Tip #1: Make Pages Accessible To Mobile Searchers

This tip may seem like a no-brainer in a world where at least 25% of all search traffic comes from mobile devices and 90% of consumers use multiple screens sequentially before making a conversion; but unfortunately, many have still failed to get with the program.

In Q2 2011, PureOxygen Mobile did a study of the top 75 retail brands in the 2012 IR 300 and found that only 19% of them served mobile content to smartphones. Even worse — more than 30% of them redirected all mobile traffic to the site’s home page.

You can do better. Yes, providing unique mobile content can be a key differentiator for your business (depending on your users); but, you have to crawl before you can walk.

Serving mobile users the same information and services as those using desktop computers or tablet devices (a concept known as “One Web“) is important; it creates a consistent brand message and ensures that searchers who find a page on your site will be able to find some equivalent version of that page on a mobile device.

Responsive Web design and adaptive content are popular solutions, but they are not the only ones. Platforms like Moovweb, for example, unify content across all versions of a site, while allowing for a more customized mobile experience.

Apps have seen a resurgence in popularity recently (see Flurry and Nielsen’s study on time spent in apps); but, if you don’t have an accessible mobile site first, then you’re not going to be visible in Google search for most queries. Having an app is great, but not at the cost of sacrificing valuable mobile Web traffic.

If you’re a retailer, and you still serve desktop pages to mobile users or only have a mobile app, you may not be in business for long. Remember, we live in a world where more than 25% of total search traffic comes from mobile devices, and mobile devices are one of many that consumers use before making a conversion.

Tip #2: Be Careful When Selecting Mobile Platforms

Long-time readers of my column should know that I don’t often recommend the platforms that so many large brands select to make their content mobile-friendly. These platforms are often cheap, and you get what you pay for. (See the problems Staples and Mercedes had with their mobile sites, for example.)

Many of these platforms create duplicate content and/or have major search usability issues that prevent them from being indexed in search results.

Some platforms are better than others, of course. When looking for a partner to help take your site mobile, make sure they can answer “yes” to the following questions. If they can’t, look elsewhere:

• Does your platform add tracking parameters to the URL or host the site in two places, which might create duplicate content issues?
• If dynamic serving is used, can you serve the vary HTTP header to Googlebot? And if mobile URLs are used, can you implement switchboard tags with the platform?
• Does the platform allow you to make content changes for each device, based on keyword research?

Tip #3: Foreground Local Information If Applicable

Not all m-commerce providers have a local presence; but, if you do, you should know that mobile searchers often want information on local stores.

Retail searchers are more likely to be looking for local information, according to Google, who said the single most important retail task for mobile users is getting directions to or operating hours for a local store.

In fact, if we look at a large retailer like Sports Authority — which I think does a good job of aligning search intent with content — you can see that the searches with a high mobile volume are largely location searches.

Searches for Sports Authority locations index high on mobile devices.

By making it easy for all searchers to find a location near them, Sports Authority is also making it as easy as possible for mobile searchers to find what they’re most likely to be looking for.

The first thing mobile visitors to m.sportsauthority.com see is the store locator.

All retailers with a local presence should take note.

Tip #4: Regardless Of Mobile Configuration Strategy, Follow Google’s Guidelines

This is applicable to everyone, but especially to complex retail sites that may be using multiple platforms to provide content: follow Google’s guidelines for smartphone and/or feature phone sites. There are a few complex e-commerce sites that are responsive, like Curry’s (UK retailer), but most of them are not.

In fact, of the 11 retailers in the SEMRush top 100 sites, none of them are responsive. Eight of them actually use mobile URLs, and one uses dynamic serving. I don’t know whether responsive design makes sense for their users and their business (it may not), but if they do want to create a dedicated mobile site, they should at least implement bidirectional annotations. As of this writing, none of them have.

Naturally, these sites wouldn’t be among the top 100 if they were bad at SEO — but think about how much better they could be doing if they helped Google properly recognize and distribute their mobile content. It’s really not that difficult, as Google has detailed instructions on how to implement. Recently, Google even published a list of common mistakes in smartphone sites, complete with tips on how to avoid these errors.

Tip #5: Make Price Comparison & Buying Easy On Mobile Devices

As a new homeowner, I’ve recently found myself shopping quite a bit on my smartphone, including what’s known as “showrooming,” or using a mobile device in-store to find the best price and compare features. And, I’m not alone on this — according to a recent Harris Poll, 43% of Americans engage in showrooming. Google has said that on average 2% of mobile searchers search in-store, but that figure doubles in the Shopping category.

Some businesses, like Sears, are actually encouraging showrooming on their mobile sites by providing mobile searchers with a price scanner which allows them to compare prices of items they’re looking at to items for sale at Sears.

Sears’ mobile site includes a price scanner so that shoppers can easily compare prices in-store.

Amazon also has an app that works similarly, but I like the fact that this functionality is available on a website so that it can be linked to and shared. All link equity eventually helps the main domain become more visible in search.

Following the above five tips will make life easier for mobile searchers and ultimately ensure your success as a marketer doing retail or mobile commerce optimization.

Next month, I’ll be resolution-friendly once again, talking case studies that demonstrate mobile SEO success. If you have a great one, reach out, and I may publish it with your permission.

Twitter Cards Image from Marketing Land

Mobile Application Search in both Apple’s App Store and Google Play is frustratingly similar to general online search in the early 2000s — and the tactics used to make them visible in search resuls also closely mirror the SEO best practices from that era.

Searching for and discovering the right apps is a concern for both developers and mobile users, which may recently have been dealt a helping hand from Twitter with its App Cards.

How Do Twitter App Cards Work?

Currently, you need special approval from Twitter for the app card program, although this should be generally available by May 2013.

Once admitted into the app card program, anyone who Tweets a link to a page or pages that you have designated will have an app card added to the Tweet, which is visible to followers when the tweet is viewed on their Android or iOS device.

You can designate a page (such as your Homepage, About, or App page) by including these Twitter META tags in the HEAD portion of the page code, similar to the Open Graph tags used predominantly for Facebook.

Twitter will then link to the appropriate app store based on the device type the Tweet is viewed on. What this means is that the same Tweet will go to the Google Play location of the app for an Android user, while going to the Apple App Store location for an iOS user.

As this evolves past its trial period, it should be a great revenue generator for Twitter as it charges for impressions/clicks; but, why is this necessary with search engines and app stores presently?

How App Search Works Now

App stores, in varying degrees, leverage the following factors in displaying an app from a search query:

How Do These Twitter Cards Help App Search?

Social mentions — combined with the assumed downloads, comments, and lack of uninstalls — will be sure to help the app’s rankings in respective app stores, all the while helping with visibility in standard search.

Now that Twitter has opened itself to be indexed by Google, as well as allowing a direct feed into Bing, these Twitter app card links can be crawled to help increase rankings in the standard SERPs, both as a linking and social mention frequency factor.

This is such a great idea for social platforms from an advertising revenue standpoint that I can envision it being quickly emulated by Facebook and Google+.

From a search marketer point of view, this is also great as it provides added META information to be optimized toward achieving added visibility to apps/products online.

Perhaps next, we can have an App Store for people.

When he posted Luke Wroblewski’s results of sites that have seen success with responsive Web design to Google+ with the caption #rwd #ftw, I wanted to remind Google and other responsive Web design advocates that responsive Web design, while great for some sites, is not the right solution for others.

This was great feedback to get, as I tried to get an official response from Google to the post last month, and this acknowledgement from a Google representative is at least some indicator that responsive Web design can have problems for the user and isn’t the right solution in all cases.

So, are these extreme examples that don’t apply to the majority of sites in question, as John Mueller says, and many responsive Web design advocates seem to think? Let’s look at the data by issue and see.

Unfortunately for SEOs and site owners, there’s not an exhaustive list of sites whose information architecture does not match their consumer demand somewhere to easily prove if this holds true.

Instead, for the next two proofs, I’m going to use three examples from .Net magazine’s list of the top 25 responsive web sites of 2012: Starbucks.com, Microsoft.com and Disney.com. If these sites that are held as paragons of future-friendly Web design have these issues, this should at least demonstrate that these are not edge cases, but less extreme problems that we need to address today.

1.  Many Top Responsive Sites Have Poor Information Architecture

Last month I referenced an audit that I did of Mercedes’ mobile site in which the traditional website had site architecture issues that prevented the transcoded pages from appearing in mobile search results, as well. Because the same content is used in responsive Web design, these problems would exist with retrofit responsive sites. Microsoft, Disney and Starbucks all have IA issues that their responsive redesign (or retrofit, in most cases) didn’t solve.

For example, Starbucks did a great job of highlighting the local aspect of their website, as search data shows the great majority of users are looking for a store, especially if they’re using the site on a mobile device.

Starbucks does a nice job at highlighting the Store Locator given their users’ tendency to search for a store near them, but their information architecture has other problems when it comes to searchers.

The rest of the website is not as friendly to searchers and users, however. You can see from the data below that the priority based on search volume is not aligned with the prominence of each feature on the mobile site.

Comparing Starbucks responsive site architecture to searcher interest reveals potentially profitable gaps.

I’ve explained the methodology of this chart in detail earlier at Marketing Land, but what I’ve basically done here is categorize branded keywords where the total volume is 1,000 or more searches per month and compare them with the features on the site.

Sometimes, the search intent is aligned closely with the prominence on the website, but in many cases, it’s not. For example, coupons are absent from the home page, but you can find expired ones through search. And, more people are looking for Starbucks jobs than are looking for anything around the brand except stores and coupons. Yet, the feature is buried at the bottom of the page. These may have been features that Starbucks chose to suppress for business reasons, as search volume can’t be the only driving factor when considering what goes on a site, but for features like calorie counters and order recommendations, this doesn’t seem likely.

As I said in the last column, these problems could be fixed with a complete redesign, responsive or not, but the point is that responsive sites can and often do have major information architecture issues that will prevent them from being visible in search engines. So, if you’re saying “responsive sites are better for SEO,” as many do, and your responsive site has major information architecture issues, what are you really saying?

I haven’t done the same exercise for Microsoft or Disney, but it’s clear that they also have issues when it comes to aligning search behavior to information architecture.

Disney, for example, has major problems when it comes to the concept of games. We know from a recent investor event that games are important to Disney’s business, but it’s hard to tell from looking at their site. A searcher entering [disney games] in a search engine will go to this page, where they are compelled to play games like Mickey Delivery Dash, or Phineas and Ferb:

Disney’s responsive site entices mobile users to play a game that they have no chance of playing.

However, when they try to play the game that they’re told by the graphic to play, this happens:

For a site to be responsive, it should work everywhere. Not so for this critically-acclaimed responsive site.

And sometimes even this happens:

Sometimes responsive sites provide less than responsive user experiences.

When you return to the Games page and click on Online Games in the footer, it redirects you to the top of the page; and when you click on Video Games in the footer, this happens:

Our quest to play games on a responsive site ends with this, as would quests from the majority of mobile searchers.

I can’t play video games on my phone now?

This is an award-winning, future-friendly site, but if you were one of the people who did one of the 30,000 searches a month from a mobile device on Google, Bing or Yahoo! on [Disney games], you’re probably not going to think it’s that great. And you’re certainly not going to think of it as being responsive to your needs regardless of what platform you happen to be using.

Microsoft has a similar situation if you navigate to Downloads on their site. Very popular category, but don’t be misled into thinking you can actually download anything if you click there. If you can figure out that the three lines and three dots in the upper right-hand corner is a menu, you get a category with downloads like this:

Microsoft’s responsive web site offers free downloads to mobile searchers that mobile searchers can never receive.

Windows downloads weren’t relevant to my Android phone, so I clicked on Free downloads and was taken here:

This page was presented when I clicked on Free downloads in my mobile web browser, not my PC.

Get the most out of my PC? What PC? I thought I was supposed to be getting some free downloads, and that this site was responsive to my needs. Again, a poor user experience and content that’s platform-specific and not labeled as such is not good for the searcher experience, and not good for SEO.

So, I profiled three large business websites that have gone responsive and found problems with all three, which tells me these information architecture problems in responsive sites are probably more common than some people think.

And, for those of you who still say responsive Web design is best for SEO, this is award-winning responsive Web design, and nothing about it is good for the searcher experience, or SEO.

2. Many Top Responsive Websites Don’t Use Mobile-Specific Keywords

Not everyone understands how to use the new keywords that searchers are putting in mobile devices to their advantage, and that’s fine. It’s a relatively new phenomenon that some of us are finding success with, but not everyone’s there yet. I’ve written a pretty extensive guide for those of you who may be new to the subject.

Those who do understand this may see the same opportunities that I do when I look at Starbucks’ keywords that come primarily from mobile devices. When we sort our master keyword list by mobile percent of total volume and look at those keywords where more than 70% of the total volume comes from mobile devices, we see a lot of people en route to a Starbucks.

Amazingly 46 people a month ask their desktop computer to help navigate them to a Starbucks.

Many local businesses say that most of their revenue comes from driving a lead to a store, and so, these keywords that indicate a searcher’s intent to go to a physical Starbucks location are probably some of the most valuable leads that the website gets. But, with responsive design, the opportunity is squandered.

Many of these searches lead to Google pages to specific directions, and the website will never get credit for the lead. In cases where directions don’t show up, such as [drive thru starbucks]:

Some queries with local intent don’t include maps in mobile results.

Or worse, when incorrect information shows up, such as [24 hour starbucks] (I’m in Chicago):

Not going to walk to San Francisco from Chicago for a latte, Google.

Starbucks has the opportunity to provide a better user experience to people who are looking for these things, and to get a valuable website lead in the process.

How do we do this? How about a crawlable page that lists all 24 hour Starbucks locations and another that lists all locations with drive thrus? Right now, there is no page like that because the site relies on search filters, which aren’t crawlable (see problem #1 above). If we created that page and used HTML5 to tap into the phone’s GPS, we could provide them with the nearest location of these types as soon as they clicked through to the page.

As it is, it sends a searcher to the Store Locator page, where the searcher will hopefully recognize the small funnel shape is a filter icon, and then click on it. When that happens, you can select the type of Starbucks that you’re interested in, and then click Apply. When that happens, you go back to a map, where you need to zoom in or hit the scope button to find your location, and hopefully it shows the location nearest you.

But why would Starbucks want to make their most valuable leads go through that experience when they could show them what they’re looking for with one click? They might be able to do this with a responsive design, but it’s kind of unlikely that anyone would, since advocates so often argue against the mobile context and wouldn’t be looking for opportunities like this in the first place. Smart SEOs can avoid the same mistakes and get more converting traffic from natural search in the process.

Disney also has keywords like this in mobile content like games, apps and wallpaper. They do have their mobile apps listed on their site, but as we saw above, the keyword “mobile games” isn’t mentioned, and they don’t list mobile wallpaper or have wallpaper on their responsive website, it seems. This is a big miss for SEO, as there are thousands of searches for games and wallpaper, and Disney won’t get any of them with this “responsive” site.

Non-branded games searches have as much search volume on mobile devices as many of Disney’s most popular brands.

There are also plenty of issues on all of these sites, not just with mobile keywords, but with keywords that become meaningless in a mobile context. Examples from Disney and Microsoft make this clear in point 1 above, but Starbucks is not immune at dealing with these adaptive content issues.

Here’s what happens if you’re one of the people who has done one of the 8,500 searches per month for [Starbucks coupons] from a mobile device in the US. Not only do you not get what you’re looking for (again, possible business reasons that may make sense), but you’re told to click the Print Coupon Button to redeem the nonexistent coupon:

Starbucks responsive web site asks you to print out a coupon from your mobile phone, and gives you how-to instructions that you’ll never be able to follow.

It’s like one bad user experience piled onto another, and it’s all due to making a site responsive without understanding how that changes the meaning of the content and the relevance of the queries.

Could all of these issues be resolved using responsive Web design? Maybe. But, because responsive Web designers and SEOs are not currently looking for them, this is likely to be an edge case, if it happens at all.

3. Many Responsive Websites Are Slow

Yes, to all of you who commented that responsive websites can be fast if done correctly. I agree with you; but, that’s not the point. The point is: “fast responsive website,” while not exactly an oxymoron, is certainly an edge case.

I’m not the only one saying this, either. Most of you are, in fact, as the majority of commenters who objected to this point in last month’s article told me it’s the developers’ fault, not responsive design’s. But, as an SEO, I don’t care whose fault it is, only that it happens. If responsive websites are slow, as many are, they could be bad for the searcher experience and bad for SEO.

And, as I said in the comments, it happens a lot. According to Akamai performance evangelist Guy Podjarny, “You can’t escape this fact. A responsive website tuned to perform optimally would not be as fast as a dedicated mdot site tuned equally well. Or, more realistically, an average responsive website would always be slower than an average mdot site.” In other words, slow responsive sites are not the exception, but the rule.

4. Responsive Websites Are Losing More Than 10% Of Global Mobile Web Traffic

As a marketer, do you frequently avoid the potential to connect with 158 million visitors and 98 billion page views? Because this is currently what you’re missing if you ignore global feature phone users on just the Opera browser, as of December 2012.

According to their most recent State of the Mobile Web report, Opera reported that 229,000,000 visitors had 143,000,000,000 pageviews globally from either Opera Mobile or Opera Mini. They also said that 68% of their visits come from something other than a smartphone. If you do the math, you get the figures mentioned above.

Given that Opera has 15.4% market share, we can extrapolate that this is 10.63% of total mobile Web market share worldwide.

You can make a business decision about whether ignoring 10% of the global mobile Web traffic is something you’re willing to do, but this is certainly too large a number to be an outlier.

As some of you said in the comments last month, build a site mobile first, and responsive would give some sort of experience to feature phone users as well. But, there are two problems with this:

• it’s not recommended by Google, which recommends separate sites or dynamic-serving-only for a site that works on feature phones and smartphones
• building mobile first may make you future-friendly while alienating a lot of primary desktop users in the present

Many companies you would think would be mobile first, like the Weather Channel, don’t see mobile first as being a viable strategy for another couple of years.

5. All Responsive Sites Don’t Delight Users With Mobile-Only Features

By nature, this last one is not an edge case, as responsive design is about making the same content available to all platforms, not about adding functionality depending on what devices are supported.

As explained last month, we have the ability as marketers to use mobile-specific features like GPS, camera, accelerometer, etc., to create app-like experiences on the Web that will rival what’s possible in native apps, but be seen and enjoyed by everyone, regardless of platform.

And, I still don’t know why we as marketers are content to do without this so we can make our sites responsive. One Web is a good start, but we should be doing more.

I had a discussion with the Thunder Tech user experience team on their blog last month, and they argued that these experiences belong in apps and not websites. However, this is the difference between User Experience and SEO. As SEOs, we should want to make the experiences that people really find engaging as visible as possible, and the Web, unlike native apps, has 100% reach.

With  HTML5, we can make increasingly app-like experiences available on the Web, and this kind of content is likely not just to bring qualified traffic, but also links, shares and all of the signals that Google relies on to understand that our sites are authoritative. How is it better for SEO when we’re content to leave all of these things at the door in order to make our sites responsive?

I don’t know how common the practice of building app-like experiences on the Web is, but I did find an example of one brand that is seeing great results after building a more app-like mobile Web experience through dynamic serving. Hopefully, more of you in the future will follow suit.

According to Nielsen and Business Insider, consumers spend more time in apps than on the mobile web. While games and social networking are part of the story, how much are webmasters to blame for not making web experiences more app-like and engaging?

If you’ve made it to the end of this post, you have seen many instances where the five things I discussed last month are evident, and definitely not outliers. Google may still consider these things edge cases, but if you see that searchers are getting stranded, confused and unable to convert, it could help your business and the user if you fix it.

So, the next time someone tells you that responsive Web design is always best for SEO, you now have examples of many responsive sites, some of which are critically-acclaimed, that are not helping themselves at all with SEO. I think you can do better.

TL; DR Recap

Problems responsive websites have with SEO are common because:

• Several critically-acclaimed responsive we sites have major information architecture issues that are preventing searchers from completing a task, and businesses from generating revenue from these leads.
• These same websites ignore keywords that are most important to mobile searchers, to the detriment of the business and the user.
• Though responsive sites can be made fast, most of them aren’t.
• Google doesn’t recommend responsive Web design for capturing feature phone traffic, and that is more than 10% of the total mobile Web traffic available.
• Responsive sites can’t by nature allow for content that’s not multi-platform, and these experiences can often help users, build organic links and generate revenue for a business.

The Trends in Mobile Search session was moderated by Search Engine Land’s Greg Sterling and included Raj Kapoor of Microsoft, Jason Lehmbeck of DataPop, Bryson Meunier of Resolution Media, and myself.

Raj and Jason presented on trends in mobile advertising with mobile use increasing in the evenings and weekends, and how best to leverage Google Enhanced campaigns as well Microsoft Mobile Ads.

Sandwiched in between was Bryson and myself, focusing on mobile organic search trends with methodologies and data.

First, before we talk about the current state of mobile search, I felt we should answer the question: is mobile really important?

Does Mobile Search Really Exist?

Steve Jobs stated back in 2010:

“…mobile device search hasn’t happened. Search is not where it’s at…”

Fast forward two years, and thanks in large part to Android’s dominance, Search is, in fact, the #1 mobile browser activity, according to comScore.

So, now we can affirm that search is a heavy activity on mobile devices; but, how much?

How Prominent Is Mobile Search?

As worldwide mobile Internet usage increases to just over 10% of  total Internet use in 2012, mobile search has grown even faster to a quarter (25%) of all search. At  Covario, we predict that by the end of 2013, a mobile device will be behind 1 out of every 3 searches.

In reality, mobile URLs could be the best option for SEO, depending on your circumstances.

The Madness Of Crowds

For example, though I praised her in my last column for sharing her mobile SEO process, and in general, I think she provides good information on mobile SEO, Aleyda Solis also provides this flowchart in her process as a way of helping businesses understand their options for developing mobile sites based on what is preferable for SEO:

Flowchart represents the myth of responsive web design’s superiority for SEO.

In fact, Google never introduced such a hierarchy when they announced their preference for responsive Web design last June. All they said was they prefer responsive Web design, and if it’s not best for your user, then they support dynamic serving and mobile URLs. The one URL argument for dynamic serving and responsive design’s superiority is moot with the introduction of switchboard tags, as Google can now understand which site should appear when, regardless of URL structure.

Let me say that again, as those who write about these issues don’t seem to be getting it otherwise:

The one URL argument for dynamic serving and responsive design’s superiority is moot with the introduction of switchboard tags, as Google can now understand which site should appear when, regardless of URL structure.

Not just doing that for Aleyda’s benefit, as Aleyda presents mostly good information, and many others are making the same honest mistake.

In a recent poll of SEO firms and MBAs, 100% of respondents said that responsive Web design is preferable for SEO than separate mobile sites. Really? Always?

Really, it seems these days everywhere you turn there’s someone somewhere claiming that responsive Web design is preferable to separate mobile sites for SEO because all of the links go to one URL. To this I say…

For example, in the otherwise excellent new book Mobile Marketing an Hour a Day by industry veterans Noah Elkin and Rachel Pasqua, Covario’s Nick Roshon states his preference for responsive Web design for SEO, citing consolidated link equity as evidence of responsive Web design’s superiority for SEO. He even gives this curious statement: “While Responsive Web Design may be harder to implement, and there may be user experience reasons to go with alternative mobile web design standards, the benefits of going responsive are undeniable.”

Actually, they could be deniable, depending on the site that’s going responsive. In fact, the benefits of responsive Web design are often negated by the cons. If mobile URLs or dynamic serving provides a better user experience, then Google does not suggest that you make your site responsive, but instead provides options to give you the same benefits of consolidated link equity on mobile URLs.

Unfortunately, Google did not mention any of the instances when responsive Web design provides an inferior user experience, leaving it up to individual webmasters. They’re very concerned with confusing webmasters, it seems, and didn’t want to confuse the issue, I assume, by getting into those scenarios where responsive Web design would not be preferred.

When I reached out to them for this article, Google has officially declined to comment. However, based on the limited information they have provided, empirical evidence of what’s working in SERPs, and my twelve years optimizing content professionally, this is a list of five things that will make mobile URLs or dynamic serving a more attractive option for you for mobile SEO.

1.  When Desktop Website Does Not Contain Categories Mobile Searchers Are Looking For

In the example I used on the Stone Temple blog in January, Mercedes has serious information architecture issues that are preventing it from connecting to searchers in general. Their content for car types is not accessible, let alone optimized, and making that site accessible to smartphones and tablets is not going to solve these serious information architecture issues. Mercedes could redesign their site, and then make it responsive, and that would solve some of their problems, but if they make their current site responsive, they will have the same issues that they do now.

Similarly, the desktop website doesn’t have information on mobile content like mobile wallpaper or apps. Why should it, in fact, when desktop searchers by and large aren’t looking for those things? Yet, mobile searchers are in droves, and if Mercedes simply makes their current site responsive, they will miss out on all that traffic.

Mercedes would miss out on traffic from the categories in green if they made their current site responsive.

Responsive Web design advocates: missing out on relevant traffic is not optimization.

2.  When Desktop Website Does Not Contain Keywords Mobile Searchers Are Using

As I explained in last month’s mobile keyword research guide, context can change the keywords searchers use and the frequency with which they use them.

For example [nearby] and [download apps] are two keywords that are likely used a lot more on mobile devices than they are on desktops and laptops (if they’re used on desktops and laptops at all).

Desktops and laptops lack GPS, so if a searcher asks Google for restaurants nearby on their laptop, they’re likely to get results based on IP address if they’re not logged in (which in the case of my laptop, the server in New York city, 800 miles away), and if they are logged in, results based on the city they’ve specified in their registration.

If a searcher asks her smartphone for restaurants nearby on the other hand, the results are much more accurate as they’re based on the position of her phone at the time of the query.

It’s likely because of this that many more people use the keyword nearby in mobile searches than they do in desktop searches. As you can see from this mobile % of total volume chart, most of these searches are coming from mobile phones. The two that don’t come from mobile phones specify a location, which Google desktop search needs if it’s going to provide accurate search results.

Certain keywords, like “nearby” are primarily used by mobile phone searchers, and can’t be used in a responsive design.

You can take this information into account and use these keywords in adaptive content on a responsive site, but it’s going to be more effective from an SEO standpoint to optimize both sites with different keywords depending on the platform.

Look, Google may have announced their preference for responsive Web design, but they also tell webmasters in their Webmaster Guidelines, “Think about the words users would type to find your pages, and make sure that your site actually includes those words within it.”

In cases where mobile searchers and desktop searchers are using different keywords, the best option for SEO is the option that brings more qualified traffic: separate sites with targeted keywords.

3.  When Responsive Layout Increases Load Time Significantly

We already know that speed is a ranking factor for SEO, but we also know that Google wants to send searchers to the best possible experience. Sites using responsive Web design, which by nature include more code than mobile websites, generally take longer to load.

Apart from the ranking factor of page speed, this could increase your bounce rate and/or decrease your conversions. According to Google research, mobile searchers are a fickle group, and won’t stick around if you make them wait.

Recent research presented on http://www.howtogomo.com/en/d/why-go-mo/#reasons-mobile-matters shows the dangers of making mobile searchers wait.

Now of course, if you were just providing a desktop site that makes a user pinch and zoom to perform simple actions, providing a responsive site is a step up from that. But it’s not the ideal in this situation, which would be serving fast clean code with dynamic serving or separate mobile URLs.

Of course, there are ways, as covered by Sherwood Stranieri last year, that webmasters can speed up responsive sites, but they’re still unlikely to load as quickly as separate mobile sites.

4.  When Target Audience Primarily Uses Feature Phones

Don’t go responsive if you want to be visible to the red countries on this map, as they primarily use feature phones to access the Web.

This one, I didn’t have to speculate on, as Google has guidelines for developing for feature phones and smartphones that do not include responsive Web design. So, if you’re developing for an audience that uses feature phones (i.e., non-white, non-US-based, not affluent, and/or older), responsive Web design is not the best option for SEO.

5.  When It Prevents Product Innovation That Improves The User Experience

Google Now wins the Popular Science Innovation of the Year Award in 2012, as a direct result of not following Google’s own advice about responsive web design.

Yes, Google may have stated a preference for responsive Web design, but they also say this in their Quality Guidelines: “Think about what makes your website unique, valuable, or engaging. Make your website stand out from others in your field.”

Some businesses have taken this to heart with mobile, and have created products that can only be used on mobile devices that help their user do what they need to do faster.

Take banking, for example. JP Morgan Chase could have reformatted their desktop website for mobile visitors and called it a day. Instead they thought about the specific properties of mobile devices that they could use to make their customers’ lives easier. And for them it meant creating a separate mobile website, allowing for SMS banking, and creating a mobile app.

The mobile app has a feature called Quick Deposit which uses the device’s camera to allow users to take pictures of checks for deposit. It’s mobile-specific content, as it’s only available on tablet and smartphone, and it has been a huge success for Chase.

According to a recent press release, since launching Quick Deposit in 2010, consumers have used it to deposit more than $4 billion, and the number of active Chase mobile customers increased 42% between 2011 and 2012. The app now has 15 million registered users, and several awards including a 2011 Webby Award. And those 15 million registered users have expressed their gratitude with 4.2 out of five stars in Google Play with over 70k reviews as of this writing.

Had Chase not considered the unique characteristics of mobile devices and the utility that they could bring to consumers, but instead only reformatted adaptive content to appear in a mobile context, they wouldn’t have been able to have the success they’ve had, and wouldn’t have been able to serve their users as they did.

Or, take Google, for example. Their stated preference in responsive Web design hasn’t stopped them from making mobile-only content. One of these features is called Google Now. Released just seven months ago, it’s now a big differentiator for Android over iOS, with reviewers saying things like “But the jewel of Android 4.2 is absolutely Google Now, and its brilliance overshadows the still lacking aspects of the OS as a whole;” and “This latest Google Now ad has me hating Siri.”

Google Now has been such a big innovation for Google that it won them Popular Science’s Innovation of the Year, putting it in the company of such innovations as former award winners like the iPhone, the fluorescent lamp and the Mosaic Web browser.

Google could have made their content adaptive and responsive and not considered the mobile context. But they didn’t, and their business is better for it.

In fact, Google itself is an interesting organization; although they have stated a preference for responsive Web design, and the CEO has made disparaging remarks about mobile content, they also develop for mobile, tablet and desktop search separately, and on the mobile ads side, they have advocated strongly for experiences in which mobile context increases the relevance of the ad. Regardless of which side you’re on here, it’s possible to use Google viewpoints to justify your own. Think, instead, of your user, as that’s ultimately what will serve your business (and Google) best.

You may be making a responsive site because it’s easier to maintain, but is it preventing you from creating mobile-only content that your users will love, and that will differentiate your site from your competitors’ in the marketplace? If so, think twice about responsive Web design or adaptive content, as it’s not going to help your business — or your SEO — as much as mobile-specific content.

Granted, the two aren’t mutually exclusive, and the preferred method for mobile SEO that I detailed last year is still a hybrid of responsive pages and mobile-specific content.

A Revised Decision Tree

The message: if you’re thinking about mobile SEO, throw away the decision tree I mentioned earlier. Apart from the one URL fallacy, one of the decision points isn’t even SEO-specific, as it is more about the businesses’ resources than optimizing their content for search results.

Replace it with this. It’s not perfect, as deciding the proper configuration for your mobile content is a nuanced process; but it should get you closer to optimal than what’s been provided in the past.

Don’t Be A Responsive Bandwagoneer

Not everyone thinks responsive Web design is best for SEO, though it can sometimes seem that way to those of us who know better. Adam Audette and George Michie of Rimm-Kauffman Group said in their classic post on marketing as applied science, “Mobile websites: Responsive design helps, but smartphone users have fundamentally different needs and only a site designed to meet those unique needs will produce the best outcome for the user and for the business.”

This is a similar message offered by GigaOM Pro recently, which cites unique mobile use cases and speed as reasons why they advocate separate mobile sites. Likewise, when I interviewed veteran mobile SEO expert Cindy Krum for .Net Magazine, she said that she also advocates a hybrid approach: “I have been recommending a mixed solution for most of my clients – leveraging Responsive Design when it makes sense, and special mobile-only landing pages when keywords or use-cases cannot be appropriately addressed with a Responsive Design approach.”

Finally, Forrester Research, in their 2013 Mobile Trends for Marketers report, said that “Responsive design will be hyped once again in 2013.” Responsive design is not a “magic elixir” they say, because “1) The consistency of experiences across devices is only one small element of the overall picture; 2) companies will need divergent app and Web strategies as well as mobile content and service curation; 3) not every portable/mobile device will have a browser; and 4) supporting different use cases across devices requires a process to implement responsive design principles.”

If you’ve read this post and you still think responsive is best for SEO, that’s your prerogative; but your competitor who provides a better user experience with mobile landing pages might be getting more traffic from search.

TL;DR Recap

• It’s a popular myth that responsive Web design is always the best choice for SEO
• The one URL argument for dynamic serving and responsive design’s superiority is moot with the introduction of switchboard tags, as Google can now understand which site should appear when, regardless of URL structure.
• If any of these questions apply affirmatively to your business, dynamic serving or mobile URLs may be the best option for you for SEO:
  • Is desktop website missing categories mobile searchers are looking for?
  • Is desktop website missing keywords mobile searchers are looking for?
  • Is site speed important for conversions on your site?
  • Can the user experience be improved using mobile features not available on desktop (e.g. camera, scanner, GPS, etc.)?
  • Are you targeting any users with feature phones (i.e., non-U.S., non-affluent, non-white, older)?

Google’s mobile search crystal ball with Chrome

Toward the end of 2012, I read an interesting article theorizing that Google will be crawling APIs instead of mobile websites in the future.

API means Application Programming Interface which allows software, including websites and mobile apps, to provide direct integration based on functions permitted by the API.

Websites and mobile apps use APIs predominantly to share content including photos and videos from one site to another, for example, posting a Flickr photo from that site or mobile app/operating system directly onto Facebook, as well Mashups. This often includes permitted sharing of personal information to do so.

In this article, Dan Cristo of Catalyst believes APIs are/is the mobile search puck we should skate to, while I feel APIs may ultimately sharpen the search engines’ skates in getting to the best mobile Web “puck.”

How APIs Could Influence Mobile Search

1.  Direct access to information

APIs can provide timely, immediate access to database information, which in turn the search engines can use for real time results. For this to work in scale, APIs would need a uniform standard and either open or express permissions for search engines to access.

2.  Integration signals

The ease of integration APIs provide can be a signal to the search engines as to how popular and trusted it is. The number, frequency, and quality of services using that API can become a metric, in addition to or, in place of text links for ranking that service in mobile search results.

3.  Improved Social Integration

APIs allow mobile applications and websites to easily perform social sharing functionality, which provides an enhanced and direct social signal to the search engines. These APIs are often a means to an end that the search engines can already access either through direct agreements with social sites or with their own services.

Will APIs Become A Dominant Factor In Mobile Search?

There are several reasons why APIs will not likely become dominant in mobile search.

No Uniform API Standard

Today, there are thousands of APIs with XML, the leading data format, and REST, currently the dominant protocol; but, there is no defacto standard a search engine could crawl and easily discern information. As Mr. Cristo points out, there would need to be an agreed standard similar to Schema.org for microformats.

While the Web is consolidating around the open source WebKit browser rendering engine, and HTML5 has become specification complete in 2012, this not only provides uniformity, but speed and rendering through the browser that can ultimately provide a near app experience as well.

Personal Information & Security

To function, most APIs require the user’s permission and placement of a local file as a key to access personal information. Search engines would not be able to access or understand this information without users’ permission. This would limit APIs’ general usefulness as search engines will either get direct agreements with important providers, such as Bing with Facebook and Twitter, or get sidedoor access to that data, such as Google with Google+ and Android.

Not Every Site NEEDS An API And/Or App

Where I strongly disagree with Mr. Cristo is when he replied to my comment on his article with the following statement:

“It really comes down to whether or not native mobile apps will completely replace webpages or not. I think they will eventually, and I think human wearable computers will put the nail in the coffin of the legacy Web, so to speak.”

Creating a mobile app for each platform has a cost, as the major major operating systems, like APIs in general, have different formats; and then, customization for device types would be needed to continually update each combination. A correctly set up mobile website is singularly created and updated to work across all operating systems and device types.

Also, the practicality of creating an API in lieu of a website for mobile, or in general, doesn’t make sense for 99%+ of those currently with websites.

Where Does This Leave Us Now?

An API and native app does make sense for chronically used services/software, but those are few and far between. Most searches are for one off use, which is much quicker for the user to search via the Web as opposed to going to an app store, download the app(s), install, then finally running. For example, on mobile devices, when a user is looking to do something automobile related, s/he uses Web browsing 92% of the time over an app.

I personally see mobile apps, in general, peaking out shortly, as mobile computing power and network Internet speeds become strong enough to remove the need for native software.  Exceptions will remain with robust gaming and productivity tools requiring a native app, similar to the current experience on desktops/laptops.

The New York Times even suggests an App Burnout already underway as 95% of mobile apps are generally abandoned.

In the future, APIs may play a factor in mobile search results, but it would be in combination, not in lieu of replacing the mobile Web.

What do you think, will there be an app for that?

Mobile Keyword Research Then & Now

One of the primary reasons for doing mobile keyword research is that you could be missing out on keywords that your audience uses on mobile that they don’t use on desktop (e.g., [keyword + “nearby”]).

There are some categories, such as restaurants, where upwards of 30% of the volume comes from mobile devices, and if you’re not taking that into account in your keyword research, you could be choosing the wrong target keywords for your intended audience.

If you still need to be convinced that you should do mobile-specific keyword research, please go here, here or here. For the rest of us, however, this is how to do mobile keyword research.

Mobile keyword research used to be a pain. When I wrote about it back in 2008, there were various emulators and autosuggest tools that could help you discover mobile-specific or mobile-centric keywords that your target audience used on mobile devices, but not the same kinds of keyword tools that existed for desktop search.

Today, there are good tools from Bing and Google specifically designed to help marketers cater to mobile searchers, which makes the process much easier and the data more accurate.

You may have your own process for doing mobile keyword research, but in order to advance the practice I’m sharing part of what we do here at Resolution Media. If there’s anything you do that helps, please mention in the comments, or do as Aleyda Solis did in a recent post and share your processes for mobile SEO. Together we can move the needle for this discipline and make it easier for all of us to reach mobile searchers.

Keep in mind these three steps aren’t mobile-specific, as they apply to desktop keyword research as well; but there are differences in tools, metrics, and process that makes mobile SEO keyword research unique.

1.  Define Goals & Success Metrics

Keyword research can’t be done successfully without an endgame. If you don’t know your goals for these keywords, it’s not worth the time and effort to discover the keywords.

How are you going to use this keyword research? If your content is adaptive or your site is responsive then knowing mobile-specific keywords isn’t going to help you that much, as your content needs to be reusable and device-agnostic.

On the other hand, if you’re researching for a site that is designed specifically for mobile URLs, you have the opportunity to use different keywords and content on your mobile pages. Either way, knowing what keywords your audience uses overall can help you meet your goals.

For example, if your content is adaptive and you want to ensure that you are accounting for mobile searchers, you can sort a keyword list by total search volume and select your target keywords based on volume and how closely the intent of the keyword matches your business goal.

If your content is strictly mobile, you can sort by mobile volume and/or % of total mobile volume to find keywords that are popular on that platform and have intent that matches your business goal. Either way, you need to define what you want your natural search traffic from mobile search to do once it reaches your site: click, buy, view, download, convert offline, etc.

2.  Keyword Discovery

Once this has been determined, you need to discover how mobile searchers find your site and how mobile searchers find your competitors and other sites like yours. Use the following tools to collect a list of keywords that you’ll then qualify in the third step.

Google Webmaster Tools

GWT can be used to discover how people are currently finding your site on mobile devices. If you’re not optimized for the most popular keywords, this information won’t help you discover it, but you can at least see where you’re ranking for search terms mobile searchers enter.

At the search queries report, filter search type by Mobile. This will give you just those keywords that come from mobile devices. Note that this report used to include information on both feature phone and smartphone keywords, but both have been combined into the Mobile category.

As such, these keywords are likely from smartphones, feature phones and tablets, although the interface doesn’t specifically say.

This report is especially useful because it allows you to see rankings, impressions, clicks and click-through -ate for mobile keywords, which can’t really be found anywhere else at the moment.

Google Analytics

To see mobile keywords in Google Analytics, go to Audience > Mobile > Overview in the right hand nav.

Now filter to exclude (not set) and (not provided) and include only mobile keywords.

This will give you keywords used by mobile and tablet users. If you want to separate tablet traffic, use the Mobile Devices report and the regular expression I mentioned here.

Google Keyword Tool

The Google Keyword Tool is the only mobile-only keyword tool that I’m aware of that gives you mobile-specific keywords that you’re not already optimized for if you enter a URL, category or keyword.

In the Google Keyword Tool, select all mobile devices in the Advanced Options and Filters, and you’ll get keywords from tablets, smartphones and feature phones. You also have the option to select only smartphones and tablets, or only feature phones.

As with traditional keyword research, think about how a user might find your site, but don’t confine yourself to a desktop context. As I mentioned a few months ago, smartphone usage doesn’t necessarily imply a mobile context, as 60% of smartphone usage occurs at home. However, mobile does in some cases lead to new types of search behavior.

Ask yourself what that might be for what you’re promoting (e.g., apps, nearby, phone numbers, hours, etc.), and see if new types of keywords are relevant to your audience in a mobile context.

Bing Ads Intelligence

Bing Ads Intelligence can’t generate mobile keywords as the Google Keyword Tool can, but it’s the only tool that I know of that can estimate tablet search volume.

Take the list of mobile-specific keywords that you’ve compiled so far and run a customized traffic report in Bing Ad Intelligence, selecting Smart Phones, Non-smart phones (i.e. feature phones) and Tablets.

Ultimately, this gives you a list of keywords with monthly impression share in Bing for various platforms.

There are no match types in the BAI traffic tool, so although it’s tempting to use this data to get a more complete picture of total share of voice, it’s not recommended.

The data, however, can be used to ensure Google data is accurate, and to give a second look to keywords that appear with a lot of volume in Bing, but not in Google.

Finally, this data can be used to estimate tablet traffic in Google, which I’ll cover in a later column.

Bing Ads Intelligence also allows you to get demographic info on your mobile users, which can be helpful if you’re building personas and you want to compare mobile personas with desktop.

Bing Search Suggest

Unfortunately at present, Bing Ads Intelligence doesn’t give you a way to discover mobile keywords, per se, but you can do that by using Bing’s autocomplete feature in mobile.

Simply type a word or character that you’re researching, and mobile-specific keywords appear in the interface. I confirmed with Bing that these were mobile-specific keywords in 2011.

App Keyword Research Tools

Neither Google nor Apple have a keyword tool for Apps, so if you are doing app store optimization it’s a little more difficult to get what you’re looking for.

As I explained in my list of the most popular app store searches from last year, the best place to get official information on app keyword popularity seems to be the engines themselves, which offer app-specific keywords in the autosuggest for their search engines.

Autocomplete in Google Play gives popular app queries after three characters.

Yahoo! app search suggest gives app specific keyword suggestions by typing in one character.

There are also paid tools available that help you get a better sense of popularity in a keyword tool format, such as MobileDevHQ.

MobileDevHQ’s keyword analysis tool is an unofficial keyword tool for mobile apps.

Keep in mind that the unofficial tools can only give you an approximation of search volume based on proprietary algorithms, so take it for what it’s worth. Until app store keyword tools are released, search suggest and these paid tools are all that’s available to help discover relevant keywords.

3.  Keyword Qualification

At this point, you should have a lot of mobile keywords, but how do you decide what are the best ones? Volume can help you estimate traffic and competitiveness, but it’s not enough on its own. Here are a few exercises that we use to help us make better business decisions with mobile keywords.

Count of Queries by Platform

The Google Webmaster Tools mobile search queries report is good because it’s one of the few that allows you to compare your desktop queries with your mobile queries and discover differences in the search behavior of users accessing your site from different devices.

To do this, simply download your Mobile and Web CSVs by using the filter in the search query report and downloading the tables that appear.

Then, use Excel to label those queries that only appear for desktop searches, those queries that only appear for mobile searches, and those that appear for both.

You can then get a better understanding of what kind of site you need to create by examining the variance in search behavior in a simple pivot table chart like the one below.

Obviously, the data is stronger the more queries you have; but, if the great majority of queries appear in both desktop and mobile, adaptive content or responsive design is probably the way to go.

But, if the opposite is true and there are a majority of desktop-only and mobile-only keywords, then this could be an indication that your audience uses different terms on mobile than they do in desktop search engines, and you should probably optimize certain pages (if not the whole site) to accommodate your audience.

Mobile/Non-Mobile Tag Cloud

To get a quick look at the kinds of things your mobile audience is interested in, it’s helpful to use tag clouds of the long-tail.

To do this, simply copy your keyword list into a tag cloud generator like TagCrowd, for both desktop and mobile keyword lists.

Tag cloud of searches to Mercedes Benz site from desktop users.

Tag cloud of long tail searches to Mercedes site from mobile devices.

Often, this will show you at a glance, keywords that are used more by mobile users than desktop users overall. For example, in the tag clouds above, you can see that the mobile searchers are using more specific models than desktop searchers when looking for a Mercedes. They also appear to be looking more for dealers and locations than desktop searchers.

Mobile % of Total Traffic Report

This last method shouldn’t be a surprise to regular readers, as I’ve mentioned it in the past and in a recent mobile site audit on the Stone Temple blog.

Once you have all of your keywords, you need to use the Google Keyword Tool to estimate exact match search volume. This way, you have a better sense of the total volume for a given keyword in Google, and aren’t leaving out 30% or more of the search volume when deciding on qualified keywords.

But, this report is most helpful for the Mobile % of Total Traffic metric. This metric gives us a sense of what people are interested in on mobile devices vs. desktop.

For the Mobile % of Total Traffic column, use conditional formatting to make everything above 30% green, everything between 15 and 29% yellow, and everything below 14% red.

These numbers were used because on average last year, one in every seven searches in Google came from a mobile device, and some industries (like restaurants) had as much as 30% on average.

The idea is that anything above 30% represents greater opportunity than the industries with the most mobile search traffic and should be recognized as such.

With this list, we can sort it by total volume and optimize one site, whether that’s responsive or contains adaptive content.

We can also decide what types of things should be foregrounded on our mobile site by looking at those terms that have both a lot of search volume and a lot of search volume in mobile relative to the total. For example, we might not foreground content related to used Mercedes on the mobile site, as it’s not nearly as popular on that platform.

We can also categorize this list and get a better sense of what belongs on the site holistically. This way, we avoid variance in search volume by keyword and only focus on the category.

There are other methods that we use at Resolution, such as persona development, understanding basic query intent, etc. However, this guide should give you a better idea of the tools available to keyword researchers looking to understand mobile searchers, as well as specific techniques that can be used to find keywords and concepts that mobile searchers use that are relevant to the brand you represent.

In the mobile space, blogs are also one of the few areas where users expect to find lengthy text — so, the pressure to abbreviate content for a small screen gets dialed back, making blogs even more useful for mobile SEO.

Cobblers’ Shoes

To take a closer look at the different approaches available to mobile marketers, I decided to look at the blogs of mobile phone manufacturers. As a writer covering the space, I visit these sites pretty often, especially when they discuss future trends in the mobile Web.

Today, we’ll look at four companies, and how they illustrate the full spectrum of investment that you can make in a mobile blog.

Starting At Number Five

Apple: One would expect that the leading innovator in mobile phones would have an excellent blog, especially when viewed on my iPhone 4s. But, that assumption gets dashed on two counts: 1) Apple doesn’t have a blog (!) and 2) their closet match, the news room, is a pinch-to-zoom nightmare, even by pinch-to-zoom standards. Also, the title tag is a rather terse “Apple – Hot News.” Thanks to this astounding effort, Apple earns a #5 in our list of four companies.

Samsung: As the runner-up in most conversations about mobile, Samsung has the next-worst mobile experience of the group. At least they have a blog for the company, and even one dedicated to their mobile developers. But once again, it’s time for a magnifying glass. Perhaps the large screen on Samsung’s Galaxy Note would be useful here.

Honorable Mention

Nokia marks the tipping point. Not only do they have a blog, but it’s formatted for mobile! And, it’s frequently updated with a wide variety of topics. Their posts also get piped out to Google News, and show-up when searching for info about the company or specific phones. Areas for improvement? The headline-only home page discourages exploration, and the post titles aren’t well optimized. A post about “mobile maps” that just mentions “maps,” for example.

And The Crown Goes To…

Motorola produces a mobile blog that is not only friendly to searchers, but the bottom line as well. The home page shows full-length posts, right-sized images, and titles with product keywords prominently displayed.

The big surprise is how easy it is to get from here to actually buying a phone. Models mentioned in these posts are linked to product pages, and from there, you can click through directly to Verizon (in the case of Droid models) and see pricing. That’s content to transaction in two clicks! That’s money in Motorola’s pocket (and kudos to Verizon for not throwing-in a zip-code request to spoil the party.)

Motorola knows that content marketing sells smart phones, and makes it easy to actually buy one from a smartphone.

Lessons Learned

It’s really about a willingness to cater to your customers. All these companies obviously know the mobile space, and know the limitations of the mobile Web. And ironically, all of them are deeply involved in mobile search, via products like Apple’s Siri, Nokia Maps, and Samsung’s S-Voice.

But, knowledge without intent results in missed opportunities. Nokia and Motorola see the opportunity to reach customers through their own devices, and that speaks volumes about their willingness to provide a good user experience – not just for their blogs, but in their actual products, too.

Apparently the U.S. Patent office works on Christmas Day, or simply wanted to offer Google a Christmas gift before the FTC Antitrust case ruling, as it approved Google’s Blending Mobile Search Results patent under USPTO number 8341147 on December 25th 2012.

Let’s take an initial look at the patent to see what it might tell us from a mobile search marketing perspective.

What Are The Key Points?

• The mobile search result quality scores and the generic search result quality scores were generated according to different scoring formulas.

• Based on one or more terms in the search query, the search query is classified as a mobile query.

• The search service also directs the query to the mobile search engine (step 230).

• To calculate the scores, the mobile search engine uses a different scoring algorithm, or formula, than the one used by the generic search engine. Using the search result quality scores, the mobile search engine ranks the mobile search results (step 245).

What Does This Mean For Search Marketers?

Search marketing translation below each point:

Patent Point #1

• The mobile search result quality scores and the generic search result quality scores were generated according to different scoring formulas.

• Based on one or more terms in the search query, the search query is classified as a mobile query.

• The search service also directs the query to the mobile search engine (step 230).

• To calculate the scores, the mobile search engine uses a different scoring algorithm, or formula, than the one used by the generic search engine. Using the search result quality scores, the mobile search engine ranks the mobile search results (step 245).

OK, What Should I Do About It?

You can’t rely on the same ol’ same ol’ desktop SEO practices while mobile search continues to grow, with it already achieving 20% of all search in 2012 according to RKG and Covario’s own studies.

You can address the mobile searchers intent by targeting mobile related keywords separate from the desktop experience, optimally with the use of dynamic serving or at least a different mobile URL.

Each page needs to provide clear signals that it is targeted to a  mobile device, this can be directly called out in its DocType and affirmed in its page size.

Finally, the page must show that it is useful to the mobile searcher by providing concise, to-the-point information, a phone number, the nearest address, and easy social-sharing functionality.

1.  Give More Tactical Advice On How To Do Mobile SEO Well

OK, you get it: you should be doing something to account for mobile searchers. You’re not one of the misinformed masses who believe that mobile SEO is a myth, or that mobility doesn’t matter in a multiscreen world or that mobile search results and desktop search results are the same. I know I spent a lot of time in past columns dispelling these myths, but going forward, I’m going to focus on real actionable insights for improving organic search traffic from mobile searchers.

I’ve done this in the past a bit. Regular readers will know that I’m not completely theoretical or strategic here. Early last year, I dove in deep to uncover 7 common examples of duplicate content created by mobile sites, and gave specific advice on how to best optimize a mobile site.

Starting next month, I’ll continue this trend and explain a little about how we do keyword research for mobile searchers at Resolution Media. This should help you bring your keyword research into the 21^st century, where not doing mobile keyword research could cost you insights into more than half of your audience, depending on your category.

As the percent of searchers using mobile devices continues to increase, mobile SEO might become redundant, as SEOs will need to account for mobility in order to do their jobs. When that happens, readers of this column will be ahead of the curve.

If you can’t wait until next month for new information, be sure to check out my recent guest post on the Stone Temple blog for two tips on how to do a simple mobile SEO audit.

What other mobile SEO topics do you want to see covered in detail this year? Please sound off in the comments.

2.  Give More Case Studies To Demonstrate Mobile SEO Success

It can be easy to think that all of this is theoretical; as we do a lot of talk about how and why to do mobile SEO here but not much demonstration of it has worked for businesses. And, honestly, in the beginning, a lot of it was more abstract than client-based.

Yet today, I know more of our clients are asking for mobile SEO help, so we have case studies about what works and what doesn’t when it comes to app store optimization and mobile SEO for sites.

Real world examples of mobile search results & looking at mobile SEO opportunities

In 2013, you can expect to hear more concrete examples about how some of the techniques that we talk about here have worked for real businesses like yours. Keep in mind that some of them may be anonymous, as I’m sometimes limited in terms of what data I can provide.

Still, all of the case studies should give you a better sense that mobile SEO isn’t a theoretical exercise that we will all be doing sometime in the distant future; but a real process that businesses use to their advantage today.

To this end, I’d love to hear from you all about what has worked for your business when it comes to mobile SEO. Have you had phenomenal success doing mobile specific keyword research or getting incremental links to your mobile site? If so, let me know and I’ll be happy to publish in a future column.

3.  Leave The Responsive vs. Mobile Web Debate In 2012

Finally, though many of us mobile search columnists here have spilled a lot of ink about the pros and cons of responsive Web design versus some other mobile configuration in 2012, this year it’s time to move forward.

Though I respect and frequently agree with him, I would have to disagree with Michael Martin’s assertion that the single URL approach is best for SEO, as we all know that Google now has switchboard tags to consolidate link equity in the event of duplicated pages across URLs, and that mobile URLs are one of three supported options for mobile SEO.

Yet, in spite of the fact that this was announced last June, I’m still seeing many people claiming that the single URL approach is best because of its SEO value– consolidating link equity in the absence of duplicate URLs. We know now that this is false.

If you want to make your site mobile and do well in search results, you now have three supported options: dynamic serving, responsive design and mobile URLs.

Google and Bing prefer responsive design if it makes sense for your users and you’re targeting smartphone users; but if it doesn’t and you’re not they can still make it work.

Of my more than thirty published articles last year, more than half of them were about when responsive Web design is appropriate for SEO and when it’s not. I don’t plan on talking about this much more in 2013, and I hope that others like me who write about mobile SEO leave it in the past as well.