It’s no surprise that a large majority of Internet users these days are using mobile devices, such as smartphones and personal tablets. Because mobile browsing operates on limited hardware when compared with its related desktop counterparts, a mobile website must be designed with much simpler features in mind. For this purpose, you should optimize your mobile site in a similar yet separate way from the desktop version. You’ll still be including keywords, headlines and other standard text techniques, but you’re building a site strictly for mobile devices.
Exclude Flash from your mobile web design. Some high-end phone models may be equipped to handle Flash while browsing the Internet, but many will not. If a user navigates to your site and gets the annoying “Sorry, you need to have Adobe Flash to view this content,” he or she quickly becomes disinterested and continues on with the search. When search engine bots crawl your website for relevance on mobile SERPs, Flash deters any notoriety your site may have had. You shouldn’t forfeit the information before users have a chance to even use it.
Build a simple code with 100% validated XHTML 1.0 code. Your mobile website needs to be bold yet painfully easy to operate. Aside from tablets, mobile browsing usually offers limited visual space for users when compared with desktop computers. Valid XHTML code will be highly visible to mobile search engines, giving you the results you deserve every time. Likewise, a complicated CSS will clutter and confuse your human readers.
Submit your mobile website to Google or Yahoo! for instant spidering and indexing. That’s right, the top search engines have made your life a bit easier. After a recent Google report indicated that 1 in every 7 web users were using a mobile device, search engine giants have focused their attention on duplicating that same magic in desktop search engine algorithms for mobile users.
