Digital Marketing and Technological Insight

When it comes to dealing with Mobile Search / SEO, it is important to remember that the mobile audience is much different than the PC audience. Not only do mobile searchers use a smaller screen with a longer load time to display their results; they are often on-the-go, looking for time-sensitive or location based information (flight times, restaurant phone numbers, etc.), and may not have access to a QWERTY keyboard making search a cumbersome process. The goal of Mobile SEO is to make your content easily found by a mobile searcher as well as making their time on your website a simple and streamlined experience so that they’re likely to find what they need quickly and become a return visitor.

Mobile SEO Best Practices
1. Site Content Should Be Easily Accessible

• Flash, AJAX, and frames create roadblocks for the mobile user. Make your site layout simple and avoid unnecessary design elements.
• Remember that the mobile audience has a smaller screen to view your content – keep titles, metadata, and urls short and succinct so that they can be rendered on a small screen.

2. Keyword Research Must Reflect Mobile Search Results

• Google and other mobile search engines provide “predictive” search – ie., after the searcher types a few letters, the search engine tries to predict what is being searched and provides popular keyword options. If you know what keywords appear in predictive search you can optimize your site around those terms.
• Follow all standard SEO best practices including the use of optimized H1 tags, keyword rich anchor links, optimized titles and metadata.

3. Optimize for a Variety of Mobile Phones, PDAs, Blackberry’s, etc

• Use 100% XHTML, cHTML, or WML code
• Follow all mobile web best practices and then have your site validated - http://www.w3.org/TR/mobileOK-basic10-tests/ & http://validator.w3.org/mobile/
• Make sure robots.txt is accessible to mobile crawlers

4. Implement meta.txt

• Meta.txt files indicate which URL the user-agent should follow to present the most suitable format to the mobile user’s platform.

5. Submit Mobile Site Maps to Search Engines

• Google, Yahoo and other search engines accept mobile sitemaps
• If your website is location based, also submit to local directories

6. Strategic Linking

• Develop an inbound linking strategy with other relevant, mobile websites to increase your site’s relevancy
• Ensure that you are also linking internally to relevant pages within your own website.
• It is necessary to use keyword rich anchor links for both linking strategies.

7. Mobile SEO Analytics

• Develop benchmarks and analyze your results on a consistent basis

Google has been very busy the past week or so updating their Webmaster Tools functionality, the most significant addition being their new crawl errors feature - which by itself is a godsend. This morning Google added yet another feature aimed at helping webmasters make their websites safer. Webmaster Tools now tests websites that are signed up (and verified) for security flaws through their CMS. For now Google is only testing the alerts, which are deliver through the Tools message center, with a few thousand webmasters but will eventually roll it out to a broader audience. This type of interaction with Google is obviously greatly appreciated, especially for people who use various blog platforms (like WordPress) that have been susceptible to security issues / hacks in the past.

So what happens if you get one of these alerts? UPGRADE your CMS or switch platforms!

For as long as their has been SEO in conversations there has always been one simple fact: Flash and SEO do not mix. However, a couple month ago Adobe looked to change this by announcing their planned improvements in the indexing of flash files by Google and Yahoo. Obviously any change in how flash files are indexed by search engines would have a serious impact not only on Flash SEO, but Video SEO and site design / development as well. Since that announcement was made I have not seen any significant changes, through my own testing and research, in how flash content is being indexed. In fact I have seen little evidence or talk about Flash SEO since that announcement was made. However, Brian Ussery put together an awesome “2009 Google Flash SEO” post that goes into in-depth analysis of flash indexing through his own testing and case studies. Brian’s blog post is a definite must read for anyone involved in SEO or site design / development.

Here are the case studies he put together:

• Google flash content association with parent URLs
• Google flash file pagerank
• Googlebot #anchor (fragment identifier) URL extraction
• Google flash text translation

Bottom line is that there is still a lot of uncertainty when it comes to Flash SEO, however things seem to be moving forward (slowly). My recommendation stays the same for now -  it is ok to build flash heavy sites but take into consideration the standard  SEO best practices - check out my SEO Checklist for guidance. But, keep an eye on this as things can change very quickly.

Last night MySpace officially launched their new advertising platform, myAds, which has been in the works for at least a year. MyAds is a self service, targeted ad platform, like the similar product offered by Facebook. Facebook’s ad platform allows only text ads, MyAds currently allows only display ads - advertisers are limited to 728×90 or 300×250.  MyAds offers display ad templates and a flash tool for those who need help creating their ads, of course advertisers can upload their own as well.

MyAds operates on a CPC model and ad placement are prioritized by max CPC rate set by the advertiser and how often ads are clicked on. A key differentiator between MyAds and Facebook however is the ability for MyAds advertisers to “hyper-target” their ads. MySpace’s hyper-targeting technology takes into account a users activity over time, where Facebook focuses on the specific user defined interests. All together there are 1,200 different ways an advertiser can categorize users within MyAds.

So, will this add the revenue stream Rupert Murdoch has been looking for from his social portal? Personally, I don’t think it will be what adWords was to Google but should of course add something to the bottom line. I see MyAds being very similar to Facebook in the sense the CPC will be pennies and result in a high-volume of impressions but low quality click counts. However, as with Facebook, MySpace should be part of any advertisers marketing plan.

From the MySpace Press Release.

MySpace today officially announced the domestic beta launch of MySpace MyAds, the new advertising platform designed to empower individuals and small businesses from local retailers to musicians and politicians to create relevant, targeted promotional business campaigns within the world’s premier social media environment.  MySpace MyAds is a new, do-it-yourself advertising platform that democratizes the landscape of online advertising, enabling anyone to create customized banner ads, target to specific audiences using MySpace’s HyperTargeting technology, and analyze campaign performance tracked throughout the MySpace ecosystem.

With MySpace MyAds, we’re blowing the lid off display advertising solutions for small and medium businesses, said Jeff Berman, President of Sales and Marketing for MySpace. MySpace MyAds is a direct marketer’s dream providing entrepreneurs with the most accessible, personalized, and targeted advertising toolkit in the market. We’re giving businesses better ROI ASAP and in today’s economy, that’s a must-have.

MySpace MyAds empowers any advertiser to build a customized, targeted, and measurable campaign in a few easy steps:

STEP 1: Visit https://advertise.myspace.com or click the Advertise link located at the bottom of any MySpace page
STEP 2: Create a display ad using the MySpace MyAds Builder Tool
STEP 3: Select a variable ad spend anywhere from $25 to $10,000
STEP 4: HyperTarget to customers
STEP 5: Measure ad performance with MySpace MyAds analytics reporting

TechCrunch just posted leaked screenshots of  Brightcove’s latest web-based video distribution platform - called Brightcove 3. The new platform will give video publishers more options and a better, more intuitive user-experience.

About Brightcove: “Brightcove empowers content owners—from independent producers to major broadcast networks—to reach their audiences directly through the Internet. At the same time, we help web publishers enrich their sites with syndicated video programming, and we give marketers more ways to communicate and engage with their consumers.” “Most importantly, we give people the freedom to easily find, watch and participate in a broad range of video content—when and where they choose.”

Some of the new feature of Brightcove 3 include:

• New dashboards
• New video customization features
• Expanded advertiser options
• Ability to create multiple renditions of videos in different standards and bit rates

Check out the rest of the screenshots at TechCrunch.com