The Hottest New Niche | Mobile Browser Pages

Does your site have a mobile or handheld version? All this talk of the iPhone has got me thinking, is this not niche? A great deal of sites are available online, yes that's true...But how many are actually designed for a handheld browsers? Generally Google will index your pages for mobile browsing if they find them to be acceptable upon transcoding them to a mobile browsing size and format. I guess, what I am saying here is we may just be missing the boat. I think, with minimal effort we could get Google to treat our websites more like a website designed for mobile/handheld technology...Thus giving it better vantage. Want to know how?

Well first of most everything if functionally the same as your regular web pages, so it's really very easy. The first this you need is a mini-site coded for handheld in either XHTML Basic 1.1, XHTML MP 1.2, cHTML, WML 1.3. I would use a sub-Domain. Remember, this can be as easy as you like or as detailed and advanced as the time you would like to spend on it. I think for the sake of extreme safety, as I am a true Virgo, AVOID using the exact same content as your other site....Besides we are going to work the double whammy out of this little min-site later =-). Now, make sure you have linked well to your main site's main and inner pages.

Now lets make a sitemap and a robots.txt for our new mobile niche machine. These work exactly the same but with some different variables. Now, very important....All the pages in your mobile sitemap URLs must be coded in XHTML mobile profile (WAP 2.0), WML (WAP 1.2), or cHTML (iMode). Standard HTML has to be in a separate map. Additionally, all XHTML pages in one map, and all WML pages in another for example. The robots.txt is going to be very similar to your regular sites as well. List your site map in the same manner. The user agent for Google mobile crawler is: Googlebot-Mobile or Googlebot. Don't forget to verify this little doorway to new technology with Google Webmaster tools and add your sitemap.

Now the really cool part, a pseudo 301 for just mobile browsers. Now that you have created your mini-site you no longer want Google mobile to transcode your regular page(s)...So you place a link in the "head" to tell Google to send just the handheld visitors to the mini-site. Pretty cool! Click to enlarge...



Make sure you check out your site in a handheld device or 2, and I recommend Openwave also. Easy on the animation. Absolutely ALWAYS us "alt" text for your images, many browsers are either not image enabled or it is turned off. Heading tags are OK, but will generally display the same size. Fonts will usually all be the same size. I would avoid unnecessary Java, as it is not broadly supported yet. Clear type fonts only, lets face it many of these screens are very small. Clicks count....Keep your navigation really easy, too many clicks is a real pain. And the nuber one tip...Just like any other page DESIGN FOR USERS.

I really use this analogy alot. probably too much...But hell with it I love to fish. The more lines in the water, the more fish you can catch! Just a quick note out to designers and content/promotion type webmasters this is a GREAT marketing vantage. Customers are looking at the marketability of the mobile Internet as an industry. I do realize that mobile browsing in itself is not truly a niche, but it is a very booming environment of fairly untapped niches. Google mobile search is going to be a big player in 2008, just like many of the things we see these days...Getting in early and doing it well may very well mean big success for you.


Peace and SEO

Melanie Prough
"Baby"


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