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A Cre8asite Forums member asks how a site is differentiated by Google as a mobile site or as a regular website that may not be included in Google's mobile web search. What are the criteria for being categorized as a "mobile" site?
The Google Webmaster Help Center has a guide of questions and answers on this very topic. Additionally, other feedback is given from a webmaster who has been designing for the mobile web for a year.
He says that you need to avoid tables in your design, have concise titles, have a small page size, and include good content.
As far as understanding whether your site is going to be accessed, he says that Google crawls your site as a Nokia 6820 which accepts XHTML.
And finally, it helps to create a mobile sitemap.
Forum discussion continues at Cre8asite Forums.
Comments:
Bryson Meunier
12/11/2007 09:12 pm
Thanks, Tamar. I'm glad to see the mainstream SEO press is paying more attention to mobile SEO and development, as usage is growing and has been for a while. There's not much here, though, that hasn't been mentioned before either officially by Google a while ago or on SER early last year. If your readers are looking for even more information on optimizing mobile content for search, we created a white paper on the subject back in August, which anyone can download for free at MobileSearchOptimization.com. I also blog about the topic frequently on my web site, where there is also a link to the white paper. At any rate, thanks for the mention, as building awareness on sites like yours is an important step in building a community that will take mobile search optimization to the next level.
Rob Abdul
12/12/2007 10:01 am
I am very excited by the mobile web. I’m currently working new sites that will be mobile phone friendly. Please check the following URL: Why the Mobile Web Matters and How to Get Started http://www.w3.org/2006/Talks/mwbp-ac-tutorial.html
Teddie
12/12/2007 12:30 pm
Being from the UK where most business users have had iphone style functionality for at least a year or so on other devices, I've done this a few times and the things that really made a difference (beyond the usual page level SEO hacks, crawlability etc) were: 1) Ensuring you are using an appropriate doc type. 2) Ensuring that the server is configured to send back the correct status headers. 3) Using <link rel="alternate" media="handheld" href="http://www.mymobilewebsite.mobi/mobile-page-mapping.htm" /> within as many pages as possible in the normal website to redirect the crawling appropriately.
Buzzknow
12/05/2010 10:33 pm
nice, i've build a new mobile site and need to promote it right now, your article helps me out :) http://m.123funmobile.com