Last week, I had the opportunity to give a Mozinar on the different steps and activities involved in a Mobile SEO process, from the initial research, analysis, and decision making, to the development, optimization, and measurement. I outlined the following phases:
The Mozinar covers the different phases of the Mobile SEO process, along with the different aspects and criteria to consider to make the best decision according to your own online characteristics and capacity, from a business, audience, content, and technical perspective. If you didn't attend, you can watch the recorded Mozinar or take a look at the slides below.
Audience Q&A
As a supplement to the Mozinar, I tried to answer as many audience questions as possible. Enjoy!
1. Does ranking well on desktop SEO translate or help with ranking well on mobile SEO?
Yes, if the desktop site also takes the most important aspects that you need to prioritize in mobile search into consideration. For example, a site that's already featuring a responsive web design approach, not necessarily because of mobile reasons and without an "active" mobile SEO process.
Nonetheless, you might also have a situation where a highly authoritative desktop site doesn't feature the specific keywords that are used by its mobile search audience. For example, the site might end up not ranking so well and losing the opportunity to maximize its mobile search presence, traffic, and conversions.
2. How does one optimize mobile search keywords with multiple locations on a mobile site?
You will need to enable an internal mobile site architecture that specifically targets these type of keywords, with internal pages that would be the ones to be optimized to rank for them.
3. Do you still need link building for a parallel mobile site?
For a parallel mobile site approach, Google specifies the following when describing the importance of rel=alternate/canonical attributes:
"When you use different URLs to serve the same content in different formats, the annotation tells Google's algorithms that those two URLs have equivalent content and should be treated as one entity instead of two entities. If they are treated separately, both desktop and mobile URLs are shown in desktop search results, and their positions may be lower than they would otherwise be."
This means that you won't "need" to build links additionally to the specific mobile URLs since they will be considered as one entity along their desktop versions. Nonetheless, since you might also have mobile URLs that don't refer to desktop ones, you might also want to "promote" them to earn popularity by their own.
4. Can a mobile emulator be used to see HTTP redirects?
You can use a web sniffer using the desired user agent to verify HTTP redirects.
5. Why you shouldn't block CSS and JS in a Responsive Web Design Approach?
Google needs to crawl pages assets (CSS, Javascript, images) as specified here to be able to identify that a site is using responsive web design approach.
6. If I've implemented redirects to keep mobile users out of my desktop-ready site, but then I offer mobile users a link to view my full site, how can I keep them from being redirected back to the mobile version?
You need to use cookies when you link to the alternative URL version. For example, link to your desktop version from a mobile URL by adding a cookie informing that the desktop is the preferred version for that user.
7. Common practices with responsive web design involve hiding page elements or changing them depending on screen resolution using CSS/JS. What is the prevailing consensus on doing that with respect to SEO?
As Google explains here, they're able to detect if a responsive web design approach is followed by a site and the reason behind hiding some elements from users. Responsive web design is, in fact, Google's recommended configuration for smartphone-optimized websites.
8. How does Google feel about serving different content based on user agent?
As long as you correctly detect user agents and serve the same content to both devices and Googlebot (for example, the same content to both mobile users and Googlebot mobile), it shouldn't be a problem as it's specified by Google here and here. The issue comes when you don't correctly detect and might end up doing cloaking, showing different content to users and search bots.
9. Is there a character limit to mobile titles?
The limit before titles are truncated in mobile search results are around 45 characters. Nonetheless, it's best to verify directly how your own specific website titles are shown, as described from slides 50 to 53 in the presentation.
10. Is it necessary to use "m" subdomain for a mobile site? What are advantages of using "m"?
Is not "necessary," but from my experience, it is the "cleanest" approach from a URL structure perspective. It keeps it short, user-friendly, and easier to refer to desktop URLs versions, and you can easily track the specific mobile site activity by filtering the subdomain traffic. This can be trickier with an /m/ subdirectory, besides the fact that you're adding an unnecessary extra level of depth to the URL.
11. How do you incorporate your app into your SEO mobile strategy? When someone arrives to your landing page, should you pop up to use app instead?
It's not recommended to implement "App Interstitials" as John Mueller explains here, since you might likely also be blocking Googlebot. A relevant and also non-intrusive approach is to "suggest" users to download or open their app, as Airbnb and Yelp do:
12. What is the best tool to use for using mobile searches on desktop for reviewing and testing?
For Firefox, I recommend the User Agent Switcher add-on, and the Ultimate User Agent Switcher extension for Chrome.
13. If your mobile site use a separate URL versions do you need to have a separate Google Analytics tracking code installed on the mobile version?
You can still using your present Google Analytics code but configure it to show the full hostname (as described in slides 159 and 160) and create a specific profile for the Mobile subdomain to follow-up more easily.
The Question Guide to My Mobile SEO Presentation
As a guide to the presentation, I've outlined a list of all the audience questions I received, organized by topic. Hopefully this allows you to get the most out of the Mozinar possible, and answers your questions about the mobile SEO process!
A Mobile Search Industry Overview
- Why is mobile search Important? Slides 2-3
- How Google targets mobile search? Slides 4-5
- Why is mobile optimization needed? Slides 6-8
- Which are the Google recommendations to develop mobile optimized websites? Slides 9-10
- Why you need mobile SEO recommendations? Slide 11
Mobile Research and Analysis
- What's your current mobile traffic and conversions volume and trend? Slides 20-22
- What's the volume and trend of your mobile traffic and conversions compared to your mobile organic, desktop, and desktop organic traffic and conversions? Slide 23
- Which mobile devices are used by your visitors? Slides 24-25
- What's the volume and trend of the mobile devices used by your mobile visitors compared to your mobile organic, desktop, and desktop organic visitors? Slide 26
- Which are the keywords and pages used by your organic mobile visitors? Slides 27-28
- How do your mobile keywords and pages perform compared to those used by your organic desktop visitors? Slide 29
- How is your site displayed in mobile devices? Slides 31-34
- Which are the queries and pages giving mobile search visibility to your present site? Slides 36-39
- How do your mobile search queries and pages perform compared to your desktop ones? Slide 40
- Is Google having issues to crawl your site for mobile? Slides 41-42
- How does Googlebot mobile fetch your pages? Slides 43-44
- How does Googlebot mobile crawls your site? Slides 45-49
- How are your pages shown in mobile and tablet search results? Slides 50-52
- How do your pages titles, descriptions, URLs, and competitors in mobile and tablet search results, compared to your pages in desktop search results? Slide 53
- What are the authority and links of your mobile ranking pages? Slides 54-56
- How are your domain and page authority and links compared to your mobile ranking competitors? Slides 57-61
- Which are volumes and trends of the keywords used by your organic mobile search audience? Slides 65-68
- What's the mobile organic search volume potential of the keywords used by your present mobile visitors? Slide 69
- What's the mobile organic search volume potential for your site? Slides 71-74
Develop your Mobile Web
- Which are the different mobile architecture alternatives? Slide 78
- Which is the most suitable mobile architecture in your situation? Slides 79-80
General Mobile SEO Recommendations
- How can you optimize your mobile website speed? Slides 83-85
- Why is speed important for your mobile site? Slide 86
- Which are the Google recommendations for mobile speed optimization? Slides 87-88
- How should you optimize your mobile content? Slides 89-90
- Which are the structural elements of your Mobile site you need to optimize? Slides 91-93
- Which elements should I validate in the mobile search results? Slide 94
- How can you increase your mobile search visibility with rich snippets? Slides 95-96
- How can you increase your mobile search visibility if you're a local business? Slides 97-98
- Which aspects you need to take into consideration to optimize your mobile Interface? Slides 99-100
Mobile SEO with Responsive Web Design
- What's responsive web design? Slides 103-105
- How to verify if a site is responsive? Slide 106
- How Google recommends responsive web design for smartphone optimized sites? Slide 108
- Which are the recommendations that Google gives for responsive web design? Slides 109-110
- Which are the responsive web design pros and cons towards mobile SEO? Slide 111
- In which situation responsive web design is recommended for your mobile site? Slide 112
- How can you more easily implement responsive web design? Slides 113-116
- Which elements you should not block so Google can identify a web is responsive? Slide 118
- How Google recommends to use Javascript for responsive web design? Slides 119-120
- Why is speed and visualization additionally important for responsive mobile sites? Slides 121-122
- Which websites are using responsive web design for a mobile approach? Slides 123-124
Mobile SEO with Dynamic Serving
- What's dynamic serving? Slides 127-129
- How to verify if a site is dynamically serving its content? Slides 129-130
- Which are the dynamic serving pros and cons towards mobile SEO? Slide 131
- In which situation responsive dynamic serving is recommended for your mobile site? Slide 132
- How should you do user agent detection for dynamic serving? Slides 133-134
- How do you avoid doing cloaking in a dynamic serving environment? Slides 135-136
- Which websites are using dynamic serving for a mobile approach? Slides 137-138
Mobile SEO with Parallel Mobile Sites
- What's a parallel mobile site? Slides 141-143
- How to verify if a site is effectively implementing a parallel mobile approach? Slides 144-146
- Which are the parallel mobile sites pros and cons towards mobile SEO? Slide 147
- In which situation parallel mobile sites are recommended? Slide 148
- How should you structure the URLs of your parallel mobile site? Slides 149-151
- How do you implement redirects in a parallel mobile site? Slides 152-153
- Which annotations should you include to refer a parallel mobile pages to their desktop version and vice versa? Slides 154-155
- Which annotations should you include in your desktop sitemap to refer to its parallel mobile version? Slides 156-157
- How do you allow your users to browse between the mobile and desktop versions? Slide 158
- How do you effectively track the analytics activity of your parallel mobile site? Slides 159-160
- Which websites are using a parallel mobile site? Slides 161-162
Measure and Evolve Your Mobile SEO Process
- How can you reclaim your lost iOS 6 Safari search traffic mobile ? Slides 165-166
- Which metrics should you follow up from your mobile SEO traffic? Slide 167
- How to identify if your mobile SEO process is successful? Slide 168
- When is the time to go for a mobile app? Slides 169-174
If you're interested in following up with more mobile SEO news, you can also follow MobileMoxie in Twitter, read Bryson Meunier's Mobile column in Search Engine Land, and join the Google+ Mobile SEO community.
Is there any other mobile SEO related question that's not addressed here? Let me know in the comments!
Its really helping material, actually i was looking for it from a quite while, how to optimize your website design and make it seo friendly for mobile devices. thanks for this great work @Aleyda.
A lot of good information, as usual Aleyda, and thanks for the mention of my Search Engine Land column!
I don't agree with everything, and especially not with the flowchart on slide 79. I'll detail why in my next Search Engine Land column, but for the most part this is a good overview of best practices in mobile SEO. :)
Does the presence of this mobile SEO content on SEOMoz mean Rand Fishkin is finally coming along to the idea of mobile SEO? Just two years ago he went on record as saying apps and app interstitials were where it's at for mobile marketing and that mobile and desktop search results are the same: https://www.brysonmeunier.com/response-to-rand-fishkins-thoughts-on-mobile-seo/ Glad to see the content, although I honestly find it perplexing to see it on this domain that has been so bearish on the practice of mobile SEO for so long.
How DARE YOU Bryson... how dare you question Rand here. Don't you know that's a surefire way to the dog house.
Welcome to our club... me, you and a guy by the name of Alan (who loves to question Rand in the most painful of ways).
I bet Rand replies with something like, "We just see things differently."
Update: The paragraph formatting is still broken... thus my reason for editing this.
Markus, I've frequently dissented with Rand's and other prominent figures' opinions in SEO over the years, so maybe I should welcome you to my club. ;) To Rand's credit, though I've never actually met him, he and I have disagreed about this for years and he's always been very cordial and reasonable in his responses. I believe he actually did say something like that in the comments of the post I linked to. He even consented to an interview for .Net Magazine this month. Not every SEO figurehead with a prominent following has been as gracious in the face of dissent. Obviously I think disagreement can be healthy for arriving at the truth, and I think Rand agrees, though I know not everyone on the Internet (or at SEOMoz) shares this opinion. :)
Rar rar rar. I'm all angrypants and mean! :-)
Honestly guys - I think it's a good thing to have some different opinions in the marketing world. It makes for good conversation, good challenges, and learning on both sides.
Aleyda - this is a phenomenal resource, and while I'm generally on the side of mobile/desktop/tablet search results converging (with some location and personalization-specific edge cases), I have great respect for folks who embrace the differences in mobile and find ways to optimize for them specifically.
I highly appreciate it Rand! Thanks for the opportunity to share it here :)
Okay. Count me in your club.
Let's call it Plato's Cave. Deal?
Update: UGGGG... this posted under Aleyda instead of Bryson's post.
Thanks Bryson! And no problem about the flowchart, we don't need to agree with everything really. As happens in SEO there are always different "ways" to solve issues and achieve goals --especially in these type of areas that are evolving very fast and where there was not much clear directives before from search engines-- and this is what has proven to work the best for me.
Also, please note these are my own views of things and doesn't necessarily reflect those of SEOmoz --as it says at the beginning of the post--. I'm very thankful to SEOmoz to have the opportunity to share with the community what I've identified to be useful about this topic here :)
Aleyda,
As a note to your concluding "If you're interested in following up with more mobile SEO news", the Mobile Search columns in Search Engine Land are not just Bryson Meunier's, who is a key contributor, but as well Sherwood Stranieri and myself...We are the softer side to Bryson ;)
I feel its accurate to say for all, including Bryson, our Mobile SEO articles at Search Engine Land are based on sharing and debating mobile SEO knowledge with facts and data...not imposing it or picking online fights.
Much love Bryson, as I do enjoy our Mobile SEO "battles" privately and publicly - I look forward to our mobile panel together at SMX West 2013 :)
Michael, I'm looking forward to it as well! And I love that you, Sherwood and Aleyda are all writing great stuff about mobile SEO now. A few years ago there weren't many SEOs who paid much attention, but now it certainly has been getting a lot more attention now that the users are there. As with the beginning of traditional SEO, I think these articles where we all debate new information and share best practices on how mobile affects search will start to define best practices for this new world of mobile search and optimization. Again, great job Aleyda!
Hi Michael, thanks for your comment and the column clarification :) I highly appreciate it.
Thanks again for your comment Bryson! I definitely believe is the best way to add value.
I hope to meet you both in person soon!
Very thorough follow up to the Mozinar. I'll have to check out the video. Thanks for sharing.
Just starting to get into the mobile arena. Thanks for the great info.
The age of mobile is definitely here.
Great post, thanks for sharing. Don't have time to check out all the slides at the moment but will be coming back to it later!Thanks again !
Amazing post aleyda.
Wow this is a really great post. These slides are are really helpful. The current trend of mobile Internet use is definitely changing SEO. More and more users surf the Internet through their mobile devices. In order to remain competitive, every business will need to adapt to this trend.
Thanks for a great post, Aleyda! Considering how much mobile is growing, information like this is great!
I'm Aleyda's biggest fan! I'm gonna use this soon! Thanks for sharing!
Thanks Rodrigo :D really appreciate it! See you soon
Welcome mobile information especially with a future site design in the making Aleyda. So well organized and answered I too have bookmarked to refer to for mobile responsive web design. In my business it is the searches from mobile that is growing exponentially by buyers in real estate must be delivered or we lose them immediately to the big sites. Chock full of nuggets here! thanks
That's awesome! I hope it helps.
Thx so much for putting this together. This is definitely something I need to look into as mobile represents a nice and growing chunk of my website traffic (and these users tend to be higher end, too). Thx for the link to the video and the slide show. It's so great to have that outline too as there is so much info, so this makes it much easier to pinpoint specific areas to return to. I've bookmarked both so I can try to review over the weekend.
Outstanding slides! Thanks for sharing
This is really an outstanding post. Thanks a lot Aleyda for sharing. This type of information I was looking for last few days as mobile search is increasing in compared desktop search. Now I will follow above steps to optimize for mobile search. Thanks again Aleyda.
Thanks Kalu!
Kudos! Aleyda. Great post. Learnt about alternative/canonical here for different devices. Wasn't able to go through all the slides right now (it will take time). But learnt a lot from these queries. Thanks.
Great presentation Aleyda. Its really useful for Mobile SEO process. I have found some stats points and measurement for responsive web design SEO for mobile. Thanks for great post. In this post answers for many most of the Mobile SEO questions.
Like this post because of the Q & A structure, very useful.
Good work!
I always hate missing Mozinars as they are happening, but love that there have recently been great followup posts like this one. It's very helpful for those of us who are busy during the day with work. The answers to the Audience Q&A are sure be referred to and bookmarked by many. Thanks for the great review Aleyda :).
Thanks George! I highly appreciate it :) you can also watch the recorded Mozinar here.
Good post, I have optimized few of my client websites for mobile devices. But non of them are bringing 100% marks. I think these kind of post will give more idea on optimization for mobile devices.
Aleyda
It is predictable that in next few years, the PC's and Laptops would be available only in museums, Mobile and Tabs are capturing the market rapidly. These are the next Internet Marketing Tools and we must focus on them effectively. I must appreciate your post, you have done a great job. I find its an effective post to read as well as to get help for making strategy.
Awesome! Great Post Aleyda :)
Superb, amazing tips on mobile marketing I have any rule with content? otherwise analysis and research looks fantastic.
Hi Manoj, for much more information about content strategy for mobile take a look at this presentation. Thanks!
Some timely information Aleyda. Given the mass migration of users away from desktop devices and towards mobile devices, it is critical that online marketers ensure that their web presence is easy for mobile users to find and easy to use once they get there. Your slide 7 points out some compelling reasons for mobile SEO and responsive web design: "57% of users say they won't recommend a business with a poorly designed mobile website" Thanks for sharing.
You're welcome!
Thank for this nice stuff aleyda. I just want to know something more. !
As we know that if we want to get good ranking in desktop websites or normal computer using sites, then we have to create good quality links, unique content, powerful linking, social media etc. My question is that are we have to do same thing in mobile seo site. Or some things involved that skip in mobile seo . ?
Thanks for this gr8 post
Google is still crawling your website and indexing it the same regardless of how you are showing the site to the user. If you have one site that adapts from Mobile and Desktop and so forth the ranking on Google will remain the same.
One thing to bare in mind, more from a PPC side, is that mobile adverts, especially with Google Shopping being paid need to be local as well as national to maximise your revenue streams.
Hi Amir,
If you have a responsive Web design or a dynamic serving approach you won't need to built additional links to your Mobile pages since the URLs for both versions, mobile and desktop, will be the same. If you select the parallel Mobile site approach then please take a look at the question No. 3 in the post where I answered to this question.
Thanks!
Good information on mobile search and another reminder that I need to take time this week and work on making my sites more mobile friendly! Thanks for this useful share, Aleyda.
Great post. I'm a huge believer in having a mobile strategy, and one of the sites we run has a separate Wordpress theme optimized for mobile. Interestingly we get more mobile viewers on our site than desktop.
We run Adsense throughout our site, but on the mobile theme our CPC is almost 50% lower than desktop, which is hurting us a lot. Its almost as if we're being punished for having more mobile users. I'm urgently waiting for Google to implement their announced mobile adwords changes which should see more competition and thus a higher CPC - it can't come soon enough for us.
Wow.. This is an awesome post about mobile SEO. It covered very deep information about mobile SEO with its issues and solutions. Now a days it is time to go for mobile SEO and your this post going to be helpful to all SEO. Thanks you so much for your hard and wonderful work to make this post.
Seriously informative post, Aleyda. Thank you for sharing your knowledge & insights.
I love this article, I struggled with getting Parallel Mobile sites, the maintenance
is a lot of work. Now I have a guide for every type of site. This is great. A lot of the time, we end up having to optimize mobile setups after they are built out.
Mobile search is a growing part of the SEO industry, I really need to look more into the metrics off it and do some case studies / tests with the Google Mobile crawler bot.
Hi, Great post thanks for sharing.
I am going to look for more information to complement the knowledge that you have given us, it is very interesting thank you very much
Awesome Work. Presentation is very nice & informative. Thanks For sharing
The most important thing is to first of all check your website through a mobile emulator to check your content (videos, images, text) and the URL'S.
You can then go to Google webmasters and check your site's mobile crawl issues.
I would appreciate if you can also elaborate a little more about how to do mobile seo.
Hi this is dravidjhonson, mobilize seo topic is nice and so important to futher seo. Thanks for share it here.
Wow. Very thorough. I look forward to going through your presentation and this post in detail.
Thanks. Mobile is interesting because the implications vary so widely depending on the nature of the business. Information like this laid out simply will help me wrap my head around it better.
Mobile consumers are vital for location-specific services; since it is localize, we can use location modifiers in our contents including city or street names. Such a great info!
Good information on mobile search .
Its a wonderful post and also interesting. For mobile seo, I agreed with you it should be responsive design because responsive sites are compatible according to any mobile.
If you're looking into having your website go mobile- friendly then this is a great resource to start with. Very useful.Thanks aleyda for sharing this.
Instead of creating a mobile website, which is expensive and time consuming to manage, we're switching our website content to Wordpress. Wordpress allows you to create a website that works on ANY mobile device. No need for two websites! Also, most of the world's largest companies use it for their content management. I'm not a Wordpress rep or anything, but it's pretty sweet if you look at it. https://wordpress.org/
Awesome! Like this post!
Great post Aleyda! Thanks for a very informative discussion. Mobile SEO is a relatively new platform, and it's great to read well-researched posts... Again, Thumbs up!
Do you have any site or example for a script such as the one you mentioned in point number 6? I have been looking for a cookie or so similar to this for quite a while, but have not been able to find one. How you can give me further advise as to where I can find more detailed information about how I can arrange this in a hopefully easy way!
wow this is really amazing post.................