People searching the Internet on their mobile device is rapidly increasing; and as mobile searches are growing faster, so does the endless discussion about how mobile searches have now taken over desktop searches. It must make you wonder if you should adapt or utilise a different strategy for your SEO. This has become even more important because Google has now begun to roll out the ‘Mobile First Indexing’ algorithm.
The answer is yes, you should! Desktops and mobiles are two completely different devices which people use differently and with different intents.
Let us start by looking at Mobile Keyword Strategy.
There are two aspects to this:
1. Mobile search terms are usually shorter and more often than not are linked to a local query. The queries are short and less wordy, as time and speed are key for mobile search. For example: Italian restaurants Inverness.
So if you are a local business, your website for both desktop and mobile must be optimised for your Geo location. Signing up with Google My Business and Bing My Places is a very good idea if you want to be found for local searches.
2. Voice Search. With the rise of personal assistants like Siri and Cortana, and voice apps, voice searches are more likely to be made on mobiles. Voice searches are just like how we converse with another person. And yes, they do tend to be longer, as they take the form of verbalized questions.
The problem with this is we have to optimise the sites for both type of searches. It is therefore necessary to achieve a balance between these different strands of the mobile search realm.
Google Search Console
Regularly check the Crawl Errors Report under Google Search Console for Smartphone Crawl errors. It’s perfectly normal to have 404/crawl errors on any site, but monitoring these on a regular basis means that you will quickly spot any usability issues or pages which have been deleted by mistake.
Submit a Fetch and Render request through Google Search Console for SmartPhones too.
Make sure that you Check the Mobile Usability report under Google Search Console to see if any pages have mobile specific issues and be sure to fix those.
Mobile Page Speed
We all know that Page Speed is one of the most important user experience factors. The faster your page loads the better it is to keep your potential customers on the site. With mobiles it becomes even more crucial. Do keep an eye on the mobile page speed report provided by Google Page Speed Insights.
Mobile Web Design
Deploying a responsive web design is the best strategy these days. That way you don’t need to have two websites operating separately for desktop and mobile. A responsive design makes sure that your site responds to any screen size and provides a top notch user experience for any device.
At teclan, we have upgraded many websites into a responsive framework. Here is more information about responsive design upgrades.
Google also recommends having a responsive design; read about it here.
Content
Last but not least.
Content is king and so it is for mobiles too. Although long and optimised copy is absolutely great for SEO, we suggest you try to keep the message short on important pages. This is where it has to be balanced. Good optimised and informative web copy is very important for SEO and even for better quality scores for PPC campaigns you might be running. So it is all about finding a happy balance between extra-long content and short but focused content. Feature the key information in the first paragraph or two so that mobile users can access what they need quickly and efficiently.