What Are The Mobile SEO URL Options?

1. Same URL or One URL strategy
2. An m. subdomain
3. A third party site for mobile pages
4. A .mobi TLD

Why Is The One URL Strategy Better For Mobile SEO?

With the large enterprise companies we work with at Covario, our position has been to recommend the one URL or same URL approach over the m. subdomain.

The one URL approach for mobile has also been recently echoed as a preferred choice by both Bing officially and Google unofficially.

This approach requires user agent detection to trigger different rendering of the page based on the mobile device type which can also include the DocType and HEAD section of the code. Google specifically affirmed this is not cloaking back in their Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide.

The key is to change these sections for feature phones and smartphones as Google has two different mobile crawlers for these devices since the search results between feature phones and smartphones do differ from each other, as well as from the standard desktop search engine ranking results.

To be proactive, it is best to do this as well for tablets and TV rendering, which should get specific crawlers from the search engines in the near future.

In the end, why is this single URL approach better for mobile SEO?

• Link empowerment since all the link equity would be consolidated into one URL
• Mobile URLs rarely have much link equity on their own
• A URL being in an m. does not inherently have any advantage in mobile search
• Google and Bing have both affirmed its not cloaking to show different content on the same URL for the different mobile device types
• There is no need to create a subdomain every time there is a new device type
• Results in reduced load on your web server; and
• Definitively establishes a direct relationship of the different mobile renderings to your desktop instance

When Is An m. Subdomain A Better Option?

Using a subdomain for your mobile rendering is a close “1B” option to the one URL strategy and could be the preferred direction in many circumstances.

If you are only going to have a limited mobile site that doesn’t have a one-to-one relationship to your desktop instance, then having a subdomain for mobile would make sense.

Also, if your site already has a long established mobile subdomain the advantages of bringing it to the one URL does diminish.

The disadvantage is that you would need to have user agent detection on both your www- desktop instance as well your m. mobile instance to properly redirect the user to the other based on their device.

Then, you would need that user agent detection on the mobile subdomain to trigger different mobile content on the same mobile URL for feature phone and smartphone users.

Finally, you would then need to create a subdomain for each future device thus a tablet. subdomain then a tv. subdomain and possibly in the future a car. subdomain or appliance. subdomain.

There are of course, differing views on the one URL strategy, including that of my fellow columnist Bryson Meunier, who does prefer the the m. subdomain over the same URL strategy overall and I’m sure he will further expand on his position why in a future post.

Why Use A Third Party Site For Mobile Or A .Mobi TLD?

Using a third party site for your mobile pages such as Google’s mobile site service should only be a stopgap solution until you can capably provide mobile pages under your own domain, which is SEO 101.

As far as an SEO reason to use a .Mobi TLD for your mobile instance, the answer is the same to any inferred advantage this TLD has in the mobile results…none.

Since there wasn’t the same data pull last year, it could be compared loosely to data from Brand Anymore in late 2010, which determined that of 7,000 retail websites only 4.8% were mobile ready – a nearly doubling of the Web’s mobile readiness in a year.

In the Mongoose Metrics data set, 118,000 of the 1,000,000 sites could not be crawled for a variety of reasons, resulting in approximately 882,000 sites that could be used for this data.

As 79,133 sites either rendered a mobile version on the same URL or redirected to a mobile version of the site under a different URL when a smartphone user agent was detected, this number dropped to 76,241 when a feature phone user agent was used.

Interestingly, these sites used a JavaScript mobile redirect more often for feature phones than smartphones.

The two user agent types being used were the same that Google uses to determine a site’s rendering for the two mobile phone types.

Why this is important is due to consumers preferring a mobile website over an app for price comparisons, reviews and actual purchases on their mobile device, according to the results of Adobe’s Mobile Experience Survey in 2011, which means they are most likely to use a search engine.

When a consumer does click on your site in the search results, over half of these potential customers would not recommend a business with a bad mobile site and furthermore, 40% would then visit a competitor site after a bad mobile experience on yours.

Some tips were provided here at Search Engine Land to understand and prepare for mobile search in 2012.

Is you site ready for the estimated 1 out every 4 searches in 2012 coming from a mobile device, or are you part of the 91% of sites that aren’t?

You can see mobile results directly from your desktop for feature phones at http://www.google.com/xhtml and for smartphones at http://www.google.com/m, but the rankings don’t quite correlate to what you would actually see on those device types.

So how can one qualify those different mobile results without having to do an actual search on those different types of mobile devices themselves?

An easy way to do so is by masking your desktop browser’s user agent by using the User Agent Switcher plugin on Firefox.

For a features phone, you can use simply use the feature phone user agent Google uses for its mobile crawler:

SAMSUNG-SGH-E250/1.0 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 UP.Browser/6.2.3.3.c.1.101 (GUI) MMP/2.0 (compatible; Googlebot-Mobile/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)

Feature Phone Google Results

For a smartphone, you can use simply use the smartphone user agent Google uses for its mobile crawler:

Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8B117 Safari/6531.22.7 (compatible; Googlebot-Mobile/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)

Smartphone Google Results

Then you can use a rank checker within FireFox such as the SEOBook Rank Checker tool to gauge how you rank in feature phone, smartphone and desktop results.

You will see some similarities, but you will be amazed when you see actual ranking differences from desktop to feature phone to smartphones.

Google has just announced a specially designated crawler for smartphones apart from what it uses currently for feature phones, which foreshadows a deeper divergence of results between the two mobile types, as well as from desktop results.

Until recently, the results for the different mobile types has been assumed to be the same as those for the desktop or simply just more Google local results.  However, data and research findings detailed in a Covario whitepaper on Mobile Search validate that there is much more happening with search on mobile platforms.

How Does Google Differentiate Between A Feature Phone &  Smartphone?

In a search engine’s view, the difference between feature phones and  smartphones, other than an ever expanding list of devices, is that smartphones have a WebKit browser. This WebKit browser is always declared in a smartphone’s user agent. It is also why BlackBerry devices before BlackBerry 6 OS, when the WebKit browser was introduced, are provided feature phone results.

Why Would Google Do This?

Google’s number one rule is “Focus on the user and all else will follow.” As such, Google wants to be sure the resulting pages render properly on the user’s device and provides results based on the user’s search intent.

How Would Search Results Be Different On These Mobile Devices?

The intention of inputting a search term on a desktop, feature phone, smartphone, or tablet can mean different things for the same keyword. For example, when typing in the term “tacos” on a desktop I may want information or recipes; but on a feature phone, I may want to call a local taco shop; on a smartphone, I want directions to a local taco place, and on a tablet, I want to check reviews or what different items on the menu look like.

How Will Google Rank This Accordingly?

Google already provides the greatest divergence of search results for feature phones via Googlebot-Mobile by specifically crawling for those devices. Google wrote that your pages may be filtered from those results if it doesn’t render properly and declares the proper mobile DocType. This will be Google’s approach with smartphones and ultimately tablets as well.

What Will Be The Different Mobile Search Ranking Factors In 2012?

Standard inbound text links will be marginalized as a ranking factor for the different mobile search types as popularity will be determined more by sharing, such as through Google +, rendering via crawlers/headless browsers, and usability data from all those Android users.

Standard SEO ranking elements will be gathered by the desktop version of that page, especially if the mobile page is on the same URL as the desktop page.

How Can I Best Prepare My Site For Mobile Search In 2012?

• Enable user agent detection to trigger a mobile type CSS on the same URL as your desktop pages if you can have a 1 to 1 relationship for the purposes of consolidating link juice in the current search environment.

• If your mobile site will be smaller than your desktop site, using an m. subdomain is the next best option for both smartphone and feature phone results. These mobile results should be on the same m. URL, but triggering a different mobile type CSS based on the user agent.

• When triggering the mobile type CSS it should also include the correct mobile format DocType.

• Load time should be minimized not just via page size but in network/http requests, as well increasing compression and cache-control when possible.

• Use semantic coding with microformats, especially address location tagging, and the formats used in HTML5.

• Improve rendering and user experience by providing an app like experience with HTML5 and jQuery.

I foresee in 2012 Google pushing us more into the Mobile Semantic Web 3.0 and having a Googlebot specific for tablet rendering and perhaps even one for TV based on the acceptance of Google TV and a fully Web integrated Apple TV.  These bots will provide new segments of search types for which to optimize sites for, especially as this semantic Web better prepares for inferred searches via voice.

Image used under license, courtesy of Shutterstock.

A brief history of mobile marketing

Marketing to mobile devices is widely believed to have started in the year 2000 with text message/SMS news services that were free but sponsored by advertising. This evolved into mass promotion of events and alerts with even recent claims of “more than 100% response rate” by Marc Hyatt of Txtlocal, thanks to the viral effects of users forwarding messages to others.

SMS advertising, like forms of email marketing, can often be obtrusive and annoying, with the added inconvenience of costing users money based on their mobile service’s inbound SMS rates. As such, it remains more effective as a “pull” medium rather than a “push” one, such as a means for polling or voting for programs like American Idol or Dancing with the Stars.

Mobile applications also began appearing in 2000 from Handmark. But apps didn’t really become mainstream for in-application advertising until Apple’s App Store for the iPhone arrived in 2008.

Android, Blackberry, Symbian, along with the iPhone and iPad have advanced mobile web browsing to near mainstream use as the February Nielsen Mobile Report affirmed there are now over 72 million mobile web users in the United States.

Are we there yet?

Mobile has been touted repeatedly at conferences over the past few years as the next big thing for marketing years. However, most predictions were based on traffic charts and pretty graphics with gaudy numbers, while ROI and tangible mobile marketing results were often missing from these chipper forecasts.

So where does this leave marketers in getting any real value with such a limited viewing real estate on mobile devices, often less than 4 inches?

Here are some of the main services a business can use to implement a mobile marketing strategy:

• Admob
  Currently, the largest mobile advertising service; Google wants to buy the company and is awaiting FTC approval.
• AdMozi
  This relative newcomer provides full screen mobile ads.
• GoldSpot Media
  Focusing on rich media and video mobile ads.
• Google AdSense for Mobile
  Google application advertising.
• InMobi
  Focusing on mobile website advertising.
• JumpTap
  Ad network of mobile sites and applications.
• MDotM
  Android and iPhone/iPad application advertising network.
• Millenial Media
  High end mobile advertising networks and toolset.
• Mobclix
  Largest mobile ad exchange network.
• Mojiva
  Advertising on news, sports, entertainment and gaming mobile sites.
• Quattro Wireless
  Full spectrum mobile advertising service which was acquired by Apple to become iAd.
• Rapid Mobile
  Full spectrum mobile advertising including SMS/MMS.
• Smaato
  Mobile advertising platform aggregator.
• Velti
  Focusing on SMS mobile advertising.

AdWhirl is a great service that now combines many of these advertising options for the developers themselves in a one stop shop mediation solution.