February 22, 2019
Recently, we have been seeing changes in how search engines are treating desktop and mobile websites. Specifically, there is now a clear divide between what kinds of people use desktop computers for, and what people use mobile devices for, (aka. location-based and voice-searched content is very popular on mobile devices). Thinking of your responsive website in terms of it being a single website is fine, but if you want to improve your chances of drawing in more viewers, you need to optimise your website to appeal to mobile users as well.
- The Sheer Popularity of Mobile Internet
Since the use of mobile Internet is now so popular, it demands that you allocate more of your marketing budget towards improving your mobile SEO, and part of improving your website is improving its SEO so that it is more usable, more user-friendly, more useful, more easily available, and more prominent on search engines.
There are currently 3.7 billion unique mobile data users in the world, and that doesn’t count the people who have two phones or have family plans where numerous people use mobile Internet data under the same plan. Worldwide, mobile devices accounted for 49.7% of worldwide web page views, and that doesn’t count the people who are connecting to the Internet use their social media apps. Plus in Asia, mostly China, using a mobile to connect to the Internet is the highest in the world at 61.09%.
- Local SEO Draws A Bigger Footfall
People use desktop and mobile devices in equal measure when buying larger items or items of high value, but people tend to buy smaller things with their phone (such as dog toys, replacement fuses, bicycle pumps, etc.) Add to this that when people are searching for business/products near them, they will often use their phone to find what they’re looking for. If your website has correctly optimised its local SEO, then people who are nearby will be easily able to find your store, and, if it has high-quality content, there is then a higher chance of search engines favouring your site over others, resulting in a higher page ranking. When people are out and about and looking for you services or your products, it is imperative that they find you over your local competitors.
- You Need To Deal With Your Mobile Website’s Usability
Part of a website’s SEO involves fixing the mobile website so that it is more usable for users. It means eliminating things such as loading errors, broken links, and screen-compatibility issues. The design of the website itself also needs to be considered here. By improving your mobile SEO, you are also helping to make your website more usable and less frustrating. A broken link can ruin a customer’s progress down a sales funnel, and it is a SEO expert’s job to find and fix broken links.
- Voice Searching Is Becoming More Popular
Optimising mobile websites to leverage voice searching is a relativity new field that is being dominated by Google and Apple. They decide which rules apply and which do not. As a mobile website owner, it is up to you to stay on-par with the curve. If Google change the rules tomorrow, then you may lose or gain a significant number of voice-searching customers. Keep in mind that Google are aligning their Mobile First technology with their voice searching technology because both are elements of mobile web searching, which is another reason why you cannot treat your mobile website and your desktop website as one-in-the-same.
- Leverage Cookies To Help Improve Your Sales Funnel
Cleverly designed websites will balance the processing power used to read and leverage cookies, with the help they offer when creating dynamic websites. Websites that wish to use the power of a dynamic website will need correct SEO, otherwise the web master will make incorrect assumptions and damage the effectiveness of the sales funnel.
For example, a website may sell Grannie’s home-make biscuits, but the mobile website’s SEO has been set up in a way that it attracts people who are looking for dog biscuits. Some people may buy because they also fancy Grannie’s biscuits for themselves, but most people will click away and find another website. The web master then sees that people are leaving the primary landing pages in massive numbers, so starts to change the landing pages without realising that website’s mobile SEO is causing the problem.
