It occurred to me as I was making my personal site responsive and adding recommended resources that I’ve been doing this column for over five years and have yet to share with you readers a comprehensive list of the mobile SEO resources I recommend. This month, I’d like to right that wrong by citing the people, publications and tools that I find essential for mobile SEO, all in one place.
People
Pierre Far – Pierre said at one point that he wants to be the Matt Cutts of mobile search, and along with Maile Ohye (and sometimes even Matt Cutts), that’s the role he plays at Google. All of these people have been instrumental in clearing up the murky world of mobile SEO in recent years.
Cindy Krum – Cindy is the CEO and founder of Mobile Moxie and the author of Mobile Marketing: Finding Your Customers No Matter Where They Are, which contains quite a bit of info on mobile SEO. She’s an industry veteran and a consistently good source on the subject of mobile SEO.
Michael Martin – Michael is an SEO Manager for Covario and a champion of dynamic serving. Michael has been speaking on panels with me and the others on this list on mobile SEO for years, and for good reason. He also writes frequently on mobile SEO in various publications, including Marketing Land.
Bryson Meunier – Contributor at Marketing Land, Search Engine Land and many other publications on mobile SEO, as well as a frequent speaker on the subject and author of this column.
Barry Schwartz – Barry is well-known in the general SEO community, but he’s done quite a bit in the past couple years to make mobile SEO something that the general SEO community cares about.
Aleyda Solis – Frequent speaker on mobile SEO, and more recently global SEO, Aleyda is the principal consultant at Orainti.
Jason Spero – Jason is the head of performance media at Google, and the head of Global Mobile Sales and Strategy there since 2012. He’s the author of The Mobile Playbook, which contains a lot of Google’s ideas about mobility and business.
Greg Sterling – Greg is the first to say he’s not an expert on mobile SEO, but like Barry he has done more to make it visible to the general SEO and mobile community that most. He also reports at the cutting edge of mobile search, giving mobile SEOs an idea of what’s coming.
Mobile SEO Google+ Group – With 474 members currently, there are a number of people in this group bringing up interesting problems and solutions when it comes to mobile SEO.
Mobile Marketing Publications
Google Smartphone Guidelines – Google’s official word on mobile site configurations and other problem areas when it comes to mobile SEO.
The Mobile Playbook – Intended for mobile advertisers, but with quite a bit of good advice from Google on providing a great mobile user experience.
MobiForge – Large mobile developer community with a lot of detailed information about developing accessible, usable, search engine-friendly mobile sites.
Marketing Land Mobile – The publication you’re reading, where thought leaders in mobile marketing and mobile search contribute weekly.
MobiThinking SEO Best Practices Guide 2014 – I’m proud to have contributed to what is probably the biggest and most detailed free mobile SEO guide to have been recently updated.
Search Engine Land Mobile Search – Marketing Land’s sister site has quite a bit of great information related to mobile SEO, including Vanessa Fox’s popular guide to mobile technical SEO.
Smashing Magazine Mobile – Detailed implementation advice for developers. Includes my guide to SEO for responsive sites.
BrightEdge Mobile Share 2014 – The most recent mobile share report has a lot of great info on what’s working for mobile SEO today. Spoiler alert: It’s not just responsive web design. Requires contact information to download the entire report.
Google will never show Mobile Insider and Mobile Marketer for the query [mobile SEO], as both publications are relevant to more than just SEO and focus on mobile marketing in general; but both publications are essential for understanding how brands are making their mobile experiences uniquely valuable to consumers, which is really at the heart of SEO.
Mobile Search Engine Optimization Tools
General Mobile SEO Tools
Bright Edge – Includes smartphone and tablet rankings, as well as standard Bright Edge reporting for mobile search results.
Search Metrics – Includes traffic and rankings for smartphone and tablet.
Mobile Moxie – Includes a whole suite of tools, including emulators, page speed tools and a script generator for proper mobile redirects. Free 30 day trial.
Pure Oxygen Mobile – Suite of mobile SEO tools, including a mobile site analyzer, mobile redirect viewer and mobile page analyzer.
Google Webmaster Tools – Information on your site directly from Google, including smartphone queries and crawl errors.
Mobile Crawlers & Spiders
Deep Crawl – Enterprise SEO spider includes the ability to crawl by mobile user agents.
Fetch as Googlebot – Google Webmaster Tools allows you to fetch a page with Google’s crawler to see how it renders.
Screaming Frog – Like DeepCrawl, Screaming Frog allows paid subscribers to enter mobile user agents to crawl content as mobile devices.
Rob Hammond’s SEO Crawler – Free SEO Crawler that allows businesses to crawl 250 pages with smartphone Googlebot and identify errors.
User Agent Switcher/Emulators
User Agent Switcher for Chrome – There are various user agent switchers for Chrome, but this one gives the user a lot of flexibility. Useful for simulating smartphone or tablet search results from a desktop.
User Agent Switcher for Firefox – A good general user agent switcher for Firefox. Like the Chrome user agent switcher it gives the user a lot of flexibility, allowing her to enter user agents.
Prism – Emulators from MobilForge allow you to see what your content will look like on devices without buying the devices.
Mobile Keyword Research Tools
Google Keyword Planner – As I mentioned in my column the past two months, Google Keyword Planner now has great charts for helping you determine which keywords are more likely to be searched from smartphones and tablets. Requires free AdWords login to use.
Bing Ads Intelligence – Using Bing Ads Intelligence within Excel is still the only way to get actual search volume numbers by device that I know of, since Google sunsetted the Keyword Tool.
Mobile Site Speed, Usability & Accessibility Testing
All of these are great sites for improving the usability of your mobile site, including site speed, which has a direct impact on search results.
Mobile SEO Checklists
If you’re looking for a simple way to apply mobile SEO best practices to your site, start here.
Mobile Site Galleries
While not every site in these galleries is optimized for search, these site galleries can provide design inspiration and a valuable editorial source for getting new users to your site.
Mobile SEO Presentations From SMX Conferences
Visit the SMX Slideshare channel to review all presentations about mobile marketing. The following presentation is from SMX West 2014:
It’s unlikely that this page will be regularly updated (too often) with new resources, but if you’d like to make others aware of a site I’ve neglected to mention, contact me using the resources on my author page. If I like the site I will add it to my regularly updated mobile SEO resources page here.
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