My wife and I just
got back from seeing the Reader and are currently, like many Americans, watching the Oscars. I wanted
to quickly post a movie related mobile tip, and then try to predict
the winners with mobile search volume via the new Google Mobile
keyword tool.

This great tip for using Google Analytics for mobile analytics was first brought to my attention by Craig Hordlow of Red Bricks Media in iMedia Connection. Instead of using filters and creating a separate profile, I’ve set up custom segments in the latest version of Google Analytics in order to compare mobile traffic to desktop traffic or smartphone traffic to mobile traffic easily. Here’s how:

I want to preface this post by saying that I am employed full-time by Resolution Media and am offering this limited mobile marketing checklist and guide for a nominal fee in order to help those who don’t have the resources to hire me and my colleagues at Resolution Media, or employ an agency or consultant to help them in their SEO efforts. It’s not an alternative to hiring an agency or a consultant, but it’s an affordable way to begin to understand mobile SEO indexing and ranking factors for those who have no other options. If you’re interested in partnering with an industry leader for your long-term natural search (including mobile) strategy, the checklist and mobile SEO seminar I’m about to describe are definitely not a substitute. They are, however, good places to start for the uninitiated, and the nominal fee allows me to control access to the information, while helping those who read this blog and are interested in mobile SEO get a taste of the type of understanding that’s necessary to execute mobile SEO successfully, even if they have limited budgets. If you want to discuss a long-term partnership with thought leaders in monetizing emerging media, including mobile search, you can hire me and my team on a full-time basis by contacting Resolution Media

At the beginning of the new year I’ve noticed a lot of backwards-looking traffic in my analytics. Many of you are finding this blog while looking for insight into the top mobile search queries entered in 2008. A number of other blogs reported these in December of 2008 when the engines released them, but to my knowledge none of them gave search volume for the queries, and few places have even aggregated the content into a single page. Therefore, search and you shall receive… I give you the top mobile search terms of 2008, as reported by Yahoo! Mobile, AOL Mobile and Google Mobile India:

Excited and flattered to be a part of this year’s SEMMYS. I’m the only mobile-specific nominee among a list of informative local search posts, which I think of as a triumph for mobile search. Oddly, it’s not my most popular post that was nominated, but it does give me a sense of what kind of posts the community appreciates, which will give me some direction for 2009. Regular readers of this blog understand that I don’t think of mobile as a category within local search exclusively

What are you going to be doing at 12pm EST tomorrow, Tuesday January 20, 2009? If you’ve turned on a television or glanced at a newspaper or online media source in the past several weeks, you know that many people will be tuning in to the inauguration of Barack Obama at that time. However, if you have a Tivo/DVR and want to take advantage of the momentum mobile has this year, I would think about Tivoing the inauguration and tuning in to Cindy Krum’s webinar on mobile marketing instead.

Very excited to be a part of SMX West this year. I haven’t made a secret of my frustration with search trade shows in general for catering to search marketing newbies, but SMX is unique in that they offer SMX advanced for marketers who don’t often learn at the more general trade shows, and a satisfaction guarantee. I had a great time at SMX Local & Mobile last year, and am looking forward to this SMX-perience as well.

This blog has always been more about analysis and tutorials than news, but since this is probably the biggest news ever to hit mobile search marketers, I’ll happily make an exception.

Today Google released a mobile keyword tool that allows AdWords users to see mobile search volume from within their AdWords account. Here’s the announcement from Google:

On the last day of 2008, many of us are giving predictions for 2009, but since genetic engineering in 2008 has not yet advanced to the point where any of us are clairvoyant, I’m going to forgo the predictions again this year.


At the beginning of 2008 I had two basic hopes: that people calling themselves SEOs would focus more on whitehat strategy and less on cheating their way to the top of the SERPs, and that mobile marketing and SEO would continue to converge. You can judge for yourself as to whether either of these have come to fruition, but it seems to me that we’re closer to where we need to be than we were at the end of 2007.

For the Mobile Search Battle Update panel, we have elected to present in a more panel-based format since there will only be three speakers. For those of you who were expecting a presentation on how to effectively monetize mobile search, you’ll find it below. I may be referencing it occasionally on the panel. It may be more difficult to follow in presentation form without the voiceover, but if there are specific questions please leave them in the comments of this post and I will do my best to answer.

Mobile SEO is a part of mobile search marketing, which is a part (along with mobile search advertising or paid search) of mobile marketing.


See the Mobile Marketing Association’s Intro to Mobile Search for a good overview of how natural search fits into the overall mobile search opportunity.

Mobile SEO is a hybrid of Search Engine Optimization and of Mobile Marketing and a specific niche of both. According to the current Wikipedia definition, “Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” (“organic” or “algorithmic”) search results.” Mobile search engine optimization (SEO), then, is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to digital content from search engines via natural search results to users entering mobile queries.

Starting Monday I’m going to start answering the most common questions I’ve heard as an SEO dealing in the mobile space and posting them to a new Mobile SEO FAQ. I came up with 18 of the most common questions I’ve heard during the last three years of specialization and broke them out into the following categories: Basics, Opportunity, Development/Indexing and Ranking/Analytics. Beginning Monday I’ll answer one of these per day for the next four weeks in an attempt to move the conversation forward on mobile search optimization. I’m listing the questions below. If you can think of others that you believe need addressed, please list them in the comments of this post. If I agree, I’ll add them to the

When you spend enough time around something you start to hear the same questions from users, particularly those who are just getting started in the space. On the Internet the FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) was invented specifically for this purpose. I know that I learned quite a bit about many topics using FAQs, including SEO in the early days of the practice. What follows is my attempt to compile common questions about Mobile SEO into one frequently asked questions document. Hopefully the answers can help others understand what is meant by Mobile SEO, and how the practice can benefit a business.

If this is your first visit to the Natural Search and Mobile SEO Blog, you might not know where to start. Since my first post in May 2007, I’ve tried to make this a place for information on more advanced or emerging topics within the field of search engine optimization, with a mobile SEO slant. I don’t know if these ten posts have been the most successful in achieving that goal, but they are the ten most popular posts from my contributions on this and the FindResolution blog. If you don’t know where to start, one of these may help you decide.