With the recent surge in demand / production of tablet handheld computers, there will no doubt be a knock on effect to the SEO industry and the way in which practices are implemented.
A normal user monitor is around 16-17 inches wide, and most websites are only set-up for this kind of resolution. With mobile devices many retailers have not taken seriously the change in screen size, due to the fact that most people browse for retail goods on desktop pc’s. They are easier to use, easier to navigate websites on and have more information displayed at once. You can also see clearer pictures all at once.
With tablets however, they will be seen as devices that can be used to browse when shopping online, offering a display size that is large enough to see product images. They are also quite easy to use when entering information into checkout forms etc.
This means websites will inevitably have a couple of different style sheets in the future, or even different pages solely for tablet browsers. They will be the same content as standard desktop pages but displayed in a different way.
The implication for SEO would be the duplicate content if secondary pages were created just for different screen layouts. One remedy would be to stop the indexing of these pages, and only have the full size versions indexed. Then when a tablet user lands on the page, they would be redirected to the appropriate tablet browsing page.
As the popularity of the handheld pc’s increases in the coming years, only by way of an increased amount of users will we see the real issues and solutions appearing in SEO for tablets.
