Mobile search is in its infancy. Adoption rate is low and growing slowly because the user experience is so bad. But there are many reasons for making your website work for mobiles, not the least of which is the fact that there are some interesting innovations in the field which can help mobile search come into its own.

This point was made by Gregory Markel of Infuse Creative, one of three panelists during a session on mobile search optimization at Search Engine Strategies 2007 in New York.

According to Markel, Google voice local search is a glimpse of the future – searching by voice is so much easier than entering search terms by stylus or keypad. This service works in the USA only at this stage. Call 1-800-GOOG-411 to give it a try.

Another innovation from Google might add some much needed usability: You can now personalize your mobile search start page.

How to make your existing web site work for mobiles

Panelist Cindy Krum of SEO agency Blue Moon Works presented some best practices for makeing your website device independent, so it works not just for mobiles, but for PDAs, PSPs etc.

Code best practices

• Use XHTML
• Avoid unnecessary code to avoid slow downloading spead
• Use external CSS to decrease loading time, ensure correct display on different screen resolution and to specify rendering based on the device

Navigation best practices

• Organize buttons consistently
• Name buttons clearly
• Include text links for the main navigation
• Have a site map
• Place the navigation below the main content so the optimized content stays above the fold and the unique content is visible when a visitor change pages
• Use optimized jump links on top to allow users to jump quickly to content below the fold. You can hide these with CSS on your regular web site.

Basic best practices

• Regular SEO best practices apply, like avoid frames, pop-ups and flash
• Plan for short searches in keyword selection (2.3 words are the average for a search phrase on a mobile pone)
• Don’t rely on embedded objects like images, scripts and objects because they may not download correctly
• Test on several devices and device simulators
• Validate your site with mobile code checkers (mobi ready and W3C)

Quick SEO tips for mobiles

For mobile, some of the tricks from early SEO are still valid. According to Krum, you should start with a linking campaign, getting links from other mobile sites and mobile directories.

Remember to mention mobile in your other advertising, especially outdoors or on the bus or subway. People on a train with nothing to do will enjoy checking out you new mobile service.

It’s not a surf media; it’s a search media

Rachel Pasqua of iCrossing explained that mobile users are looking to solve a problem in real time: Find news, a phone number, an address … and you need to help them. For instance, provide your phone number but not your annual report.

Unless you create a mobile site and create and submit sitemaps for the mobile content, the search engines will transcode your site. This means that they strip every bit of code that doesn’t work on mobile devices. The result is not a good user experience.

The transcoding is an interim solution because there is so little mobile content out there. If mobile users are searching for your product right now, you can avoid transcoding only by optimizing your site for mobiles.

What about the .mobi domain?

It is far from achieving universal acceptance. The panel’s opinion was that you should have one site that will present your content for different devices through CSS. If you want the .mobi equivalent of your domain name (and this might be a good idea), make it point to your main site.

Here’s a list of mobile directories and more (via Cindy Krum).
More of Pandia’s Search Engine Strategies coverage.