What is Mobile SEO?
How do I know if my website is Mobile Friendly?
Mobile friendly sites also need to be optimized just like traditional websites. Keywords and content play a large role in mobile website optimization just like they do in regular websites.
What is the difference?
People using mobile devices often times search with shorter keyword phrases, and they do not want to look through the entire site to get to the right answer or to find the information.
There is a thing called a mobile sitemap. This is a tool that will get your website listed in the Mobile Search Engines (yes mobile devices access a different search index). You must get your mobile website into the mobile indexes – and a mobile sitemap is the easiest way to do so. It is important to only include the pages that are included in your mobile website.
For a tool to create your mobile sitemap use MadSubmitter (free tool). Simply fill out the form and the tool will scan your website for mobile friendly pages. The drawback is that you will have to manually update this sitemap when new information is published. If you are using WordPress you are in luck. There is a Mobile Sitemap plugin that will automatically keep your sitemap up to date when you publish new content. It is a “set it and leave it” plugin – my favorite. Got to love WordPress!
Mobile Sites: Is Your Site Mobile Friendly?
How can you tell if your site is a mobile website?
In today’s market having a website that performs well on a smart phone is essential for your business. You might be surprised how many people are accessing your website via some kind of mobile device. I was! To find out look at your website analytics. If you are using Google they have added a mobile section. If not just check the browser usage – you should see the mobile browsers separated out from desktop browsers.
This is a growing market that will not go away – business owners need to have mobile friendly websites.
What is Mobile Friendly?
If your website is hard to read on a mobile device, if the menu is hard to navigate, if it uses flash, if the photos are too large to load, if your site does not load at all – it is not mobile friendly. You can take it one step farther – if your site is the same on a desktop as on a mobile device it is not mobile friendly.
What needs to be on a Mobile Website?
Let your website analytics help you. Take a look and see what pages mobile users are visiting. Make these pages prominent on your mobile version. Think about what people using your site on a phone are looking for – are they wanting your phone number, address, map to your location? Are they looking for a coupon, restaurant menu, or other benefit of your business?
Give them what they want and take the unvisited pages away. It will clean up your site and greatly improve the experience of your visitor. I know I have visited some websites on my phone and just gave up because the site was so slow or the menu was not usable. They lost my business that day.
Is your site usable on a mobile device?
If not you need to get that fixed this year – plug the hole in your funnel now not later.
Search Engine Placement Changes
Layout Matters!
Google just announced an update to their search placement algorithm. This update has to do with the quality of the user experience and the layout of your website. Google’s goal is to provide the closest natch to what someone is searching for highest in the search results list. Our goal is to be in the top 3 for our search terms.
Best User Experience – Ads above the fold?
One complaint that Google gets from searchers is that they can’t find the information on the site that Google served to them. It is buried under a multitude of ads. Although ads provide an income for the website owner – they do nothing to help the searcher find your information.
This update is designed to rank websites with too many ads (how is that determined?) lower than websites with no ads. This will help to improve the user experience when they look for information.
What does this mean to you?
It means that business owners need to provide the most important information first – always keep users in mind. Do not clutter your website with promotional AdSense, or anything else that makes it hard for the user to find your information. Google cares – and so should we.









“When people ask me how I get my business, they are usually somewhat surprised when I say, “From my website.” Although I do have some local customers, about 75% of my customers come directly from my website. My business is making customized bereavement and memory quilts and my customers are spread out all over the United States. Many of them have commented on my website, saying, “When I found your website, I just knew I had come to the right place.” One of them wrote, “When I saw your website, I knew I’d struck gold!”My most recent quilt (shown here) was made for a customer who had looked for quite some time online for the quilter she wanted. When she found my website she was very excited, even more so when she found out she lived only about 45 minutes drive away from my home.Dotty has not only provided me with a sparkling website, but has been very helpful and supportive along the way. I love the fact that I can manage my own site, but if I run into a problem, Dotty is right there to help.”
Rosie is an ideal client
As a business owner we do not care what other people eat for breakfast. Twitter can be very noisy with irrelevant topics. How can you really use Twitter to get results?
to everyone that is on my Tip of the Week list. Benchmark has now sent out 2 unauthorized emails to mt entire list – causing confusion, frustration, and spam!
I had an interesting and frustrating event happen over the weekend. I registered for a new email management system that would allow me to send video emails easily. I spent about 6 hours setting up my imported list, adding missing content to the list, creating a Newsletter template, and creating my first autoresponder message for new people added through the web form.