March 30th, 2010 by Nick

The way we all access and use the web is changing. More people are using the internet from mobile devices. Some of those devices will be iPhones, Android phones and Blackberries, which are designed with larger screens and internet usability firmly in mind, but many aren’t. Even normal phones can be used to access the internet, but the screens are much smaller and the keyboards only those found on standard phones rather than the full qwerty style you get on handheld computers. There is no doubt that internet use on both kinds of device is a growing trend, so search engine optimization professionals will need to consider it.

The technology phones use to parse websites is generally excellent and very effective. Even if you own an old website built well before the rise of the mobile internet, the chances are that you’ll be able to browse through it on any internet enabled phone. You would probably be surprised just how well most sites appear.

However, there are some things that just don’t work well on a small screen. Long lists are one. Most phone internet software will automatically remove images and flash, so don’t worry about them cluttering up precious space. That is another SEO reason not to use image based navigation, though!

While we don’t recommend focusing your SEO strategy on optimising your site for phones, how your site looks on one is worth considering. The vast majority of your traffic will come from laptop and desktop computers, but internet phone use will increase significantly in the next few years. There may be a few small factors you can tweak to make phone browsing easier on your site. Social media on phones is a strong growth area and is worth keeping in mind when building your SMM strategy, too.

Get an internet enabled phone and check out your site. How easy is it to navigate from page to page? Can you enter text in search boxes without problems? How do the titles look? The iPhone, for example, allows users to zoom into content, but a lot of mobile internet devices don’t and it is better if nobody has to. If you’re starting a new site, internet phone use is another good reason to choose the right domain. Because browsing with a phone usually costs money and takes more time than usual, more users type addresses into their address bar on mobile devices than standard computers, rather than going through search engines. A memorable domain name is good search engine optimisation practice any time, but that is especially so for mobile phones.

Another thing to consider is loading speed. In these days of near total broadband coverage, loading speeds are no longer really a consideration for regular user friendliness (and hence SEO). For phones, be careful of anything on your page that might cause a user to reload the page or refresh content unintentionally. Talk to a friendly web developer about the html on your site, and the Java if there is any. The way Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are implemented can also have an impact on refreshing and loading speeds.

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