It is hard to imagine going about your daily routine without a mobile phone today. From calls to messages, mails to entertainment and a lot more, smartphones, in particular have become the norm among people all over the world. A large percent of shopping searches and purchases are carried out on smartphones as well. This is one of the main reasons that more and more businesses are looking to cater to the smartphone using population.
There’s no mistaking the takeaway – without a mobile search strategy, you’re digging yourself into a hole.
However, to cater to smartphone users, you need to have a strong mobile search strategy in place. The most important principle in this type of search engine optimisation (SEO) is to make sure that visitors can look for anything on your website in a way that suits their requirements and the device. Here are some simple ways in which you can ensure your site caters perfectly to mobile users.
Improve mobile user experience- Perhaps the most important factor in a successful mobile SEO strategy is to enhance mobile experience. The ease of navigating a site can greatly impact the ability to engage visitors, keep them coming back and generate conversions. All this can also affect the site’s ranking, which makes it extremely important to create a flawless user experience.
Make pages load faster- This can play a significant role in not only improving user experience, but also increasing conversion rates. Visitors may get distracted or frustrated with pages that take long to load. The average speed of a mobile page loading is more than seven seconds. However, reports show that Google ideally prefers mobile pages to load within a second as it can affect user experience, re-visits and conversion. While there is no proof that quick loading mobile pages affect rankings, it can affect the mobile traffic to your website.
Encourage socialisation- Almost every smartphone user is connected to at least one social media site at all times. Smartphone users like sharing their experiences with their family, friends and peers. Allowing them to share or recommend your content on their preferred social platforms will make your content far more visible to mobile users, especially to those who constantly access social networking sites. The best part about this is that there are many social platforms which offer mobile sites easy-to-use plug-ins that create a seamless sharing experience.
In addition to these, there are a few other things that you can do to make your mobile website more user friendly for smartphone users. It is advisable to take into account voice and conversational search options. However, remember that even for this type of SEO, a smart and logical strategy is needed. Simply combining keywords with a location might not solve your problem. Consider the way in which users will ask questions or the words that they will use. For instance, when searching for a grocery store, mobile users may ask “show me nearby grocery stores” rather than “groceries and location”.
Similarly, it might also be a good idea to verify your mobile website. Visitors tend to trust sites that are genuine. You can do this easily and quickly through specific mobile settings in Google Webmaster Tools. And should you do this, remember that while updating your sitemap on Google, you should also upload your detailed mobile sitemap as well.
As the global population migrates from conventional modes to mobile phones and tablet devices, market leaders like Google will have huge stimulus to upscale mobile search performance.
If you are counting on Mobile SEO to keep you ahead of the game, you have a head start of roughly twelve months before competition catches up with you. That’s the pace at which Mobile SEO is expected to grow.
On the other hand, if you feel you will wait for the Mobile SEO trend to get off the ground in a big way before you hitch your wagon to the star, your competitors will have long before eased you out of the competition.
