Highly rated SEOs are always looking for new ways to make links more powerful, helping websites rank higher in search engines. Building a network of mobile websites to complement the traditional web may just be one way that has been more or less overlooked.
Don’t worry too much if you don’t know anything about building a mobile website, as for many reasons it can be considered less complicated than building a complex website for the legacy internet. It’s something you should consider doing now, before everyone else in your business niche finds out how powerful having a network of high-traffic sites can be on the mobile web.
There are several different ways and different theories on how to approach mobile websites and the mobile web. The old guard believes that the Internet should be “device neutral,” and there’s another group that thinks cell phones, PDAs, and other wireless devices should take a more unique approach to how websites are designed for mobile consumption. Both points of view are valid, and the central theme is that mobile websites should be smaller information sites that can be downloaded quickly to save time and network resources.
Don’t worry too much about this debate and just somehow start building a small site that is easily viewable on mobile devices and easily indexed in mobile search engines. Just know for now that Google has decided that a mobile site will be indexed separately from a regular website, which means there may be some opportunities when it comes to mobile search engine optimization and the future of marketing for mobile users. .
An interesting fact is that Google indicates that it will continue to offer a version of traditional websites when a mobile browser is detected. This is part of the same controversy of having to deal with a full website on your mobile phone versus a lightweight version with smaller pages designed to favor text over graphics. Some reviewers have compared this to reading a book through a magnifying glass and having to scroll all over the place to see anything on a smaller screen.
Another option, if you are a WordPress user, is to use some of the popular plugins that will detect what type of browser your website visitors are using and then display the correct view of your web pages (WordPress Mobile Pack, MobilePress). These are simple and useful tools, but they probably won’t provide any of the added SEO benefits of being able to index what might otherwise be considered duplicate content. This is why it may be smart to purchase a separate domain name to use for the mobile web and then create just a few pages of essential information. You can create a CNAME record for mdot (m.) or register a dotmobi (.mobi) TLD. These are recognized as mobile-friendly URLs. Winksite.com and Mobify.me are two online services that you can use to create a mobile site for free. These are pretty intuitive point-and-click online solutions that will work as a start and also get you used to thinking smaller for mobile sites.
Depending on your focus, from there your SEO efforts may duplicate some of what you already do online, or you may take on some new features unique to the mobile web, like adding QR codes. It goes without saying that you’ll want to link back, but you may have to find new ways and experiment along the way to see what gives you the best results. The favorites here will continue to be social bookmarking, commenting on forums and blogs, and submission to mobile web directories and mobile search engines.
RSS feeds are a great way to promote online, and this is a shortfall for what you’ll see currently being offered for mobile sites. You can use RSS to promote mobile sites, but you won’t typically find these feeds as a built-in feature like in WordPress. In most cases, you’ll need to create your own RSS feed using one of the RSS conversion sites like Feedage.com. RSS complements the mobile web as it is simple in concept and lightweight when it comes to computer code. Remember to submit your mobile site feeds to RSS directories and be sure to use tags that favor words that indicate it’s a mobile website.
It seems that even though the mobile web has been around for a few years now, for some reason it can still be considered a sleeping dragon. This makes it all the more exciting as there is still plenty of time to learn and become more or less an expert in the area of mobile website marketing before others realize what is going on.
