Mobile SEO: How to optimize your site for mobile phone users.

• I've been reading a lot about mobile search and how it's now becoming important to optimize your site for mobile phone users. Do you have any specific mobile-related strategies you can recommend for those of us who want to optimize for this new medium but not change our current sites too drastically?

Answer: This is a great question—one that every SEO should be considering for their site. According to Kelsey Group, one of the leading strategic research firms, total mobile search users in the U.S. will grow to 64.8 million by 2011. These users will in turn spend upwards of $700 million online through their mobile phones during the same period. The great news is optimizing for this traffic is easier then you think.

Thanks to the incredible success of the Apple iPhone and iTouch models (about 4 million sold thus far) you really don't need to change much. Your site will automatically look the same on an iPhone as it does on a desktop computer browser. Apple has blazed the trail and most companies will follow their lead or be left in the dust. This is great news for webmasters, as it means no changes to your site are needed to make it mobile compatible.

However, not all current mobile phones render your sites as well as the iPhone does. So, until those other phones catch up, you'll need to add a few mobile-friendly features if you want to optimize your site for as much mobile search traffic as possible.

Contrary to popular belief, you don't need a separate site on a .mobi domain. You just need a cascading style sheet (CSS) attached to your website that delivers specific instructions to a mobile browser. When the CSS detects a mobile browser, it serves up a scaled down version of your site.

The Opera Browser has a great tutorial on making your site look great on cell phones. In particular, see the styling for handheld...