Mobile SEO

Mobile SEO easier said than done

Two questions keep arising as conduct my analysis on mobile SEO.

The first is “the market isn’t ready and only adult has a space in SEO right now”.

The second is that mobile SEO is only a short term variety performance waiting for real devices such as the iPhone to catch-up with the mass market.  

 

Both questions are relevant and joint at the hip. The fact of the matter is that the market for mobile SEO is still early. Adult content and the adult market IS the tipping point of the mobile web and SEO right now. The fact of the matter is that mobile search engines are continuing to evolve and develop and spikes in traffic are usually governed my immense mobile advertising campaigns.

 

Answering the second question is tougher. Mobile devices are mission critical for mobile. But the double edged sword is the tossup between great site or basic site at the top of search engines. I don’t claim to have the answer for this one. But I will say the mobile site is vital for search engine optimisation and without it – you won’t be found.

 

No. Actually I lie. Without a mobile you might be found in searches of the “web” on your mobile device but you are not guaranteed an optimised viewing experience.  But the questions above that one hears often – are only one part of the mobile SEO experience.

 

Now, I don’t consider myself a preacher for mobile SEO, but what I have found this momentous past year is that achieving effective mobile SEO results is not a given.  In fact,  it is not as easy as it seem and I urge users to be weary of parting with money freely for the chance of global mobile eyeballs.

 

The reason for this is my broken back of hard work in the past year. I felt slight tipsy, when I managed to get one of the leading newspapers in the UK to the top of all the mobile search engines on 3 different keywords in December 2008. My tipsy feeling turned an evil green by March when all my hard work had vanished due to changes from key search engines and obvious buying search keyword campaigns from competitors.

 

Now, I am the first to say that buying traffic is great. But it is a short term strategy as there is no SEO weight once the campaign finishes. Brands find themselves lost in the world of the mobile web once more. 

Saying that obviously brands and agencies prefer the “get rich quick” approach.  If I had a new campaign or a phone to sell – I probably would too.

 

But what the mobile ad campaigns do not answer is discovery. Paid search is considered to be a discovery tool but in reality the mobile web just isn’t the space or the place where links, juice, meta-data and all other online techniques thrive or drive success.

 

Many of you may contest this – but it has been one hard year of learning.  Mobile SEO IS hard, hard work.  There is also no mobile SEO without a strong social media marketing push.  Social Media mobile SEO is the best for driving traffic and for testing keywords in an early stage campaign. 

 

On top of that conducting a mobile SEO campaign in a week or month is also virtually impossible. Anyone pushing these tactics should be viewed with caution. Long term content driven strategies are the only way forward in the mobile domain.

 

Anyway in my ramblings I am forgetting the point of my post. The fact of the matter is that there is no magic in mobile.  There is no magic in the mobile web and as I celebrate one year of visibility mobile I realise what we have learnt, had to re-learn, test and master has been incredible.

 

We are not there yet and I look forward to another year of learning, ups and downs and our change of focus from content SEO to solely mobile publishing, mobile barcode and sporting mobile SEO.  

 

Mobile SEO helpdesk: Frames in mobile sites

Mobile SEO helpdesk?

... well at least it feels like I am running a mobile SEO helpdesk.  After writing about my charity situation I have been inundated with emails and requests.

 

Like I said before, I can’t answer everything. But one problem seems to be very very common.  It is the issue of frames on a website.  Now this is very dear to my heart as when I was starting out a few years ago – this problem hit me on the head like a hammer and I had no idea what to do.

 

I had a killer mobile site.  Top Mobile OK marks but the minute I re-directed it to my new domain  name  frames appeared and I went to a ready.mobi score of 2.

 

This seems to be happening a lot (based on the number of emails I received – 6). So this is what you do.

 

When you use a site creation company to create your mobile site – it is NOT enough to simply re-direct a URL to that site.

Domains need to have a DNS A Name record.  If they don’t the host (e.g. GoDaddy) can add frames to your mobile site.

Once you have this A Name record – you need to point it to the server of the host.  So this is NOT GoDaddy but any one of the mobile site creation companies you have chosen.

I use GoDaddy and have done this in easy steps:

1.       Get the A Name record from your mobile site creation company

2.       Go to your domain provider

3.       Go into domain manager

4.       Select your domain

5.       Look for total DNS control or DNS control

6.       If you cant find anything search for ARecord (all together)

7.       When you see it click on it to change

8.       Replace the address there with the one given to you by your mobile site company

9.       Wait up to 24 hours

10.   All done.

Your site will be back to normal and mobile ready!

Ultra simple mobile seo for beginners

GoMo News and visibility mobile love helping those in the charity sector. So, when I got this email from the owner of a charity in Germany - I had to respond.  I have translated this from the German original as best I could.

Question:Bena. Your site Mobile SEO News came to the top of my Google search on SEO in Mobile and I wondered if you could help me?

We are a charity in Bayern and I know you are based in Seeheim-Jugenheim - is there a very low cost way to take my site to mobile?  Will you consider doing it for us for free?  Do I need a mobile site or just to mobile search my online site.

Bena's Answer: Hi. Thanks for your email. As you can imagine I get a lot of emails requesting me to help them and I can't help everyone for free.  But I took a look at your site and taking it mobile or getting it in search results will be very easy.

Before I answer, I want you to think what you want from a mobile site. Is it just to be mobile or do you want to get customers, do SMS services that can make your charity money?  I can only help when you know what you want. But I can suggest the following if you are nowhere on mobile at the moment.

You have 5 graphics on the page and not too much content.  The site is a very simple blog.  To get it onto mobile you can use a rendering engine like Skweezer (www.skweezer.com) and then redirect your online site to your mobile site or promote it via a mobile button (Mippin www.mippin.com will also do this for you)

But if you want to get instant benefits on mobile for SEO- follow these simple steps:

Create an XML feed (pointing to your content)

Dont worry about your pictures - mobile sites should be very clean and as a start just getting your content mobilised will help you.

Go to a free mobile site creation company - zinadoo www.zinadoo.com , wapple www.wapple.net , mofuse www.mofuse.com , winksite www.winksite.com  and make a site with our your feed and then submit a sitemap (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sitemaps) to Google see here: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=34627

Just for you I have created a feed for you and a sitemap to submit to Google- see attached.

When you do this - I would start mobile search submission see here: http://www.mobileseonews.com/2008/12/mobile-search-e.html

OK, its not rocket science and its the very basics but I hope it helps any true beginners.

Presentation on visibility mobile, mobile seo

This is the full version of a presentation I created last year. It is now my task to renew and refresh it with real live case studies - metatxt and the launch of our first ever mobile search wizard (which 20 webmasters downloaded on the first day of launch alone last week - huge thanks).

SEO for Mobile by visibility mobile

View more presentations from Bena Roberts.

SEO Mobile Myth – busted

So many people have contacted me or visibility mobile over the past few weeks. Many of them have congratulated us. Others have dismissed what we are doing as a short term interim solution for the mobile web. Some have even questioned the need for SEO on mobile sites.

 

So, firstly, thank-you for all the congratulations – last year was an amazing year for me and my experience in mobile and working on projects for all sorts of brands large and small has just opened my eyes to another world of mobile search possibilities.

 

Secondly, in all honesty, I love feedback good or bad. Mobile SEO might be the interim solution for the mobile web. But, you know what. If it serves a purpose and it gets brands top placement and makes the whole ecosystem grow... then so be it.  I love the mobile web and anything that helps it succeed can only be a good thing.

 

But if there is one thing that I can prove is that mobile SEO is vital. To quote Steve Wing from the Guardian, “if you can’t be found online then you don’t exist” (see http://www.gomonews.com/mma-brands-and-agencies-event-at-bafta-london-with-ba-the-guardian-and-ogilvy/)

So, this is my attempt to bust at least one myth.

 

What is the myth?

Simple web design with the right name and anchor text will get you to the top of mobile search engines.

 

Answer: Wrong!

 

I created a mobile site: m.gomo.zinadoo.com (now one year old - redirected to m.gomonews.com for 3 months)

 

It is an ultra simple mobile site – it is just under one year old today. I indexed it in one place only – but that is all I did – bar doing a search on ready.mobi (also an indexing tool I heard) for the site.

 

I decided to rely on the fact it is a simple site to get me found.

 

Just under one year later – nothing.

 

Yes. Nothing. The site is nowhere. Even when it was redirected to the gomonews.com domain.

 

What does this mean?

Don’t assume.  Don’t rely on anything and a little bit of effort or (if you have a Zinadoo site using our SEO Wizard or a webmaster our SEO tool) you can achieve results within weeks.

Mobile SEO Hands On Workshop - London May 29th

I am in London from May 27 to May 29 and in my boots as the President of visibility mobileI am interested in giving a one-day workshop on mobile SEO.

What type of workshop?

Basically a workshop for anyone in mobile content or the mobile web that needs more organic traffic.

This will be my fourth workshop and I haven't had any complaints yet!

It will cover what the basic principles (plus) of mobile SEO and anyone that takes the course will come out prepared and ready to increase the organic value of their brand's mobile sites.

All other details to follow - but let me know if you are free to attend on that day and I will send you all the details on cost, location.

bena@visibilitymobile.com

The visibility mobile SEO wizard on Zinadoo in pictures

Interest in our mobile SEO wizard is increasing daily. The first week since launch is over and in one month I want to publish a press release on uptake.

I did some Twitter analysis and the mention of our mobile SEO product with Zinadoo was RT'd or re-tweeted 35 times.

The press release on the world's first mobile seo tool was RT'd 40 times.

My article on the Three Mobile marketing steps was liked on Facebook and RT'd 15 times.

I am very very grateful to anyone that helped to promote the services last week!  Any promotion is great and anyone that didn't promote it - please try it first to test the benefits and see what you think!

Anyway - I did a short post on this on GoMo News - but here are the simple steps needed to use the online SEO tool with Zinadoo.  Once again, visibility mobile is looking for partners for the tool and also we are meeting some huge brands for greater deployment but would love to help some mobile start-ups be found with a case study.  Let me know if you are interested!

Zinadoo Marketing Material for the mobile SEO wizard

 

Zinadoo and visibility mobile marketing banner

 

Information on the Mobile SEO tool for Zinadoo users

Introduction SEO Wizard page

  

Mobile Search Marketing in three simple steps

The penny has dropped. Mobile search marketing is vital for any business, brand or consumer in mobile. The awkward in-between concern of having a great mobile site and it not being found on the mobile web will vanish. What will prevail will be a rich mobile web experience where brands and companies that deserve to be at the top of mobile search results will get there.

Enter mobile search marketing.
Mobile search marketing entertains the mobile web. It is the key way in which mobile sites, brands and services get optimal placement at the top of a mobile search engine results page. Following on from the online space search is expected to be the way in which people discover on the mobile web – just as they do online. This means determining a footprint on Yahoo’s oneSearch, Taptu’s or Veveo’s mobile and video search engines is paramount to any existing mobile marketing campaign.

Mobile search marketing is part three of a mobile marketing strategy. The first stage is to have a mobile concept in your media plan. This usually consists of creating a mobile site. The second stage is to add mobile advertising to your site to give it a revenue stream and also to promote the site by advertising it.

At the moment stage 1 and stage 2 are common. What is missing or at least has been missing is stage 3. Stage 3 has been easy to forget as in the short term mobile advertising campaigns give a mobile site traffic. With the average mobile marketing spend of about EUR 50,000 to 100,000 per month a click through rate with huge promise can be achieved.

This issue however, is that once this super campaign has come to an end – mobile sites, brands and agencies realise that the site looses all of its traffic. But even worse it can’t be found on a mobile search engine result. Therefore, the organic value of the brand or site hasn’t been built.

By adding stage 3 (aka mobile search marketing) mobile brands and agencies can immediately start to reap the benefits of early stage mobile search engine optimisation.
Mobile search engine optimisation can be rocket science. Many brands prefer to use the services of an agency or specialist company. But simple early stage triggers can be used to start the process of mobile SEO.

So how do you start to optimise your mobile business for search?

Mobile optimisation, like online optimisation can come in many forms. Some of it might only be done by professionals but with conviction anyone can start the process to make their mobile site or mobile content ready for the mobile Internet.

Often mobile content providers use services such as the W3C’s Mobile OK and ready.mobi to assess their content’s user interface on mobile. These are excellent and vital tools –but have little impact on SEO.  Scoring number 1 (which is very bad) on ready.mobi will mean that the site has a poor user interface but it might not mean that the SEO is bad.

The only way to evaluate your search marketing readiness is to go on to mobile search engines such as Taptu, oneSearch, find.mobi and search for your site.

If the site is there then stage one is complete. If it is not complete what follows is a lengthy and laborious task of registering to mobile search engines. This will force site owners to seriously take a look at the site and in, as few words as possible, describe exactly what the offer is.

This is indeed the hard part as getting it wrong at this early stage can be a costly dilemma. But once nailed, the yellow brick road to early mobile SEO success has been paved.

Stage 2 is about insertion or creation of mobile pages or made for mobile content that can support you site regardless of mobile device or browser. This is critical as mobile search engines love mobile content and in order to rise up the rankings specific mobile areas or pages are vital to attract the right search engine attention.

By the time stage 3 arrives mobile search engines will have started to pick up your site and this is where it gets serious. What will now drive eyeballs to your site is by telling mobile search engines where to go for the best content based on search results. Free standard tools such as metaTXT (metaTXT.org) will help here.  But another crucial factor is relevancy. However, tempted you might be; NEVER and I mean NEVER lie or mask your content for search engines. This is a shady move that in the early stage of the mobile web where mobile sites still aren’t indexed can be found and penalised quickly.

Stage 4 will be re-writing the content you spent hours and hours on in Stage 1 as by this time you will see that however hard you worked your offer is often very different to the one written down at that time. What has happened is that you will be found for your company brand or name but for little else. The onus now must change from the brand name to the agenda of the site. Once the title and description of your content has been changed – it’s time for keywords.

Keywords are vital for mobile search engines. They are the trigger for mobile search engines (they can be inserted into metaTXT) if that is being used or placed into the site and page itself.

The tricky bit here is getting the content vs keyword association correct. Overdoing your keywords and creating sentences’ such as “we are the mobile advertising leader, leading in mobile advertising globally. Mobile advertising is our business and we are leading successful mobile advertising business” will not do you any favours.  Pick keywords that are out of the box and don’t put more than 10 or 15 keywords on each mobile page.

After that if there is any doubt the world’s first Mobile SEO optimisation wizard is available from www.gomobileseo.com/pro  for only EUR 20 per use.

Leading mobile site and solutions provider Zinadoo integrates mobile seo wizard powered by visibility mobile

• Zinadoo has enhanced its existing M-SEO service with the world’s first automated online mobile search engine optimisation tool from visibility mobile called GoMobile SEO

• Zindoo is a leading enabler in mobile solutions and now every users will be able to instantly bolster the visibility of their website on mobile search engines

April 20, 2009, Waterford, Irleand: Cutting edge mobile solutions provider Zinadoo is enhancing its rich portfolio of services with a mobile search engine optimisation tool. The tool is the first to be created worldwide, and can add search engine juice and eyeballs to any mobile site.

The thousands of Zinadoo site users can now ensure that their mobile site is found by all major mobile search engines. This is essential as at the moment there are many mobile sites that simply exist but cannot be found by users.

Using in-house knowledge and expertise, visibility mobile has created the first ever wizard for mobile search and discovery. The tool will now be available to Zinadoo users exclusively until September 2009.

Bena Roberts President of visibility mobile remarks that “this is a momentous time. Mobile marketing is coming of age, but mobile SEO is and will be the killer part of that stream moving forward. SEO for mobile is in its infancy but the need for it already exists and by launching the world’s first automated SEO tool with Zinadoo we are paving the way a new exciting avenue in mobile marketing”.

Hélène Haughney, CEO of Nubiq commented “we’re delighted to have visibility mobile on the Zinadoo platform. They offer a great service and great value at €20! Zinadoo users are very active and regularly update their mobile websites. They are constantly looking for new and innovative ways to market their businesses and now have an advantage with made for mobile SEO tools”.

About visibility mobile www.visibilitymobile.com
Our goal is to implement search integrity for a mobile world based around the new MetaTXT standard and advanced mobile SEO techniques. Use our online tool for an immediate increase in mobile visibility or if you need a personalised service contact the professional services team at visibility mobile.

About Zinadoo www.zinadoo.com, www.zinadoo.mobi
Zinadoo provides a mobile Web platform that let’s users create their own mobile Web presence using easy to use publishing tools. Zinadoo also provides users with free listings in the fastest growing mobile Website bookmarking services and for those who wish to create  a mobile Web directory, Zinadoo provides a suite of APIs to custom build a Web and mobile Web service that incorporates search, location and advertising modules.

Contact:
Bena Roberts +491712624063 benagomo@gmail.com
Hélène Haughney +353 51 302974 hhaughney@nubiq.com

World's first every mobile search engine optimisation (Mobile SEO) tool to launch next week

This is huge!  We have finally arrived and next week we will publish two press releases.  The first is about a major mobile site creation company has completely integrated our new mobile SEO tool.

The second release is about the tool itself. I won't give too much away - but in short we have created the first ever online mobile search engine optimisation tool. Any mobile site owner or webmaster can use the tool to instantly optimise the site for search engines.

It has been in private beta with a mobile operator for 3 weeks now and results are looking good. It is in no way a completereplacement for SEO but an ideal starting point for webmasters and beginners.

More next week!

Mobile Search Marketing set to rocket!

I know I have been quiet but its because we have been extremely busy at visibility towers... We have opened up our technology for a private beta and we have some huge names including one of Europe's largest mobile operators checking it out.

Also, we get a lot of interest in mobile SEOon a daily basis now. The conversion rate is still not 100% but its getting better. Some people are just curious, others want to copy but more recently "valuable brands" are understanding why search marketing or like we now describe it in our "pitch" - Mobile Social Organic Value is killer.

Anyway the reason for this article is to share this link to this interesting article about Mobile Search Marketing... saying that it is set to rocket.

New team members at visibility mobile Martin Murphy and Ian O'Neil

I just want to introduce and thank our two new members at visibility mobile towers.

Martin Murphy is a developer guru who recently worked on the acclaimed Muzu.tv. With over 20 years experience his job is to take our code and make killer hot.

Also, thanks to Ian O'Neil who created the new Metatxt.org and new visibility mobile site - which rock!

 

Mobile Site Home Page - check it out  - www.visibilitymobile.com

Positive changes after re-creating mobile news site gomonews.mobi

I have been working on quite a tough project recently. We are trying to make SEO waves in the pure mobile publishing business and I have been testing some really interesting but very time consuming techniques.

So, on Friday I decided to take a break but at the same time I felt compelled to update the GoMo News mobile site. So I deleted the existing gomonews.mobi and started again.

I am happy with the results as without even trying I got a ready.mobi score of 5 - (the old site was a 3.5).

 

The new clear pure mobile news design also looks very good on mobile devices see:

 

But what surprised me this morning is that after only a little tweaking and optimisation and a couple of the right pings to social media sites and I hit the top spot of Google with the new site after only a matter of days.  The same is true for mobile sites such as Taptu (but to be fair we were there anyway!).

metaTXT instant Mobile SEO for your mobile site new website launched

http://www.metatxt.org

Please take a look at the new metaTXT website. We would love you to sign up to our working group and the group is for anyone in mobile that wants mobile sites to have a voice globally on the Internet.

MetaTXT can instantly add mobile SEO weight to your site!

MetaTXT and Mobile Search Presentation from CTIA 2008

OK. I might be late in the game in finding Slide Share -but what a great and simple idea with a killer UI?!

This presentation was requested a couple of times it was the first metaTXT kick off back at CTIA.

visibility mobile and metatxt launch CTIA 2008

View more presentations or upload your own. (tags: mobile seo)

M-Days Presentation on mobile search marketing

Mobile Search Marketing A Basic Introduction

View more presentations or upload your own. (tags: mobile search)

Due to personal reasons I didn't actually make it to M-Days but I heard that the event was very very good. This is the short 8 minute presentation that I would have given.

Mobile SEO and the new year!

First of all, sorry that I have not blogged regularly on this site. Secondly, Happy New Year.

Just because I haven't been blogging - it doesn't mean I haven't been working. I have been very busy creating and running mobile advertising campaigns. I will start blogging about those shortly.

I also did a lot of experimenting with link building on mobile sites - which sounds easier that it actually is.... and also we are starting to create a meta TXT directory.

We have had a lot of new business queries for mobile news companies and breaking news SEO mobile which has been a massive learning curve.

Everything is going more slowly than I had imagined but we do want to do things properly. The new launch date for our mobile SEO solution is February and fingers crossed we make it!

I am in Ireland for the next week and we have a couple of sales calls as well as pre-Mobile World Congress meetings. My presentation on mobile seo for M-Days in Munich next week is also nearly finished and I will publish it on Vimeo.

Get ready for some great things and I wish every reader and every Mobile SEO good karma for 2009.

Bena Roberts speaking on Mobile Seo, mobile search marketing and mobile analytics

I will be speaking at the M days conference in Munich Germany in Jan 2009.

The talk will be in German (which should be fun).

I am speaking on mobile search marketing and I have just finished a Google Mobile Analytics paper that I will be handing out- at the show.

I know we have been quiet on the visibility mobile side of things but it's only because we are finishing several upgrades and completely re camping the websites.

I have just finished a huge project for a car company and I am giving several mobile seo workshops in January so my schedule for the new year is tough already.

But if you are going to M Days I would love to meet!

Is Mobile Search Marketing more or less important during a recession?

Online Surveys & Market Research

W3C MobileOK Checker

The W3C put out a press release today for its new MobileOK Checker. I got excited as I use the MobileOK Checker regularly for Mobile SEO.

http://validator.w3.org/mobile/

My excitement turned to frustration when the first result pulled this back.... I will test it again tomorrow and report back.... speaking out loud - I would love to see metaTXT as part of the results for Mobile OK - when this does work.....

Proxy Error

The proxy server received an invalid response from an upstream server.
The proxy server could not handle the request GET /Mobile.

Reason: Error reading from remote server

---

Apache/2.2.3 (Debian) Server at validator.w3.org Port 80