Over recent years, the overall number of smart phones has risen and with it predictably the number of mobile searches performed. In fact, mobile search is growing much faster than desktop search and is increasingly becoming a primary gateway to the internet.
Like a desktop website, mobile sites need to incorporate SEO into their mobile strategies ensuring that the sites are easily detected by search engines and therefore found by consumers. More than 60% of consumers search for brands from mobile devices before making a purchase, and as many as 49% of mobile searchers have made purchases on their mobiles within the last 6 months.
Like desktop sites, search engines incorporate various criteria in mobile browsers to determine page rank. This includes overall site performance, usability, download speed and screen rendering. Mobile websites need to encompass all of these factors and it should be noted that a fully optimised mobile site will rank higher in search results than a website that has simply been reformatted for a smaller screen.
Another factor than mobile site designers should factor is that the site is able to appear on a wide variety of mobile devices. To decrease bounce rate a brands’ mobile sites must also be automatically recognisable by the consumer as the page loads and render the page accordingly to ensure that the view is best optimised for the user’s particular screen.
Like desktop sites, mobile sites also need to stand out from other sites by translating web SEO practices to the mobile. It needs to be understood that a search conducted on a mobile is performed differently than that on a desktop. By understanding consumer behaviour, appropriate keywords can be anticipated and then used in headlines and text to increase detection from search engines.
Outbound links should be created to provide a more complete user experience and associate the mobile site with other trusted brands. Also valid HTML coding should be used, to be able to support a wide range of operating systems providing an overall consistent experience.
More than 20% of email marketing is read from mobile websites and therefore companies should remember to ensure that all digital newsletters and other promotional materials are compatible. More and more people are using their smart phones everyday, and companies really need to adapt their mobile SEO to accommodate for this fact.