It is estimated that more people will be accessing Internet information via a mobile device than a personal computer by the year 2013 (that’s not very far away, folks). As we know, most standard websites do not render well on a smartphone screen due to the smaller screen size, or use of incompatible plug-ins (such as flash). As many businesses opt for a mobile website to complement their standard website, one wonders what this means for keyword optimization and search trends? Do smartphone users search the same way desktop searchers do?

Interestingly enough, mobile search is used and rendered very different from a desktop search. Here are my Top 5 reasons why this is so:

• Mobile search is highly geared toward local information. Statistically 9 out of 10 smartphone searches result in an action. Chances are, if you are looking for for something on your phone’s browser (like a food, a museum, or a bike repair shop) it is because you want to purchase, find, or visit the searched item. Desktop searches tend to be less action oriented overall and more information oriented in nature. Because of this pages like Google Local Listings are positioned to rank higher than pages that are not locally oriented. Domains with geo-targeted keywords will also rank well in this system.
• Google has 97% of the mobile search market share, and their algorithm is different for mobile devices than desktops.
• Smartphone screen size is much smaller than a PC’s screen size, so it will be even more important to snag the top few spots on a mobile search in order to be on the first page.
• Site loading speed becomes critical in a mobile search. A site that takes too long to load when on-the-go information is needed quickly, will lead to higher bounce rates than a standard desktop site search.
• Android users are always logged in to Google on their mobile system.  This means that Android users will always be served personalized results more often than folks searching on a PC who may not have logged in. This will obviously change as more and more people begin to use Google+ or who search when logged into their Google accounts.  Most users aren’t aware if they are logged in or not, and personalized results definitely have an impact on what you will see in your search results.

These are key points to keep in mind when conducting a search on either platform, and even more important to keep in mind when positioning yourself and your business for the future, whether or not you have a mobile website. Keeping a claimed and optimized local listing has always been an important piece in your overall SEO strategy. But now, it seems as if listings such as Google Places and Bing Local could have even more impact on your search results in the future.

It is a well known fact that Google changes its algorithm a lot. They have changed it over 500 times this year alone. Usually those changes are pretty small and will only be noticed by the most scrupulous of eyes.

More recently, Google has been experimenting with larger changes. Some of the highlights from the recent months include:

• Caffeine
• MayDay
• Tags for your Places listing
• MayDay: The Comeback
• Google Instant
• Google Boost
• Google Blended Search
• And the one we’re talking about today: Google Previews

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We’ve been watching Google test integrated Places search results for a month or two now, and today they began rolling it out systemwide. What has changed and what does it mean for you and your business? In this post, I’ll walk through some of the changes and their implications.

Your search results look different.

And actually, they don’t just look different – they really are different results. Take a look at a before shot from the Do’s and Don’ts article we posted last week.

Before today’s rollout, search results were broken into three distinct and separate areas: Local (pictured above), Organic (the ten results below the map) and Sponsored (PPC above the map and along the right hand side of the page). Local and Organic each had their own unique algorithms to serve up results. There were anywhere from 10 to 17 non-paid search results on the first page for any given search query.

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When Facebook launched its new geosocial check-in service one week ago, I was convinced it was going to blow its stand-alone competitors completely out of the water simply because it lives where the vast majority of social networking addicts already spend large chunks of time. That would make it hugely accessible and convenient – no need to leave Facebook to broadcast your location such as is necessary with Foursquare or Gowalla. Why go out of your way when it was already right there?

As an SEO, I was excited about it. Check-ins provide another avenue of brand exposure for my clients, and Facebook was telling business owners to claim their profiles. We scouted out the process for our clients by claiming our own company profile.  Now, a mere week after Facebook Places was launched, I am ready to predict that it is doomed to fail without some fairly major adjustments. Here’s why.

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A search via Yahoo! Local for “breast augmentation” in “New York, NY” rendered a result in which the first six organic listings belonged to dentists.

Dentists in NYC do breast implants?? Click image to view full size version.

And yet, Yahoo! clearly knows the difference between breasts and teeth, since all of the sponsored ads are for breast augmentation.

Yahoo! FAIL

I’ve posted a question about it in Yahoo’s forums. Awhile back, a Yahoo! Local search for “breast augmentation” in “St. Louis, MO” turned up a children’s hospital, but that seems to have been fixed. So maybe someone is listening. I’ll be sure to make an update if I get any feedback from Yahoo! on the matter.

Whew! Just got back from a whirlwind wedding, honeymoon and road trip combo – and of course, being the web junkie that I am, I couldn’t help but think about work. (Bad Tara, bad!) Here are some lessons from the road on how to address your online audience!

5. If they want X, they’ll probably want Y. One thing that really impressed me about our honeymoon cruise to Ensenada was how well our cruise liner had thought of everything we could possibly want to do (or spend money on). For example, they plan on doing a formal night on the cruise, which is great for fools like me who like to make anything romantic. Then, as you make your way to your formal dinner, feeling dressed to the nines, there’s a staff of professional photographers waiting to take your portrait. I couldn’t turn them down! Even with the $20/print pricetag.

You can take this lesson and apply it to your website by really thinking about which services or products your clients will want in addition to what they’re offering on the page. For example, a cosmetic surgeon’s page on liposuction might be a great place to put a Call-to-Action for brachioplasty (arm lift) or buttock augmentation. This helps your bounce rate, time on site and helps convert visitors to patients.

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There are many of us who see the BBB sticker posted on trucks and business buildings around town, and the meaning of it kind of surpasses those of us who are less savvy with internet marketing. Yes, the Better Business Bureau has some awesome implications for your business in the physical world, if anyone knows what it is or what it stands for. But the real power of the BBB can be seen in your web presence. Being a member of the BBB and having a listing on BBB.org can be one of the strongest things you can do for your online presence. The most important “person” to see your online influence with the BBB is Google, and other search engines. Here’s seven reasons why your BBB listing will improve your search engine results!

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Around here, we call it “The Scallion.” It’s a play on The Onion, but slightly less clever. Every month I gather together the news that I’ve found around the web about SEO, the search engines, and the internet in general. I put it all in small, easy-to-digest niblets that I send around in a newsletter to the whole company – web designers, writers, account managers, etc – so that they can keep up without having to spend hours reading the same articles over and over.

This month, I’m sharing it with you.

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I began an SEO overhaul last week for a legal client. It’s an older website, one that our firm did not design, and their rankings have been suffering inexplicably. Investigating the site architecture, I quickly realized that the previous designers had stored the old copies of the site in subfolders that were live on the web.  They weren’t excluded from crawling in the robots.txt.  Cue the facepalm.

Why, WHY would a competent designer do such a thing!? I implored my Facebook friends. The most designer-ish of my friends quickly responded, “Wouldn’t you do that for the historical record?” In general the response seemed confused by my objection. My reply quickly evolved into a rather substantial treatise on spidering theory, so I decided to make a blog post of it. Here’s my answer:

No. You don’t store old copies in a live subfolder. EVER. If you want a historical record, store it locally. Store it on an external hard drive, a thumb drive, a floppy disk – whatever. DON’T KEEP IT IN A LIVE SUBFOLDER. Here’s why.

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As the competition for first page listings, web traffic and business leads keeps getting tougher, optimizers are always looking for new ways to get inbound links and authority and credibility for their clients’ sites.

The fact that results from search queries now increasingly include real time search results , it’s becoming imperative for us to craft strategies above and beyond the traditional link-building methods.

While making sure that the fundamentals like custom Title tags, compelling descriptions, high quality content and user friendly interfaces remain the cornerstone of our work, we can successfully use some strategies to boost the presence of our sites.

• Publishing targeted blog posts, interacting with the viewers and syndicating blog via feeds.
• Making sure Google Maps and Bing Local listings are verified and updated with the latest media rich information about the site.
• Finding Local directories to add sites and create a presence within a smaller, more focussed geographic area.
• Using Twitter and Facebook to build a brand following for your site, thus proving the popularity of your site to the search engines.
• Using e-PRs , articles and press releases to target specific key phrases through latest updates.
• Using Video especially YouTube to build a strong presence for your site.

These strategies will bring definite advantages to our sites, helping us get an edge over competition in the search engine rankings and potentially bring in high quality web traffic and business leads for our clients.