The web is becoming more and more mobile and Google, in particular, is adapting fast. Now that mobile search has surpassed desktop, and search engine’s are prioritising the mobile user experience, it’s becoming increasingly important for businesses to ensure that they have a presence and a ‘mobile first’ SEO strategy in order to not get left behind on search engine results pages (SERPs) and miss potential sales leads and ultimately customers.
Ensure your website is mobile friendly
Google gives additional priority to mobile-friendly websites and expects businesses to optimise their web pages to suit mobile first and foremost. Therefore the first step is to first ensure that you have a truly mobile version of your website.
Here’s a simple test you can perform on your sites home page and other key pages now.
Many businesses work tirelessly to optimise their desktop websites and think that they can just transfer this straight onto their mobile site. However, this isn’t often the case, there are different SEO strategies to optimise. What might help a business rank higher within desktop SERPS, could in actual fact hurt the user experience in the mobile SERPS and be misaligned to users searches.
Crucially, Google will shortly be using a first index to rank pages, that means sites with differing links and content on desktop vs. mobile could see a decrease in rankings.
Once a business has developed a responsive website, they need to ensure they’re serving mobile friendly content to users. This will entail creating content that suits and corresponds with both the desktop version and mobile version of their website.
Ultimately this should improve their user experience as it ensures they can access the same depth of content across all versions of a business’s website. Thankfully, Google have said that website content behind carousels and accordions which currently don’t receive as much weighting as visible content on desktop will receive equal weighting.
Consider how mobile search is used
Mobile search is different to desktop, yet people assume it’s the same. Mobile search results are more localised, with users searching for businesses around specific locations, more interactive and have typically less visible content to the user. How well a business considers these differences in their SEO strategies will affect their performance in the SERPs.
The next step is to ensure that you’re using savvy language within your website. In order to do this, businesses need to keep track of the way potential customers use mobile search and incorporate that within the content and keywords of their website.
Consumer search habits differ between mobile and desktop – increasingly due to the use of voice search. Because of this, searches on mobile are more question and action based. Businesses need to include semantically related words and phrases that suit the needs of their target consumers into their web pages and structure pages with ‘instant answer’ content to meet user needs.
Localised landing pages
The third step businesses can take to improve their mobile presence is to localise their landing pages. Most queries on mobile search are of local intent; meaning that users are searching for a business close to them that provides what they’re searching for or Google will interpret the query to have local intent.
For example if a user is looking for a Locksmith on a device they would most likely search ‘Locksmith’s in Shoreditch’, rather than just ‘Locksmith’s in London’. If the user is located in Shoreditch then Google would likely surface localised ‘Locksmith’s in Shoreditch’ results for generic ‘Locksmiths’ queries.
A business can improve their localised search rankings through optimising all their landing pages with relevant geographical keywords. Businesses need to maintain consistent NAP (name, address, phone) details across their presence on various third party sites they’re listed on.
Including these details and even optimising content with localised titles, labelling of pictures and local information will make a business’s webpage stand out on relevant searches and help boost their positions in the SERPs including the map with typically three results underneath, also known as the ‘local pack’.
We’re seeing more and more businesses who are struggling to make it onto page in Google or even onto the SERPS at all, due to the fact that they have failed to optimise their SEO strategies to meet requirements.
To gain more authority within the mobile SERPS, whether that be in Google or Bing, businesses need to be building a better mobile presence that suits the constant stream of mobile friendly updates Google and other search engines use to rank web pages.
Written by Simon Schnieders, founder and CEO of Blue Array.
Further reading on mobile SEO
