Local search is the most happening trend and Google, as is evident from its latest series of blog posts in its Google Webmaster Central Blog, is giving more importance to it. Though SEO experts have declared time and again that the coming year is going to be “The Year of Mobile”, that auspicious year has never come. But it is a fact that mobile is no longer treated a communication tool. It now comes loaded with a number of jaw dropping features that let users do almost anything they fancy. Texting, calling, tweeting, Googling phew! Almost anything is possible with mobile these days.
Mobile Search Is Different
So, if you own a business and hopefully if you have a web presence, I think the
time has come to have a mobile version of your website until it is too late.
Since PC and mobile are two different platforms, you need to have different
presence to give boost to your business. You website may enjoying top ranking
in Google main web search but it may not get equal treatment when it comes to
mobile search. Google in fact has a different bot : Googlebot-Mobile for mobile
search and that means, if it fails to index your website, you website will
always remain invisible in mobile platforms. Now if you do not wish to lose out
on this opportunity this time around, here are certain tips that you should go
through carefully:
Do not Forsake Traditional Practices
Mobile SEO is still in its nascent stage and
that means, you need to follow the same SEO best practices as closely as
possible. Both Googlebot and Googlebot-Mobile give importance to meta title,
meta description, H tags and that you need to use them as carefully as
possible.
Create A Secondary CSS File
Once you are done with the traditional SEO practices, you should create a
separate CSS file specifically for the mobile version of your website. Give it
a suitable name for say – handheld.css and this will enable you to render your
website precisely in different mobile platforms without even changing the
content of your website.
Plan for iPhone
Since iPhone is bad at locating CSS file that you have created painstaking, you
need to make a duplicate of handheld.css file and rename it as iPhone.css. It
will redress the issue for sure.
Create A Mobile
Sitemap
Creating mobile sitemap is easy and it is more or less similar to that
generating a general sitemap. You can do it manually or you can try any of the
mobile sitemap generator tools that are easily available over the net. When it
is done just submit it by logging in your Google Webmaster tool account.
Care for Codes
Junk codes, sloppy HTML or JavaScript codes can run the risk of making your
website almost invisible in Google mobile search. Do not overboard you website
with loads of images, meaningless texts (mobile users are a bit finicky about
going through long content). Try to streamline everything neatly and precisely.
So far we have discussed some of the basic Mobile SEO optimization tips. In the subsequent posts, we will try to discuss more about advance Mobile SEO optimizations tips. So stay tuned and good luck.