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| Your Weekly 'Step Forth' into the World of Search Engines |
Wednesday - December 13th, 2006 |
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Highlight of the Week
 Stake Your Claim on the Mobile Web
With the Internet growing so rapidly do you ever wonder if you are missing a new trend or technology that could boost your bottom line? Well, there just happens to be a piece of the Internet that I bet you haven't made the leap to yet and it is going to be BIG. This new space is mobile search and mobile Internet surfing.
I know, I know, mobile Internet use has been around for a while, but even now it is very much in the infancy phase of development. After all, it was only over the past year that a W3C working draft appeared that allows web designers to create mobile sites compatible with the many mobile phone browsers. I have tried to use the search and navigation abilities on mobile phones and I have not been impressed; clunky is a nice way to put it. That said, there is no question in my mind this is a market that will explode over the next couple of years. To back up my lofty claim here are just a few of the notable headlines on the build-up to mobile search and advertising published over the last 30 days:
- Vodafone and Yahoo to Launch Advertising on Mobile Devices (Yahoo Blog)
Mobile technology is way ahead in Europe and Vodafone is currently "the largest mobile telecommunications network company in the world by turnover and has a market value of about £86 billion (November 2006)" ( according to Wikipedia ) . Yahoo has signed a deal which will provide Vodafone users with carefully targeted advertising in exchange for cheaper phone options.
- Google Testing Mobile Ads in Eight More Countries (MarketWatch)
"The ads apparently will appear whenever someone in those countries use a cell phone's Internet capability to access a site or to search via Google's engine." The article also states that Google is "... also going after the $11 billion that advertisers are expected to spend on mobile marketing by 2011, according to a recent report by the telecom division of Informa Group."
- Google and Microsoft in Mobile Search Race (Financial Times)
This article notes that "Google announced a deal to put its search function on 3mobile's handsets", and "Sprint Nextel, the US carrier, said it would place Microsoft's search engine on its mobile phones."
So we know from the articles above that the mobile web is poised to really take off. However, did you know that it already has to some degree? For example:
- Google Mobile has an option that will only provide results from sites that were created mobile-friendly.
( link )
In short, there is a huge amount of positive growth in the mobile marketplace and I recommend taking a slice of it before your competition does. So what do you need to do? Get a dotmobi domain, build a mobile version of your website and promote it by adding it to various mobile directories and sites.
1. Get a .Mobi Mobile Domain
Just this year a consortium of major players including Google, Microsoft, Vodafone, Samsung, Ericsson and Nokia sponsored a new domain meant specifically for a new mobile web: .mobi . Opened for general registration as of September 26, 2006, the .mobi top level domain "is the first and only top level domain dedicated to delivering the Internet to mobile devices" says the official " What is dotmobi? " page).
The idea of the .mobi domain is to create a mobile version of your website so that users can simply type in your .mobi address and be assured of a streamlined viewing of your company website on their mobile device. It really is quite brilliant in my opinion and it has a good chance of becoming a popular address with such monsters as Google and Microsoft on the list of supporters.
If you wish to register your dotmobi domain here is a list of registrars provided by the dotmobi website. From what I can tell, however, GoDaddy is providing the best annual .mobi registration price of $15 per domain (min. 2 yrs).
2. Build Your Mobile Web Site
Designing for mobiles is not exactly new but as it is still new to me I cannot provide a great deal of first hand knowledge. That said, StepForth will be creating our own mobile site in-house so I know my Senior Designer and I have a learning curve ahead. Fortunately, to this end, a little research and patience led me to some great resources that I recommend. The following sites will take you in the right direction:
- MobiSiteGalore.com : if you are looking for a simple cookie cutter approach to creating your mobile website you can develop it for free using this website's mobile compliant website builder. I watched the demo movie on how a website is created and I must say I am very impressed with its functionality.
- Official .mobi Development Standards : If you would like to custom design your mobile website so that it stands out from the rest then this is the site for you. Develop a mobile website to meet .mobi guidelines at the .mobi development website . The .mobi development site appears to be designed to make the move to mobile as easy as possible - thankfully! The development site even offers a free course to put your designer through so that he/she can understand the needs of a properly designed mobile website. In short, I am very impressed with this website and I expect it to provide all that StepForth needs to get our own mobile website online (it will be stepforth.mobi when it is complete).
Additional Mobile Resources
Here are some sites that provide some great additional information but they would likely be a bit too technical for the average site owner. These are, however, great for your designer to check out:
- Mobile FAQ: a mixture of general and specific questions for understanding the mobile phenomenon and designing a mobile site.
- W3C Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group: this is not light reading but your designer may find it interesting.
Check Your Final Product
Once your mobile website is complete you need to verify that it is completely mobile compliant. The .mobi development site provides a " MobiReady Report " which will check your site for compliance. This is a great way to be sure that your designer has done a good job and that your website will be as compliant as possible across the wide range of mobile products available.
3. Optimize Your Mobile Site
Optimizing a mobile site is only slightly different than the average website. The basics of optimization remain true; be sure to create great Title Tags, Description Tags, headings, navigation, and focus your content to match page targets. The only difference is you will have less screen real estate to work with so try to keep your optimized content concise - no one wants to read useless information on his or her mobiles. After all, you can be reasonably sure that the time a visitor is willing to spend on a mobile site to find information will be significantly less than their standard visit from their home computer; thus the word 'mobile'. In short, you will have very little time to convince a visitor to stay at your website.
Google Optimization Note: create a Google Mobile Sitemap so Google can ensure your mobile content is properly noted and categorized as mobile friendly. Will this help traffic? I would think so, here is Google's message verbatim, 'by using Mobile Sitemaps to inform and direct our crawlers, we hope to expand our coverage of the mobile web and speed up the discovery and addition of pages to our mobile index.' ( link )
4. Promote Your Mobile Web Site
The mobile Internet is composed of a growing exclusive group at the moment so it is important that your new website get as much visibility as possible. Here are some great tips and resources to help you do that:
- Submit your mobile site to Yahoo! Mobile for free
- Use PRWeb.com to send out a press release about your new .mobi website. Show the world that your company is cutting edge and strives to provide multiple solutions for accessing your products/services.
- Publish your mobile address on your website, business cards, and any other promotional materials. If you don't tell your target market that you have a mobile site they won't know to use it.
- Tell dotmobi about your site and it might just get some free publicity by being featured or becoming a case study.
In Summary
I think the .mobi domain is a fantastic way to provide a unique presence specifically designed for the mobile world. The fact that mobile phones are ubiquitous simply reinforces the need for the informed website owner to get their own mobile site setup ASAP. At the very least I would recommend picking up a .mobi domain of your own so that it is not snatched up when the inevitable rush to the mobile web becomes a reality.
Other Excellent Mobile Content
The following are some sites that I came across throughout the creation of this article. I found them very interesting and well worth noting:
- WAPReview.com "It's all about the mobile web": this site is well written and includes some great tips and stories that you may find revealing - I know I did. Here is a particularly good posting that attracted my attention: " Mobile Web (un)Usability "
- Open Gardens : a blog that discusses the latest innovations in wireless mobility.
by Ross Dunn - CEO StepForth Placement Inc.
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We Want To Answer Your SEO Questions for Free!
Have you got some search engine optimization questions you are dying to get answered? We want to make the StepForth Weekly more interactive so we want to answer your questions. Just visit our questions page and submit your question.
What we are looking for are pointed questions about ranking issues and best practices. Please note that we will only review website's on a paid consultation basis, give us a call if you need consultation or try our free search engine optimization review.
Privacy Note: we reserve the right to post your question and our answer in a future newsletter so please keep this in mind. |
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 The Major Players
SEO Friendly Design and Usability Questions Answered
Last week's featured article Correcting Common Usability Mistakes turned out to be a very popular topic for our readers. I received a great deal of questions and comments about website usability and design.
I have decided to share a couple of them here in the hope that others can benefit as well.
| Question: |
I have just read your article and from what I can tell, my web site is obeying the rules, however, when I search on Google for Musical Group Name , who are one of the bands we manage, our site is nowhere to be found. The relevant page is www.website.com/internal-page.html I would be hugely grateful to know what I have done wrong
Many thanks in anticipation... S. |
| Answer: |
There can be a variety of reasons for the lack of results you are experiencing.
On a quick glance I can see that the search term " Musical Group Name" can be a competitive phrase to go for as your band's name is also competing with actual geographical locations (for example, Texas and North Carolina). In addition your phrase is a popular musical group song title as well and this has driven the competitiveness that much higher.
With this in mind I would suggest the following to possibly help the placements for this phrase:
- Develop more than one page of content for the band, making the content unique from anything else that is currently on the internet
- Try to obtain back links to this page from other relevant websites. This is to say, have them point directly to the Musical Group Name page.
- Assess the design of the page(s) to ensure the search engines can flow through freely.
I hope these brief tips point you in the right direction S. |
| Question - Part 1: |
You mention that studies have been done regarding the placement of the navigation menu (top vs. left side). I am in the process of redesigning my site and was actually contemplating this question before reading your article. Do the studies present a compelling answer to this question? I personally prefer the left side, but I am a perverse person by nature and my likes or dislikes can not be relied upon. Thanks in advance for any light you can shine on this issue.
M.S. |
| Answer - Part 1: |
Your question is good one to say the least. Ever since the early days of design the question of "where" to place your top level navigation has been a hot topic.
Usually I look at a proposed layout of a newly created website following the "Z" eye scanning method for layout. When a visitor views your website for the first time, 9 times out of ten their eye scans the page in this pattern. With this in mind I tend to design the main layout with the navigation at the top of a page with a two or three column layout below.
I do need to point out that the latest studies show savvy web surfers following more of an "F" pattern when scanning a page. See StepForth September 28, 2005 article for more information.
Remember to also make sure the navigation you decide upon should allow the search engines to freely spider throughout your website. As you may or may not know some methods of navigation are friendlier than others. |
This reader then replied with another question based on my first response.
| Question - Part 2: |
Thank you for the prompt reply. But now you have raised another issue. Won't an up-to-date xml sitemap (or an html sitemap linked from every page) allow the spiders access to all of the pages?
M.S. |
| Answer: |
Thank you once again for your email. I ran your question by our Senior SEO, Scott Van Achte and he was kind enough to provide the following answer:
Both HTML and XML sitemaps are designed to help guide the spiders to all pages of the site, but this in itself is not enough. While this can help to have the individual pages indexed, it does not add any contextual value to the pages, which drastically reduces their actual value. Also, using a sitemap (while highly recommended) also pushes the page down a level in the site if their link is not on the home page. The sitemap is more of a catchall to ensure all pages are indexed, but should not be relied upon solely. The main site navigation from the home page provides not only more value for the internal pages, but also provides a more timely spidering (as spiders will often only visit the first two levels of the site on a regular basis). If the link to an internal page is from the second level, the spider frequency is reduced, and rankings may suffer.
Hope this helps... |
| Question: |
Just wondering if you had any favorite design layouts that incorporated all the points for your readers to view?
Thanks for any recommendations.
H. |
| Answer: |
Although in any given day I see dozens of websites in all honesty I have to say, "No", I do not have a favorite website that incorporates all of the elements that I discussed in the article. I do see successfully implemented elements from time to time. However in the new year we will be launching the revamped StepForth Placement website which will incorporate all of the elements discussed.
The real challenge with any website design is not only incorporating a usable, search engine friendly design but taking those elements and having an aesthetically appealing design as well. It really can be a balancing act. |
If you should have any SEO Friendly Web Design related questions please feel free to contact me . by Mark Johnstone - Senior Web Developer
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The Net Reality
Internet Pirate Locked Up
Precedent is being set as the world's first convicted internet movie pirate begins a three-month jail term. Chan Nai-ming of Hong Kong has had his appeal rejected and his conviction will stand. Nai-ming, 38, known online under the alias 'Big Crook' was found guilty in November of 2005, and had been out on bail.
Using BitTorrent peer-to-peer file sharing Nai-ming was convicted for attempting to distribute Daredevil, Miss Congeniality, and Red Planet. He had created and activated the files for download enabling other BitTorrent users access in January of 2005.
While this judgment is targeted towards someone actually posting the files to the web, the future just may see future judgments directed at those who are downloading the files, so for all peer-to-peer users, beware.
Criminals Beware, the Internet May Get You!
The internet is used by millions of people for likely just as many purposes, but a Brazilian businessman while traveling through Germany used it to stop a burglar in his tracks.
John Pedro Wettlauser was notified by a cell phone alert from the security system in his house. He then used his laptop to log into the system and watched the burglar in action. Wettlauser then called his wife who called the local police.
When police entered the home the burglar had an assortment of goods including the stereo system, waiting in the kitchen ready to be taken away. He was shocked to find out that he was being watched through cameras connected to the internet.
Stopping burglars from thousands of miles away is just scratching the surface of the true power of the internet. As we move into the future where else will technology take us? We will likely see many new mainstream purposes including an increase in remote home video surveillance enter the market place. by Scott Van Achte - Senior SEO
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If you have any questions please do not hesitate to call the StepForth staff:
Toll-Free: 1-877-385-5526 | Local: 385-1190
http://www.stepforth.com
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