Mobile Devices and SEO
Mobile devices have recently become major players in online search, providing new opportunities and challenges to web designers hoping to cash in on an increasingly mobile Internet neighborhood. By 2015 mobile web access will surpass the level of conventional desktop and laptop computers, according to many experts. Thus, the importance of catering to the mobile user is expected to grow exponentially in a very short time.-The following tips can help you provide quality content your mobile customers, while boosting your SEO efforts at the same time.-1. Consider the power of predictive search. The average mobile query is 15 characters long and relies on predictive phrase suggestions to complete each inquiry. Google’s AdWords Keyword Tool now contains a mobile function that allows the selection of ideas and statistics for mobile devices. Using this feature to your advantage can help you hone the results mobile users get when relying on predictive text to complete searches.-2. Introducing “rel=canonical”. The rel=canonical tag serves to point to the traditional computer version of your mobile page. This way, when smartphone users visit your conventional page, they will be instantly redirected to the version that is optimized for their devices. An advantage of the rel=canonical url structure is that it eliminates the need for separate smartphone subdomains and directories.-3. Separate those sitemaps. If you want Google to crawl your mobile pages, you have to create separate sitemaps for them. Google’s guide to mobile sitemaps can be found on their Webmaster Tools Help page, and you need to read up on this. Just because your main site is doing well, it doesn’t mean Google will even reveal your mobile version, and certainly not without a sitemap of its own.-4. Don’t forget to bring a GIF. Certainly, no one in his right mind would suggest using old school animated GIFs anymore for full websites. It’s tacky, and besides, that’s what Flash is for. But when it comes to mobile displays, properly designed and optimized animated GIFs can provide very similar effects to the best Flash out there, in a way that smartphone users can enjoy without feeling left out.-5. Ditch horizontal scrolling. Because so many smartphones truncate the number of vertical and horizontal pixels, vertical scrolling is always preferable to the horizontal version when it comes to mobile devices.-Hopefully these tips will help you design for the web browsing of the future, which has actually already begun.
