It’s tempting to think of mobility devices as just smaller versions of your desktop or laptop computers. You can access your email and the internet from them, so wouldn’t the SEO rules remain the same for mobility devices? This is definitely not the case, and there are a plethora of articles and advice out there on how to focus your SEO efforts specifically for mobility. Cindy Krum has written an article, “New Mobile SEO: What You Need to Know”, that gives some great tips.

Krum points out that at this point in time, mobile search engines place a heavy weight on bounce rate and she advises that “The best thing you can do to improve your mobile SEO is to ensure that the mobile crawlers and user agents determine that your content will render well and load quickly on any mobile phone.”

Basic Site Architecture – Basic SEO practices when it comes to site architecture will not steer you wrong in mobility either. Make sure your tagging is done correctly for your site, then create another style sheet for mobile devices, and call it handheld.css. “This will allow you to format your existing pages for viewing on a mobile phone without having to create separate mobile content.” Use this style sheet to block things from being rendered by using a display:none attribute to the style sheet.

iPhones are a bit of a different matter, although they can see traditional web pages, mobile pages are preferred by many iPhone users, so making another style sheet named iPhone.css covers that issue too. Be sure to include a mobile site map and link it in your robots.txt file.

Advanced Site Architecture – Sometimes your regular site will not be suitable for mobile browsing, including “Sites [that] don’t use external style sheets, have a large file size, sloppy code or lots of multi-media content that could have trouble rendering on mobile phones”. For some of these sites, the best option is to create mobile specific content on a mobile subdomain or subdirectory. If this is the case, here are a few things to keep in mind:
- Move top navigation to the bottom of the page
- Jump links at the top of the page can be handy to have, especially for contact information
- Minimize the scrolling for handheld devices
- Work on linking your mobile site and your main, traditional site to each other

Mobile Platforms and Software – “Most mobile platforms simply take the existing content on your traditional page and remove all complex code and media, leaving simply text and a minimal amount of images.” Although taking this step seems like it would save time and energy, there are a couple problems you should note.
- Your content could be included as a subdomain of the platform’s name, rather than as a part of your own domain
- Often the file names these programs create are not optimized, so all of the SEO value from your site architecture and links may be lost

As you delve into the world of mobile SEO, remember that mobility does bring new challenges and is growing and changing rapidly, so keeping on top of the newest developments is key.

Sometimes in the marketing field, we tend to look at functionality, statistics, and new features too much, and forget about the fun stuff. And really, the internet can just be a fun place to be. If it is crazy or a little off-center, then surely you can find it on the internet. The other day I stumbled on an article by Matt McGee, called “8 Crazy-Cool Search Engines You Should Know”, which reminded me of all the fun there is to be had online. Here’s a quick summary of what he found:

1. Dead Cell Zones: this searchable map shows its users dead cellular zones. Apparently, users are reporting on the zones themselves. For now, it seems to be limited to the USA and the UK, but for those areas and the 100,000 users who have submitted this information, it can answer the question: Is there something wrong with my cell or is your cell dead too?
2. Things You Saw in a Movie: ever want to know exactly what brand of dress an actress wore in a certain movie? Or maybe you can’t quite place the car? Now you can go to this site and find out.
3. Storm Events: this online database by the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) provides comprehensive information on weather events back to 1996, and for more intense weather there is information as far back as the 1950s. “You can search for records of dust storms, floods, funnel clouds, wild/forest fires, thunderstorms, and much more.”
4. Pillbox: the next time you find a random pill floating around in your medicine cabinet or purse, you can come to this site to identify it. This U.S. National Institutes of Health search engine will give you possible matches for your pill, and other information about those matches, based on its size, colour, shape and any other attributes. Although the site is in development and warns it is not meant for clinical use, it is a neat idea.
5. TypoBuddy: is the friend of bargain hunters everywhere. Instead of relying on Craigslist and eBay sellers to spell their items correctly, you can now use this search engine to find misspelled posts.
6. Filler Item Finder: Amazon.com provides free shipping for orders of $25 US or more, so it is equally distressing to be 30 cents short or $2 short for your order to qualify. This search engine finds smaller priced items to fill your order gap and get you the free shipping.
7. Storage Front: this site is a “marketing tool for storage facility owners”, but offers full search for storage units in the USA, including loads of features, like climate control and sizing.
8. Soda Finder: craving a brand of soda that’s been off the shelves since the ninth grade? This site is an “online store that offers a search engine for rare, old, and discontinued soda pop.”

Go out and be creative with your ideas, both for your business and for your marketing, and don’t forget to have fun!

By now, you know that I love when challenging a preconceived notion or showing that a tool can be used for more than you might think on first glance. Those ah ha moments tickle me, so I am hoping that you’ll have one of those moments today as I explain the newest features on LinkedIn.

Normally, LinkedIn is seen as a business and networking tool, often a way to get a job or pass your resume around. It certainly doesn’t have the social networking reputation that Twitter and Facebook have developed. But with changes to the site itself, the high-income demographic that uses this site, and some entrepreneurs coming forward to prove that it does drive significant traffic to their blogs, there is now evidence to show that LinkedIn can, in the words of Chris Crum, “bring a different brand of relevance to the table.”

Here are some of the newest changes to LinkedIn:

- Users have the ability to control who sees what they are sharing, either by individual, groups, or connections.
- Facebook has proven that images and article excerpts increase traffic to a linked site or discussion, and LinkedIn now has this capability too. According to LinkedIn, “The chances of someone clicking through your shared article are greater when you’ve images and brief excerpts pulled from the news article or blog post.” Plus, you can customize it completely.
- Users can now see, edit, and delete their status updates.
- Re-sharing content has become pretty common on social sites, and Twitter even has a term for it: retweeting. LinkedIn now allows its users to share content with the click of a button. This is a perfect tool for “making content go viral”.
- Off-site sharing has been improved, so that content sites can “offer a similar sharing process for LinkedIn to its own internal re-share feature”. You can share directly to LinkedIn when you find something that intrigues you from a popular news site or a great blog post.
- LinkedIn has implemented a URL shortener (Lnkd.in).
- When posting an article, users now give credit to the source they got it from by employing a “via-style” credit.

- Keeping your profile in the eye of an audience who will help drive traffic to your business is important. Now, when you choose to make shared items

I’ve been thinking about the limits of media when I was a child and in my teens. We had television (and not 500 cable channels), movies, and then print. It still left a fair number of options, but nothing compared to the world we live in today. Would it date me to say that the general populace didn’t even begin to talk about the internet until I was in university?

As SEO professionals, it doesn’t hurt us to remember that some of the lessons from the pre-internet era are still valuable today. Studying the media itself and how it works is still worthy of our attention today, just as it was in 1964 when Mashall McLuhen coined the phrase “The media is the message”. It even applies to link building methods, including content writing, asking webmasters to link to your site, and linkbait.

Content writing is all about attracting readers and links to your site through simple, clear content. In order to take full advantage of this kind of marketing, “make sure that your content is easily readable and absorbable (and linkable)”. If you manage to do this, you’ll attract inbound links.

While acquiring links through good content writing is a passive activity (you are passively seeking links with your content), there are more active ways to pursue links, like asking webmasters to link to your content. This asking can take many forms, including “You ask, you beg, you might whine or offer a form of compensation.” This is a trickier method, because each webmaster has different preferences of communication and each niche market will require different language both for the content you want linked and for dealing with the webmaster you want to have do the linking. “You also have to choose and use, proven methods for approaching webmasters and alerting them to your content.”

Linkbait is a combination of active and passive methods of link building, and it has the advantage of being creative. You can use anything from videos to content pieces to whatever you dream up as linkbait, allowing your company to rely on its biggest strengths. As Julie Joyce says, “Linkbaiting is both passive and active. In producing linkbait in your desired form, you could just let it sit there and wait for the links to roll in, which is passive, but in order to really succeed, you have to take an active approach and do the asking/begging/pleading bits.” Social media can help to make your linkbait more visible too, but will be much more successful in a social media arena where you or your company are active members.

So the next time you are thinking about link building, consider the media you are using, the effort you intend to invest, and the outcome that can follow from each possibility before putting together your own link building toolkit.

I came across some interesting tips on multilingual SEO from Maria Nikishyna of Search Engine Journal this morning.

Language Recognition
Stick to only one language per page
Avoid side-by-side translations
Use the same language for all elements of the page: headers, sidebars, menus, etc.

URL Structure
Language-specific extensions are often used on multilingual websites to help users (and crawlers) identify the sections of the website they are on and the language the page is in.

Crawling and Indexing
Avoid redirects based on user’s perceived language: they could, in fact, prevent both users and SEs from looking at more pages on your site. Keep the content for each language on separate URLs
Don’t use cookies to show translated page versions
Cross-link page by page

Like anything else in internet marketing, whether its SEO, social media or pay per click advertising, its important to start with the end result in mind and be consistent as you build your site out. Get the basics right and move forward from there.

I was reading an article this morning about iPhone apps. This particular article, entitled “PayPal iPhone App Hits One Million Downloads”, was basically about the popularity of the PayPal app on the iPhone and how “One million downloads shows just how ready people are to live a cashless and card-free culture with their wallet living safely in the cloud.” I find that idea compelling as a consumer, but even more compelling as a business person.

But, just like the blog post on Pizza Hut embracing Twitter this is another story about using new technology to promote your business. Someone recently told me that there is a little iPhone app that allows the comic of the day from your favourite web comics to be viewed on your iPhone. Handy! Seems like pure fun too, doesn’t it. But if you get the comic regularly on your mobile device and don’t have to go searching for it or remember to go online each day to read it, then you are never behind. And that is a step that will build a loyal fan base, for those who do web comics. The free comics don’t make you money in and of themselves, but fans buy the printed collections, t-shirts, and memorabilia. They also attend conventions and pay to see their favourite artists. Providing an easier way for your fans to keep up with your work is a stroke of marketing brilliance.

So, with the popularity of iPhone, it may be in your company’s best interest to develop a little application for it to open another channel for your customers to connect with you. A book store could have a list of the latest releases or authors reading at their stores. Grocery stores can send ads, perhaps in an app that allows you to customize your top 20 items bought in a week. A freelance service business could even post tips related to their business interests. The list is endless and depends on the business you are running and what will interest your customers the most. Think of this as an opportunity to talk to them and entice them with the best of your products and services.

Rather than thinking about new technology as simple tools, remember that these apps can become personal touches. Over the past few decades, marketing was about reaching the most people at once: billboards, television commercials and print advertisements were all about mass marketing. With mobile device apps, avenues like Twitter and Facebook, blogging, and business websites, we have the ability to reach out in a much more personal way, which is a phenomenal opportunity to grow your business and develop brand loyalty among your customers.

Advertising Age makes 11 Predictions on how Social Media that will affect marketers.

From an SEO perspective, here are the top 3 that predictions that are we are already seeing taking shape in our field.

3. Our interaction with search engines will be different

Real-time information in Google search, e.g. from Twitter, blog results and user reviews, will be more prominent. Google’s Social Search will change the way we interact with search engines by pushing relevant content from our personal networks to the front of search results, making them more personalized. The importance of digital-influencer marketing will increase significantly.

6. Influencer marketing will be redefined

As social media continues to permeate more and more aspects of not only the way we interact with digital media but also other channels such as digital outdoor, commerce or online TV, we will see the significance of influencer marketing grow dramatically. As a basic example, the inclusion of Twitter in Google search results or Google’s soon-to-be-released Social Search will permeate search results with content that will not be managed by Google’s infamous PageRank but by social influence and relevance to your social network. Discovering people that can help you to reach your desired consumer will become exponentially more effective and important.

7. Ratings everywhere

In today’s world, having a commerce site that doesn’t have user ratings could actually prove to be a detriment to sales. In the near future, brands and businesses will more frequently place user ratings and accept open feedback on their actual websites. User ratings will become so common that marketers should expect to find them woven into most digital experiences.

We are already seeing search engines provide Real-Time search results by adding Twitter or Facebook updates to their results pages and it is clear that social influence will become a more prominent ranking signal. And other every day we consult with clients and potential clients on reputation management on Google Local and review sites like Homestars.

So althought the predictions are made for 2012, there is no time like the present to start considering the consequences and planning strategies right now.

Is Apple headed for a showdown with Google? According to Ben Parr of Mashable, a heavyweight battle on the mobile advertising front is well underway.

While both Apple and Google, with the iPhone and Android respectively will succeed at building their own mobile advertising platforms, the key to success will be relationships with additional platforms, like BlackBerry.

Can you remember the last time you entered a store that made you turn away within a minute or two and just leave? I can. Ironically, it was a store for home organization. Lots of shelving and containers and stuff like that. It was also the most disorganized and overcrowded space I had been into in a long time. I could barely navigate the aisles. It was just too chaotic for me to handle. Sometimes our websites get like this, and without intending to turn away customers, we overwhelm them and they click their way to more organized spaces (the virtual equivalent of walking out).

Since we want our websites to make money for our businesses and attract customers, it is a good idea to take a step back once in a while and look at it with new eyes. Carrie Hill contemplates the issue of overwhelming your customers in her article “Are You Overwhelming Your Visitors”, providing her own insight coupled with the observations of her followers on Twitter.

Her basic advice is to avoid over-stimulating your customers. Although you might be nodding your head and thinking “Of course! That makes perfect sense…” your website may not reflect your intentions. Thanks to Carrie Hill, here are a few basics to think about as you look at your website again:

- What is the ultimate goal of your website? Can a customer find that information readily? Be clear to them where to click and what to look at. Crowding out your main point is going to drive customers away.
- Keeping your visuals and audio to a minimum drives down distractions. Multi-colored text, blinking or scrolling banners and autoplay video distract your customers from the goals of your site, even if they are pretty and entertaining.
- View your pages in 1280 x 769, just like most users do. Your savvy web users will likely use 1280 x 1024, so check your site out from that viewpoint too. Either of these angles may change what you see and how you navigate the site.

If these tips don’t really give you a clearer idea of what your customers may find off-putting, then consider some of the things that Carrie’s Twitter followers complained about, including: popups, music or noise that the customer cannot turn off easily, running text ads too close to the content of the site and making it so it is hard to distinguish between the two, items that look like they are links and are not, and never-ending flash load are some of the items that were complained about.

Most of the time I talk about driving customers to your website through social marketing and SEO, but remember that getting your customers there is only half of the battle. Once they are there, you’ll want to keep them there too!