According to Comscore, the number of people accessing the web through their mobile phones has doubled over the last year to 22 million every day. Social networking sites and blogging are the most popular sites people are visiting on their hand held device.
If you want to make sure that you are getting as many visitors as you can, make sure you optimize your blog to make it mobile search engine friendly. WordPress search engine optimization for the mobile client means making sure a business is as visible as possible on the mobile web and therefore helping that website get as much traffic as possible from search engines. There are two options:
Build your blog from scratch to be mobile friendly
If you are good at building websites, build a blog bearing in mind the following:
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Screen size
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Valid code
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W3C Mobile Web Initiative
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Follow traditional on-site SEO best practices
This is a lot smaller on handsets than on a laptop and many WAP browsers strip out the style sheet (CSS) making the page display as text. This is not aesthetically pleasing. So what you need to do is make sure you have a mobile version of your website that doesn’t contain images and maximizes the functionality of your site.
Keep the code on your website clean as mobile search engines are unable to digest invalid code.
Adhere to best practices, look at W3C’s Web Accessibility Initiative. This will ensure that your content is accessible to anyone regardless of their platform — including mobile users and mobile search engines.
Write short, concise blog headlines as these will be what the mobile visitor sees and will attract them to click on the title.
Make sure the URL structure is as simple as possible. This means that it is also easier for your visitors to type in the address.
Use an off the shelf CMS – WordPress
Alternatively, if you do not want to build your own site and are already using WordPress, you can install WordPress Mobile Pack plugin. Go to your plugins section and search for the Mobile Pack as below and follow the steps.
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Type in the plugin you want to search for
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Choose and click install now
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Your plugin should automatically install which would allow you to activate it
I downloaded this plugin and it worked straight away. It was better than the MobilePress plugin which only displayed the title of the blog posts. I am not a patient developer and so this plugin was the best choice for me.
Is your blog mobile ready?
With more and more people expecting to access the Internet through their handheld devices, it is very important that our blogs are ready for it. If you have used any other mobile WordPress plugins which you have found useful, please feel free to comment.
A guest post by Jo Turnbull of www.seojoblogs.com. If you want to guest post on HowToMakeMyBlog, please check out more info here.
Image by The Lightworks
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{ 19 comments }
Thank you for sharing this. The curent plugin I’m using keeps going wrong, I’ve been looking at changing it but did not know of any others.
Hi Dean, glad it was useful. Let me know how you get on with the new plugin.
If you don’t want to purchase a dot mobi domain, understand that most of the free services (MoFuse, Winksite) create a miniature version of your existing blog, using your blog’s RSS feed, and append their dot com domain to yours.
Another choice is building a mobile site with online web builder services such as MobiSiteGalore. Creating a site is fairly simple and you have more control over your site’s look.
Monetizing your blog with a mobile website is also a consideration. MobileSiteGalore lets you integrate Google Adsense, AdMob and other ad network ads into your website.
In sum, choose a service that meets your needs. Also remember that 3.5B people on Earth have mobile handsets, while only 1B have personal computers. As the world turns to mobile, you’ll want to have an attractive mobile website or blog.
Desktop apps are dinosaurs, web is going to be outdated one day and mobile is our future. Thanks for the tips!
Yap, mobile blogging will be popular next
Mobile blogging is popular and growing as more people buy smartphones. Google “post to Wordpress mobile” for links to Wordpress plugins for the iPhone and other smartphones.
To gain a better perspective on the complexity and solutions involving mobile websites, see my MobileBeyond blog post and podcast interview with Eran Yaniv at Perfecto Mobile.
Thanks for the information. I will certainly check out your post.
I’ve been thinking about this because Google has been pumping money and resources into mobile tech like crazy, and I sort of think they know what’s up. Or they just decide what’s up.
I want mobile versions, but I don’t like the idea of stripping out images. Most smartphones can handle images well, so I wonder if we could control images when composing new posts: create a thumbnail version for the mobile experience or mark certain images as web only so that they wouldn’t show on mobile devices.
@Brian – instead of .mobi domains, can’t bloggers just create a m.theirblog.com page for the mobile version? Is that called subdomain?
Eric, yes Google is pushing hard into the mobile ad space. Their recent purchase of AdMob, the largest mobile ad network, is proof.
Regarding stripping out images: Keep in mind that the majority of mobile users don’t own iPhones or other smartphones. Only 4% of mobile phone users, for example, own iPhones, although iPhone owners use the mobile web extensively. Roughly 40% of all AT&T data usage is by iPhone owners.
It’s a trade-off. You want to maximize the number of people who own feature phones without fast processors and video displays like smartphone users.
To that extent, services like Mippin and Instant Mobilizer are the best choices.
I just installed Mippin on both MobileBeyond.net and IM-Mobile.com. (Both sites ae available on the mobile web using either the main domain or dotmobi.) It’s the fastest way to mobilize your Wordpress blog. (Mippin even has a plugin for Wordpress that works in conjunction with its service.) The New York Times is and other publishers are using Mippin to reach the largest mobile audiences.
You don’t need to go with an “m.example.com” solution (not a subdomain). Today’s mobile browsers, along with services that reformat PC screens, automatically detect a mobile phone when it loads a regular webpage.
With their service, you actually create a stand-a-lone website with an RSS feed for your blog and lots of extra content that’s easily inserted. But your hosting company must support PHP. (I’m waiting for an answer back from the company about problems with Host Gator.)
But keep in mind, again, the trade off. If you want to target iPhone, BlackBerry and Android users, using rich content is fine, but you’re eliminating the majority of mobile handsets that don’t support rich displays and flash.
Well, here’s my first attempt at creating a mobile website, using Mobile Site Galore. Indeed, when I chose PHP rather than HTML, the screens warned me that Host Gator doesn’t support the protocol, although when checking my cpanel file manager, I see Php files everywhere. In any cases, this is a humble beginning:
Comments?
At the moment I don’t think enough readers access my content through a mobile device to justify “mobilizing” my site.
I do have mobile related domain name lying around that I would like to develop and hopefully these tips will help me do so.
Thank you for your comment. It is good practice to have a mobile version of your site as more and more people will be accessing the internet through handsets. Let me know how you get on with your site.
One thing to keep in mind about mobile websites. Visitors are not going to visit your mobilized website unless you have one and you promote it.
Second, you can monetize your blog with a mobile website using Admob, Google, Milennial and other ad networks throughout the world. Advertising revenue is growing 50-75% per year for mobile, while ad spend on print and traditional Internet is stagnant or falling. The click-through rate on most mobile campaigns is 5%-10%.
Keep in mind that most of the 3.5 billion people who own handsets that are capable of accessing the mobile Web are. Every month, for example, India’s carriers are adding 15 MILLION new subscribers and smartphones are selling like crazy. In Africa, the Middle East and Latin America, the same is happening.
Side note: Host Gator and I are still working on php permission problems using MobiSiteGalore, an Indian firm that offers a free online website build tool. With MSG you can easily add RSS feeds for your blogs, Admob and Google code for mobile ads, “click to call” and contact forms plus more.
Hi!
Nice post and some good info there! I’ve created a couple of mobile plugins for WordPress that I think are worth a look.
First up, there is the Wapple Architect Mobile Plugin for WordPress – it mobilizes your blog for your readers and allows you to retain the look and feel of your web theme across to mobile. You can also tailor your mobile SEO terms as well. You can download it here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wapple-architect/ and see how it looks on a few blogs here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wapple-architect/screenshots/
Secondly, I’ve created WordPress Mobile Admin which mobilizes the Wordpress control panel so you can create posts from your mobile phone. You can also upload photos and moderate comments as well as manage posts, pages, tags and categories. You can download it here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-mobile-admin/ and see how it looks in action here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-mobile-admin/screenshots/
Let me know how you get on!
Thanks for your comment. How long have you been developing plugins for? I am impressed with the wordpress mobile admin.
You know, Marco, it’s a really great idea for my blog. Thank you.
Thanks, for your comments. I am glad you liked the post.
Thanks, Rich, for the information about WAPL.
I reviewed the WAPL site and have a few questions:
Can Admob or other ad network code be inserted into a WAPL site using the WAPL builder–not the WordPress plugins?
Will existing 125X125 banner ads get stripped out of a monetized blog like mine?
Do you have any screen shots of WML browser displays? I’m interested in how my site would render?. The iPhone, Android and other smartphones on the market render pages very differently from legacy handsets.
The iPhone only represents 4% of all phones on the market. Most of the 4.5 billion handsets around the world have limited displays.
Thanks for posting.
Folks, WAPL is absolutely INCREDIBLE.
Not only does Rich Gubby’s plugin re-size images, he offers a a control panel similar to Thesis, allowing bloggers to easily insert headers, set your navigation, change footer text, insert thumbnail images next to posts, control length of posts before the “read more” next page link and more.
You can even insert a search function at the bottom of the page and change the title. For example, I changed “Search” to “Find” which to me sounds a lot more friendly. Similarly, I changed “Comments” to “Thoughts?”
The post title’s are a bit large, flash is lacking and I’m getting a WAPL error–”Entity ‘mdash’ not defined” when clicking on the most current post’s next page, but I haven’t experienced this error with other posts.
Without flash, my PowerPress podcast player icon doesn’t appear; however, I’ve started inserting the podcast MP3 links directly at the bottom of the post since even the iPhone doesn’t offer flash.
And I need to further explore how to insert AdMob ad code into my blog, similar to MobileBeyond.biz created using MobiSiteGalore.
I tested WAPL on my BlackBerry Curve and my HTC HERO from Sprint. Both displayed my blog exceptionally well. I don’t know how MobileBeyond would appear on less powerful handsets. But if the rendering of the web pages is half as good as I’ve seen on my Android phone, it’s still fantastic.
I believe the combination of Marko’s configuration of my blog with Thesis, plus Rich Gubby’s mobile plugin is the best solution for mobilizing my blog.