Mobile Search explored the differences in searcher behavior and search results on mobile devices versus desktop platforms. Columnists provided tips for mobile SEO and SEM campaigns while uncovering the latest trends and technology employed by smartphone and tablet applications to deliver real-time search results to mobile device users. Mobile Search no longer runs as a standalone column on Search Engine Land and has since been incorporated into the Mobile Marketing column on Marketing Land.

Mobile SEO & The Need For Descriptive Links

Oct 3, 2011 at 11:24am ET by Sherwood Stranieri

It's a well known fact that links play a key role in search engine optimization. In addition to providing a physical connection between pages, search engines also use links to get advance notice of the content they'll find at the other end of that link. While it's true that search engines place the greatest value on links that come from other websites, they also take notice of the links connecting pages on your own site. Therefore, SEO consultants will spend a lot of time focusing on the site's navigation menu, adding keywords to make the menu more self-explanatory. But why is this so im [...]

How To Create QR Codes With Optimal URL Strategies In Mind

Sep 26, 2011 at 11:29am ET by Brian Klais

My last few columns painted a picture of QR codes as a force that will disrupt paid search and organic search marketing strategies. QR codes give consumers a faster, easier shortcut than searching in many situations. I talked about how the generation of these "mobile links" will demand brevity from your SEO’d URLs - but how much? As with any new field, there is still a lot of mystery about how to engineer QR codes. Today, I’ll explore this point further by looking at the science of QR code creation, how URL size impacts QR size, and how to start engineering a QR-friendly URL strategy. [...]

Consider Mobile Content Carefully For Users & Better SEO

Sep 19, 2011 at 12:00pm ET by Bryson Meunier

I’ve spoken a lot in these columns about the differences between mobile SEO and desktop SEO, often warning webmasters to do more than just reformat their desktop content for smaller screens. But if you’re in the process of creating a mobile site, you may be wondering what to put on your mobile site that’s different than what is on your desktop site. What content (if any) would be interesting to users of a mobile site that wouldn't necessarily appeal to a stationary user on a desktop or laptop? As search marketers, we should already understand the power of keyword research in lett [...]

Why Social Must Be Part Of Your Mobile Strategy

Sep 12, 2011 at 12:15pm ET by Andrew French

Let me start this piece by throwing a few stats out there: Mobile Over 550,000 Android phones are activated each day (worldwide). In the UK, 45% of Internet use is done on mobile devices. There are more than 3m mobile Internet users in London alone. In the UK, there are more than 15,000,000 smartphones in use. More than 21,000,000 UK mobile users can access the Internet on their phones. UK iPad users are more inclined to spend money on their iPad than any of their other devices. Social Nearly half of all brand Tweets are negative. YouTube is the UKs third largest websit [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Mobile Search

How Integrated QR Codes Could Disrupt Your SEM Strategy

Aug 29, 2011 at 1:25pm ET by Brian Klais

This summer, I dedicated my columns to exploring the disruptive effects QR codes will have on the core of search marketing – from SEO URL strategy, to the very notion of link building. Today, I’ll look at how QR disrupts the SEM game, and may force you to adopt a new strategy. It's In The Mail If you’re a US resident, you’ve surely noticed the spike this summer in direct mail pieces featuring 2D barcodes (typically QR) – even curiously from firms that are typically late adopters, like non-profits. This was due to a brilliant (perhaps desperate) move by the US Postal Service to rema [...]

What’s The Difference Between Mobile & Desktop SEO?

Aug 22, 2011 at 10:30am ET by Bryson Meunier

One of the questions I get most often about mobile SEO is this: I’m already doing SEO-- do I really need to do mobile SEO separately? What’s the difference between the two? There are some who would say that there is no difference between desktop SEO and mobile SEO. It's a topic that often garners friendly debate - Andrew French, a fellow Mobile Mondays columnist, has even gone so far as to say there is no mobile SEO, just SEO for mobile search. To me, this is like saying "there is no oncology, just a branch of medicine for cancer." On the one hand, yes, oncology is a branch of [...]

How To Use Mobile To Broaden Your SEO Campaign

Aug 15, 2011 at 10:27am ET by Andrew French

Admittedly, I’ve been a little negative about "mobile SEO" in my last few posts, but that’s only because I believe "mobile SEO" really shouldn’t be seen as a separate product, just another channel to assist your SEO strategy. Let’s look at a market that really isn’t suited to mobile conversions and look at ways to make it work with your current SEO campaign. As I mentioned in my last post, industries such as insurance can struggle to find an angle to offer their products through small mobile devices such as smartphones, but that really shouldn’t mean that you give up on mobil [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Mobile Search

Mobile Search Strategies For Online Retail

Aug 8, 2011 at 10:38am ET by Sherwood Stranieri

Previously, I took a look at how the travel industry can use mobile SEO in conjunction with desktop-based campaigns to reach customers at two points during their vacation planning: at home while booking the trip, and at the destination while planning their activities. This timing element could be applied to a lot of other industries; let's look at online retail. Product Searches As search marketers, we understand the difference between someone typing in a generic product search, versus a brand or brand/product search. The generic searcher is earlier in the buying cycle, and approaching th [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Mobile Search

Mobile Link Building Issues: How QR Codes Disrupt More Than URLs

Aug 1, 2011 at 11:00am ET by Brian Klais

Last month, I introduced the idea that QR codes could disrupt your URL strategy. This led to quite a lively discussion! With dozens of comments, over 850 retweets, and hundreds of QR scans for the mobile article, this is obviously an important topic. Today, I'll complete the theme with examples, and best-practice methods for optimizing QR code URLs. Let me summarize my point of view: Barcodes (the Quick Response format, in particular) are more than merely mobile campaign conduits; they are mobile site links. They are the mechanism through which we as mobile consumers will expect to ac [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Mobile Search

Better Mobile Linkbuilding In 5 Easy Steps

Jul 25, 2011 at 9:02am ET by Bryson Meunier

You may have read in SEOMoz a few years ago that link building is unnecessary for mobile rankings. When it comes to smartphone search engine results, data suggests otherwise. When I took a random sample of 11 of the most popular mobile queries and examined the characteristics of the top 5 Google smartphone results for each query, the average domain authority (using SEOMoz metrics) for the first five positions was 83/100, and the first result (on average) had as many links pointing to the first listing as it did to listings 2 through 5. Furthermore, there was only one site in the sample t [...]

Mobile SEO: The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

Jul 11, 2011 at 12:33pm ET by Andrew French

Let me just start by saying the there is no such a thing as "mobile SEO", just SEO for mobile search. True mobile SEO could only exist if you only have a mobile site and the only link building you do is from other mobile sites and pursue other SEO activities on only mobile based platforms. In other words, "mobile SEO" doesn't really exist, it’s just another part of SEO, and should be treated as such. I'm sure that statement will not win me any friends within the mobile SEO world, but it's true. As search engine mobile and desktop results merge and the lines between mobile SERPs and des [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Mobile Search

Why QR Codes Could Disrupt Your SEO URL Strategy

Jul 4, 2011 at 6:23pm ET by Brian Klais

SEO has greatly influenced web information architecture over the years, particularly with respect to URL structure. I think we'd all agree, it has long been considered gospel to "optimize" URLs at the category (or product-levels) by including at least a sprinkling of keywords, as a ranking signal and to make URLs more human readable and clickable. However, mobile’s disruption of marketing knows no bounds. This common SEO practice can also be a liability when it comes to mobile barcode marketing - where URL size and branding matter, but keywords do not. In this two-part series, I’ll make [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Mobile Search

Top 3 Takeaways From Google’s Inside Search Event

Jun 27, 2011 at 8:54am ET by Bryson Meunier

For those of you expecting me to make good on a promise from my last column to continue the theme of how mobile is changing SEO with regard to link building, look for that next month. Since Google’s Inside Search event had a mobile theme, I think it’s more important to address the implications of what was said this month. If you’re not already aware, on Tuesday, June 14, 2011, Google held an Inside Search event in which they introduced several new features to desktop search, including voice search and search by image, released several new mobile features, and gave general statistics [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: Mobile | Mobile Search | SEO: Mobile Search

The Mobile SEO Party is Ending

Jun 20, 2011 at 12:20pm ET by Andrew French

... and moving to a bigger house. Since over a quarter of the world's mobile phones are now smartphones and mobile Internet use is set to overtake desktop use in the next 4 years, it’s even more important to have a mobile strategy or mobile offering. In recent times, Google has started to open up about how they crawl, index and use mobile sites. One example of this that there is no longer a need to have a mobile site on a sub-domain or in a folder, you simply need to have mobile friendly pages with the same URL. This was mentioned by John Mueller in a recent Google Buzz Q&A: John [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Mobile Search

How To Integrate Desktop & Mobile Search For The Travel Industry

Jun 13, 2011 at 1:33pm ET by Sherwood Stranieri

Living in the old Italian neighborhood in Boston, I come across tourists everyday. It's interesting to observe their behavior, particularly in a setting like Boston, which is famous for being a walking city. Most tourists already have a hotel booked by the time they arrive. They have a set timeframe, and a short list of sights to see. Beyond that, a lot of their time is up for grabs. And they're all carrying mobile phones of one type or another. [caption id="attachment_80681" align="aligncenter" width="550" caption="Search activity for Boston landmarks is similar, but the quantities are [...]

RIP Referrer Data! How Mobile Apps Can Kill Your Mobile Metrics

Jun 6, 2011 at 12:51pm ET by Brian Klais

Imagine justifying your PPC budget, if you could no longer track which keywords sent each visitor. Regardless of how successful your program is today, you probably would not think twice about killing or dramatically shrinking it tomorrow. And for pretty good reason, right? That referral data is connective tissue that enables you to attribute success and allocate resource against ROI metrics. Well, in the nascent mobile ecosystem, increasing amounts of this referrer information are becoming invisible to your mobile clickstream and ROI analysis. Maybe you have noticed? If not, you probably wi [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Mobile Search

How Mobile Searchers Are Changing Keyword Research

May 30, 2011 at 12:49pm ET by Bryson Meunier

Many analysts are making the case for separate device targeting in mobile paid search these days, but due largely to the subtlety of the differences in natural search results, too many SEOs are under the mistaken impression that desktop and mobile SEO are one in the same. Because this ignorance affects all of us by not giving us the tools we need to target mobile users effectively, I’m using a few columns to make the differences crystal clear. In my last column, I started to make the case for how SEO changes when targeting mobile searchers, starting with the 14 differences between desktop [...]

Do Mobile Blog Templates Have Enough Substance For SEO?

May 16, 2011 at 12:59pm ET by Sherwood Stranieri

As more online activity shifts to mobile devices, bloggers are becoming aware of the benefits of having mobile versions of their websites. As luck would have it, the developers of major blogging platforms recognized this, and stepped-in to provide default solutions for those wanting to serve-up content to a mobile audience without a lot of investment. Let's take a look at three of the major players. WordPress Mobile Versions There are two versions of the WordPress platform: the hosted WordPress.com service, and the self-installed WordPress.org package that you can run on your own serv [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Mobile Search

Your Mobile Site May Be A Lot Less Mobile Than You Think

May 9, 2011 at 11:10am ET by Brian Klais

Any smartphone shopper who’s tried to take advantage of the mobile Web will nod incredulously with Google’s recent survey that found 79% of marketers still do not offer mobile-ready content. For consumers, that’s a real letdown. But marketer antipathy towards mobile shoppers isn’t the only reason the mobile Web sucks. The fact is, most of the mobile site content offered by the other 21% also lacks the "smarts" to auto-connect with smartphone shoppers. How prevalent is this problem? Worse than you might think. Calculating "Mobile IQ" I think the old maxim rings true of mobile – y [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Mobile Search

14 Differences Between Mobile Search & Desktop Search Results

May 2, 2011 at 2:23pm ET by Bryson Meunier

When you write a monthly column on how mobile impacts search and social, it can be easy to forget that most businesses still aren’t thinking about mobile as something that impacts them today, and aren’t really planning for a future in which most of our online activity will take place on mobile devices. For the few businesses that are taking advantage of mobile today, and not waiting until doing so is mission critical, it might not seem like much of a problem, especially when the competition has yet to catch up. Yet, when I talk to providers of the tools we all use and ask them about [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Mobile Search | SEO: Mobile Search

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