Tagged:   Mobile Website

In a meeting today at an SEO agency where I perform research and development, a potential client leaned over to me to ask …

Does our website pass for a mobile website?

…since it looks the same on my Blackberry as it does on a PC?

We were discussing local search marketing, which overlaps with mobile search marketing.  I gave a pretty quick response since we were whispering under other people, but here are the main questions to answer when deciding if you need to invest in mobile website design…

• Does your website use Flash?
  • Flash does not render on iphones or ipad.  If your website degrades nicely with an image replacing a flash banner, that will pass for a mobile device.  If you turn off Flash in your  browser and it looks like crap, you probably need a mobile version.
• Can you read and navigate the website on a mobile phone?
  • His website showed everything, but you had to zoom in and pan around to read anything.
  • Are the buttons and points of action easy to read and use?

…continue reading this SEO article »

Advice on Mobile SEM and SEO from Inside Google

Google Office in Atlanta

Google invited 150 search marketing professionals along with Bing, Yahoo, Razorfish and 360i into the Atlanta Google office for a mobile search marketing event.  Each of the major search engines sat side by side along with Razorfish to speak on upcoming trends in mobile search and to answer our questions from search engine optimization consultants, internet marketing companies, web designers, creative agencies and any company providing SEM and SEO services among the 150 first people to make it through the door in Atlanta.

I was one of those 150 people.

The event was simulcast from Google Atlanta to offices in New York and Boston.  Limited audiences were invited to attend the event in New York and Boston.  A live feed from each office was projected on the wall in the Atlanta office alongside the speaker presentation screen.  The speakers responded to questions from all three locations.

The mobile search marketing speaker panel consisted of:

• Bing: Director of Bing Mobile Product Management – Andy Chu
• Yahoo: Senior Director, Mobile Sales Strategies – Paul Cushman
• Google: Senior Account Executive (Mobile Ads Team) – Elliott Nix
• Razorfish: VP of Mobile – Paul Gelb

I showed up a little early to make sure I had plenty of time to explore the Google office.  The office in Atlanta is a satellite office for Google, and as you might imagine looks like a small version of the California office descriptions, decorated with big red, yellow, green and blue circles in the carpet, carved into the walls, in the ceiling and repeated playfully throughout the decor.

After networking for about an hour with other SEM and SEO agency, marketing and designer SEMPO Atlanta members we settled down for the presentations.  After introductions by various sponsors and SEMPO officials we got to the speaker presentations.  Razorfish went first, followed by Yahoo, Bing, then Google.

Whether intended or not, the reoccurring theme behind was how human behavior drives mobile search. Here’s a synopsis of their presentations. …continue reading this SEO article »