New Mobile SEO Guide and Other Updates

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Many of you remember the Mobile Search Optimization white paper that Resolution Media developed in August of last year. We developed it partially
as a vehicle to help brands understand the opportunity inherent in mobile
search, but primarily to help them navigate the mobile search landscape with as
much knowledge to succeed as possible. It served its purpose at the time, but
an update is in order.

Optimizing for more traffic from natural search.

Calling All Mobilizers

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As I mentioned in my last post on mobile analytics, over the next couple of months I will be reviewing various technologies used in mobile development and optimization from a mobile SEO’s perspective. Now that mobile analytics is out of the way, I’ll be moving on to tools used in helping to build mobile web sites, which are sometimes called mobilizers. I’ll be contacting companies individually as I did for the mobile analytics overview, but if there are any great solutions out there that are not as easy to find, I want to invite users or creators of these solutions to be included in the mobile site creator review. If you own or know of a great tool, please don’t keep it like a secret. Contact me at bryson [dot]meunier[at]gmail.com and I will add it to the list of tools for potential review.

Optimizing for more traffic from natural search.

The Mobile SEO’s Guide to Mobile Analytics

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As marketers look to take advantage of the opportunity inherent in mobile search in 2008, many of them are going to be looking to various technologies to help them get mobile faster
(mobilizers), track mobile users better (mobile analytics), understand mobile search behavior (mobile keyword research tools), gain link popularity to their mobile sites (mobile directories), and
become accessible to mobile search engines and the highest number of mobile users (mobile validators and emulators). To facilitate this process, I will be looking at these technologies and
processes over the next couple of months, and pointing out advantages and disadvantages of each for the mobile optimizer. Today I’ll be looking at mobile analytics, including why they’re necessary
and what options are currently available to the mobile SEO.

Optimizing for more traffic from natural search.

For Enterprise SEOs Only

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Faithful readers of the FindResolution blog and followers of my del.icio.us bookmarks will know this already, but I have a new post up at the FindResolution blog about enterprise SEO and preparing for Q4 now. If you manage digital content for a Fortune 500 site, you may be as tired as I am of the focus so many SEO sites seem to have on optimization for small business sites. No doubt small businesses are equally important, and there are far more people optimizing content for small to mid-size businesses (including me and my team), but there are a number of us out here with other problems that don’t get nearly as much attention.

Optimizing for more traffic from natural search.

SEO versus Mobile SEO

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Though this is primarily a blog dealing with optimizing mobile content for mobile search engines, in my role as a consultant I need to understand how to optimize many types of digital content for many types of search engines. In this industry I’ve met many who are mobile marketers first and SEOs second. I’m an SEO first and a mobile marketer second. That said, it always perplexes me when I hear my fellow SEOs claim that SEO for mobile is basically SEO for the web, as in many cases the two couldn’t be more different.

If you’re wondering how they’re different, and you haven’t done it yet, be sure to check out my two-part post on the new FindResolution blog, How Mobile SEO is Different, which outlines five key differences between SEO and its mobile counterpart.

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Characteristics of the Top 100 Mobile Search Queries at AT&T

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Update, 2/21/2009:

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Help Google Find Your Mobile Web Site

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Thanks to Nadir for pointing out the new Google Mobile Web Index. As I commented on Nadir’s
blog, this is a welcome change for those of us who prefer simple mobile web sites to scrolling through pages of navigation with Google’s transcoding software. However, since the most visible
results in the Google mobile search engine are still Web results mixed with mobile web results when Google thinks it’s appropriate, it’s still very possible for Google to frustrate your users, even
if you have a mobile site indexed and ranked in the mobile web index.

Optimizing for more traffic from natural search.

Mobile Marketer’s Mobile Outlook 2008

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Several good things going on, including a guide to mobile keyword research and mobile analytics and a nod to R/W/W’s 85 piece mobile search toolkit from last year with my own mobile search marketing toolkit for 2008. Hold tight. In the interim, I’d like to join David Berkowitz in saluting Mobile Marketer for putting together quite a guide to mobile marketing in 2008.

Only two of the 44 pages are exclusive to mobile search, and it’s mostly about the challenges associated with it, but this quote from Phil Stelter on the opportunity inherent in mobile search should probably be committed to memory:

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Mobile/SEO Wish List for 2008

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Many of my fellow Resolution Medians are focusing on the present this New Year’s Day, I’m sure, since as of this writing Illinois is down 21-3 at halftime in the Rose Bowl, and like good Illini they’re hoping the Juice can come through in the end. As a Buckeye, however, I’m looking to next week’s national championship, which gives me time today to look a little toward the future of mobile marketing and SEO. If you’ve got time as well, join me for a minute as I spend this first afternoon of 2008 reflecting on several up and coming trends in the industry and presenting what I hope will be several positive outcomes for this new year.

1. Mobile Marketing and SEO Finally Converge

Mobile marketers, it’s time to start thinking search. In a recent Mobile Insider, Steve Smith reflects on the Unasked Questions that should be asked in any mobile marketing campaign, but historically aren’t. Brands are often so eager to “get into this mobile thing” that they’re not doing it as effectively as they could. In pushing for more effective campaigns, Smith quotes Milennial Media CEO Paul Palmieri in stressing content creation over advertising for effective mobile marketing:

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2007 Search Blogs Awards Nominees at Search Engine Journal

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Search Engine Journal is holding its annual search blogs awards, and a variety of industry pundits are currently nominating each other for awards. Interesting that best Mobile Blog was a category this year, and that, as of this writing and 70+ comments, none of said pundits save this one have nominated a mobile blog (correction: #72, David, you read my mind). If you follow the space and you want to nominate a blog (even if it’s not this one), please don’t be afraid to contribute.

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Chicago SEO Meetup

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This blog has been getting a little more attention lately, having been mentioned in MediaPost a few times and added to the TopRank BigList in the last two weeks, and I wanted to use the increased visibility to address any new readers that might also be my neighbors in Chicago.

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Google Acceptance of Paid Links Could Destroy Small Business Traffic

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The official Google Webmaster Central Blog has a very comprehensive post this morning about trafficking in links that pass PageRank, and why webmasters who want to do well in Google natural search listings should avoid it. There’s nothing new for those of us who have been following this for a while, but for those of you still interested in this debate, this post from Matt Cutts and Maile Ohye not only shows Google’s historical objection to the practice, but the fundamental reason for it. As we’ve been telling clients for a while, Google’s natural listings are fundamentally different from sponsored listings in the sense that there is no additional direct cost to entry for placement or ranking. Regardless of a site’s budget, then, all competitors in a Search Engine Results Page (SERP) with crawlable content containing relevant keywords and links from authority sites in their niche have the opportunity to rank in the natural listings. In the post, Google explains how paid links change this game:

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Say No to Bango for Mobile SEO

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When I saw Advertising Age Digital’s article this morning entitled “Getting Your Content from the Web to Mobile Phones” I was momentarily excited for the few of us in this industry who focus on just that: getting digital content to mobile users. As we argued in the Mobile SEO White Paper, optimizing for mobile devices also includes creating content for mobile users specifically rather than simply pushing your web content into the digital realm, as mobile users are going to have different needs than desktop users, and will require content that is optimized for those mobile-specific searches; but whatever. This is a start. If a publication like Advertising Age wants to increase visibility to the mobile marketing space, this can only be positive for those of us who want to get our content or our client’s content in front of the rapidly expanding group of mobile users. The problem is when the method of increasing visibility of that content not only doesn’t increase visibility in the mobile search engines, but may in fact actually hurt it

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SEMPO Certification and DM News

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There’s a short QA with me in the new issue of DM News about the SEMPO Institute. According to the SEMPO dean, I was the first student to register for and pass the Advanced Search Engine Optimization course. Has anyone else taken or passed the course? What did you think? For the most part, I’m all for standardized training. Although SEO takes creativity, it’s not impossible to learn, and the basic tenets can be taught to those with the right skill set. As such, there’s a real opportunity for the SEMPO folks to lead the way when it comes to standardized training for SEO, much in the way that Google does for AdWords and their other products. However, from what I’ve seen, the course has its limitations, and is honestly quite far from being a good resource for advanced practitioners. Would love to hear others input, however. What do you think?

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Three Embarrassing Google SERPs

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As the person ultimately responsible for training SEO within our agency, I often find myself warning our teams and clients about the dangers of common spamdexing tactics like hidden text, doorway pages, and other boneheaded ways of gaming the ranking algorithm and making low-quality content appear higher than it would otherwise. We have many blue chip clients at Resolution Media with a lot to lose, who simply can’t afford to pump and dump domains the way that some small businesses do on a regular basis. For this reason, every tactic that can get a site banned in Google is also banned at Resolution Media. We are a white hat SEO shop that helps our clients get visibility in the SERPs by applying known white hat best practices and following Google Webmaster Quality Guidelines to the tee. We follow all the rules, and when Google enforces them, they work.

Optimizing for more traffic from natural search.