Mobile SEO – What Should You Be Thinking About?

By admin February 22, 2014
Blog, Digital Marketing 0

Local search from mobile devices has been predicted to overtake desktop search by 2015. The proliferation of search from mobile devices means that online marketers need to perfect their mobile SEO strategy. Google has a set of guidelines for building smartphone-optimized websites as well as further checklists and videos for mobile website development.

When designing your website, you have to decide whether you want a mobile-only version, a responsive website that resizes itself for all screen sizes, or a dedicated url (m.subdomain) for mobiles. Remember that Google serves up the same index whether a user searches for something in Google on a desktop device or a mobile. It’s only when the user clicks on a result that Google loads the mobile version of that website for example. If the mobile version of a site has problems from the perspective of a mobile user, it might rank poorly when a user searches from a mobile device; however, lack of optimization for mobile devices won’t impact how the desktop version of the site fares in desktop searches. So site owners have to be aware of the percentage of people who love to visit their websites from mobile devices and then take action accordingly. If you are a small business (bar, restaurant, café, dentist etc) who gets 90% of their visitors via mobile searches, then you cannot possibly afford to miss out on all those potential customers by giving them a less than optimal user experience.

E-commerce sites have been guilty so far of being behind the curve: whereas users want to purchase stuff from their mobile devices, the sites themselves makes this a challenging affair. Having an App is great but that should not come at the cost of having a mobile-ready site. If you don’t have a good mobile site, your site won’t feature in most mobile search query results. Make sure that your mobile platform takes care of duplicate content issues. If dynamic serving is used for your mobile site, then it should serve the vary HTTP header to Googlebot. M-commerce providers should optimize their websites to provide local information such as store directions, store timings, and store contact numbers. Complex retail sites need to follow Google’s guidelines for smartphone and/or feature phone sites to help Google index your site better.

For mobile users, page load time is crucial. The faster your site loads, the more your users will love your site. If a user clicks on a deep link on a site via mobile and if the appropriate page is not available on the mobile site, then redirect the user to the equivalent page on the desktop site rather than sending the user to an irrelevant page such as the home page of the mobile site. While promoting your app on the mobile website is ok, make sure it does not interfere with the browsing experience itself.

Combine these mobile SEO techniques with the standard SEO techniques including content marketing, savvy social media marketing and you’ll have hit a home run from an SEO perspective. If you need any guidance, help, or assistance with your mobile or SEO strategy, then please feel free to reach out to the team at Mind Digital Group.

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