive with your geo- targeting text; and use that h1 to your advantage. Geo-searches are a goldmine…take the time to pan for local customers.
When preparing for any form of online marketing, it is important to be able to accurately identify your competitors. Often times your competitor for a brick and mortar shop will not be who you’re competing with online. In fact, your top competitors may not even be located in the same state.
Completing a comprehensive competitor analysis allows you to truly see who you are up against; allowing you the ability to devise a strategy for success.
SEO Competitor Analysis
In order to begin your competitor analysis for an SEO campaign, you must first identify the keywords that are important to your website. Your competitors are really based on the sites that are already ranking for the keywords that are important to your sites success. They may or may not be the same competitors from your pay per click campaign or other forms of online marketing.
Research, Analyze, Strategize
The key to your success will be to research, analyze and strategize how to affectively beat them at their own game, or simply join them in their successes!
Research: With organic search engine optimization there are some key areas that they look at, they then compare your site to your competitors to determine if your site deserves a top ten ranking. Researching your organic search marketing competitors allows you to visually see what areas of your site need help. The most important thing you can do is to be honest with yourself. If you see a deficiency within your site based on your research; you need to improve it; otherwise obtaining top ten rankings and beating your competitors will simply be a dream.
Analyze: Review your research, learn from it and begin to think of ways to overcome the issues you see. If you selected all broad keywords with millions of competitors; your journey to success will be an uphill battle.
We recommend selecting a gentle mix of broad search terms (approximately 20%) and targeted search terms (approximately 80%). This allows you to achieve success with the targeted phrases now while working towards that 20%.
One great thing to point out is that if you ensure that your keywords are topically related or well themed, then the work you do on the targeted search terms will actually start helping those broad search terms at the same time!
Strategize: Now that you know the areas that need work, it’s time to put together a plan of action. The first thing you want to do is grab some paper and start looking at the following:
Area: First identify the area within your site that needs work. It may be content, pages, indexing issues, page rank, inbound links, outbound links, link structure etc.
Correction: Second, you will want to identify the correction. If it is not enough inbound links, then the correction would be to increase your inbound links. If the area is not enough relevant content, then the correction is to create more relevant content.
Resources: Third, you will want to look at your resources. If your site doesn’t have a good directory structure or page naming schema; are you able to correct this? Do you have time? Do you need to hire someone?
If your site needs more relevant content then you need more relevant content added to your site. Are you comfortable creating new content regularly for your site? Do words flow easily from your mind to your website? Can you achieve the amount needed to compete with your competitors?
If you are finding that you are not the right resource then you may need to hire an SEO company, an SEO Copywriter or qualified link developer; and work on the areas you are comfortable with. You may also decide to outsource it all to ensure it gets done right the first time. The key is making the decision and making sure you take action.
Reaping the Benefits of Competition Analysis
Once you have identified the areas where your competitors are excelling, you can work to bringing your site to the same level. The ultimate goal is to be seen as equal to organic search marketing competitors in the areas that are most important to the search engines.
One thing that you will find throughout this is that the same thing the search engines want from you is the same thing that visitors want from you! By correcting the deficiencies within your site, you will start to see that you are improving the quality of your visitor’s experience.
If you use an analytics program to track visitors and page views (which we highly recommend) then you will probably notice that the average number of pages viewed per visitor will increase, conversions will begin to increase and ultimately an increase in sales should follow soon after.
ad:tech is a worldwide technology and interactive advertising conference and exhibition. Attendees can listen to keynote speakers, take part in topic driven panel discussions and participate in workshops that teach the tools and techniques they need to compete in a changing world.
ad:tech London is taking place September 24th and 25th, 2008.
JustSearch UK, sister company to Getupdated Internet Marketing USA, will be exhibiting at ad:tech London.
Complementing their expertise in natural search engine optimization (SEO) with services such as PPC and Web Analytics, Just Search is able to offer their United Kingdom clients the complete Internet marketing solution.
Just Search has become the UK’s leading Search Engine Marketing Company since its formation in 2003. After the acquisition with Swedish company GetUpdated in November 2007, Just Search was able to add to their 650 active UK clients by offering a global service from offices in London, Stockholm, Florida, France and Germany.
If you will be attending ad:tech London you can visit JustSearch at booth 234.
