Over 5 billion people have mobile phones and 51 million of these are Smart phones (iPhone & Android). By 2013 the expectancy of mobile search will be 40% of all search! With recent improvements of smart phones, iphones and mobile search engine usage, it is increasing in popularity.
How can we make your website mobile friendly?
- Follow all SEO best practices
- Code in XHTML or HTML5
- Ensure it works on all platforms
- Use external stylesheets and javascript
- Use separate CSS files for mobile and on screen rendering
- Use of %s for sizes instead of pixels ensures that things scale down
- Submit mobile sites to mobile search engines
- Have a mobile site map
- Provide relevant info for mobile users
- Make phone numbers clickable so users can click and call
- Optimize videos and images to mobile
- Use jump links to drive traffic down to content areas on your site
- Avoid Flash or other custom applications as not all phones will support all plugins
Mobile strategy
Optimizing for mobiles needs a unique strategy that facilitates quick and easy viewing of the most important information about your business. People cannot use a mobile like they use a desktop so it is important to have your website optimized for those visiting from a mobile phone. The likley chance is they will use a shorter keyword, be local and not want to have to contend with scrolling left to right across your main website page.
