What is mobile SEO all about?

Probably the majority of website owners, especially those with basic knowledge about SEO may think that mobile SEO is a totally separate branch of the SEO industry. And that by special techniques you can improve your rankings on mobile search results pages and get more traffic from users with mobile devices. However, the truth is that there is almost no difference between web results and mobile search results. I have run a number of searches on mobile devices and compared them to standard web search and in majority of cases there were no substantial differences in search results order.

Mobile search engine transcoding

However, there is one important aspect of the mobile search that is worth considering. It is mobile search engine transcoding (described in more detail in Cindy's article). In few words: when you are using Google web search on a mobile device, search results pages look similar to those viewed on a standard computer, however when you click on a listing, Google shows the given page via its renderer stripping all unnecessary images, JavaScript and styles so that to make the page less heavy, but less appealing as well.

Mobile search results:

SEOmoz's home page formatted for mobile view by Google:

Formatting for mobile viewing has many disadvantages for website owners. Including poor design of viewed pages, lack of corporate colours, lack of user tracking (JavaScript is removed as well), poor usability, especially when page is heavy and has lots of navigation links at the top (it might be that users have to browse through a number of pages until they get to the real content).

Exceptions from mobile search engine transcoding

Before I start describing what to do in order to avoid this transcoding, I would like to mention, that this re-formatting does not happen in all cases.

Firstly, it depends on the type of mobile device that we are using. Google applies formatting for mobile view only on devices with less capabilities, which may not have enough memory to render a full page with all its CSS'es and JavaScripts. For example you will get transcoded view when you use Samsung GT-S5620 or mobile phones without operating systems. While when using iPhone you will get normal pages.

Secondly, Google analyzes the content of every page to decide whether it is lean enough to be viewed on mobile devices. In the majority of cases this regards pages that were designed specifically for mobile devices, like for example eBay's home page (notice the mobile phone icon):

However, what is quite interesting, is that Google discards formatted view in case of pages that are simply light-weighted, not necessarily formatted for mobile view with perfect XHTML structure.

How to prevent from mobile search transcoding (or how to do mobile SEO)

In order to prevent Google from formatting our pages for mobile viewing we need to simply:

1. Prepare a second version of the website in such a way that it is lean enough, preferably in XHTML Basic or XHTML Mobile (good example is http://m.ebay.com/)
2. And show mobile version for mobile devices depending on user agent variable (explained here)

What is quite important, if we want to do mobile SEO thoroughly, we need to use the above mentioned functionality on every single page, not only on the home page. See for example that if we search for "ebay", we will get its mobile version as the first result (screen above). However, when we search for "ebay cars" we will get a standard result, that will be transcoded when we click it:

Good example of how it should work is Tripadvisor.com. No matter whether you search for "Los Angeles hotels" or "Hotel Marriott Los Angeles" you will get mobile results:

Advantages of mobile SEO

As I already mentioned, making websites friendlier for mobile devices does not influence search results pages. So, when we prepare well optimized page for "used cars" it will not be higher on mobile SERPs than it is on usual ones (at least I have not noticed any important changes). However mobile SEO has definitely some important advantages.

First of all, you can prevent search engines from transcoding target pages, and thus make them look better and more usable for users. This may result in more pageviews or higher conversion rates. Secondly, you can track mobile users by Google Analytics, especially if you install Analytics-for-mobile code. And finally, you get this nice-looking mobile phone icon, which might increase CTRs for marked search results.

Is it worth to invest in mobile SEO?

Well, I would say that it depends on the number of users that use mobile devices while entering your pages, and only those devices that show transcoded version of mobile search. It is quite difficult to research real numbers, though. As I already mentioned, transcoded view means removing all JavaScript codes, so this information cannot be taken from the majority of analytics software. You may get such data from server logs and or modules that analyze user agents.

For websites that I tested (for example www.ciekawemiejsca.org) percentage of users with mobile devices with transcoding is much below 1%. And this number is comparable with the number of mobile devices without transcoding (like iPhones). However this might look different on the US market, especially that iPhones are there much more popular.