The first step of a mobile SEO strategy is to define your goals and you have to acknowledge the differences between user expectations on mobile compared to other devices. Smartphones allow people to search from anywhere and there are intrinsic benefits and limitations to browsing the web on mobile. Users engage with search and websites differently on a 6-inch display and there are built-in technologies you also need to optimise for: touchscreens, GPS, voice search, etc.
These differences open up new search
opportunities and challenges that you list to data have to overcome. For example, some conversion goals may be more difficult to complete on mobile than desktop so you’ll need to optimise the experience accordingly, such as developing a mobile-optimised checkout process to make purchases easier.
You might prioritise different goals entirely, such as focusing on lead generation strategies for mobile campaigns and nurturing prospects over to desktop if this is where the majority of purchases are taking place.
To define your mobile SEO goals effectively, look at the keywords your target audiences are using on mobile and monitor mobile session data to understand the role devices play across your funnel. Determine what mobile queries tell you about purchase intent, what device traffic share reveals about search opportunities and conversions per device type across the funnel says about the customer journey.
These are the insights that define the role of mobile in your funnel and the goals you should optimise for.
#2: Measure performance with mobile analytics
Expanding upon the points covered in how prevalent is sms marketing among businesses? step #1, you need a dedicated mobile analytics system to optimise for search and users. We talked about traffic share in the previous section (and the into) and this is the first metric you want to look at. The popular consensus is that mobile accounts for more than half of all traffic and, globally, this has been the case for many years now.
However, if we go back to the Statcounter data we linked to in the intro of this article and look at UK-specific data, we see that mobile accounts for 48.8% with both desktop and tablets generating traffic volumes above the global average.
The danger is, headlines stating that the majority of traffic now comes from mobile may encourage you to prioritise the mobile experience when it’s not necessarily the most important experience for your users. If the majority of your traffic is coming from desktop and the majority of conversions also take place on desktop, you know where your priorities should lie.
Chances are you’re generating valuable traffic from all device types but you may notice different behaviours. Compare CTRs for the same keywords across device types, engagement metrics to see how users interact with the same page on mobile vs desktop and conversion goals to see where users are taking important actions. Don’t follow generic stats that tell you most traffic comes from mobile but most conversions take place on desktop because these may not be true for your business – they may not even represent the mean averages for the UK or your industry.
Learn about our mobile SEO services
#3: Create an intuitive mobile UX
The biggest challenge in mobile SEO sab directory is building and optimising the mobile UX of your website. Mobile optimisation and UX has progressed a lot since the first iPhone launched in 2007 but there are still more problems to overcome than we’ve solved during this time.
Like everything in UX design, developing the best possible mobile experience for users is a process of compromise, which is why it’s so important to make data-driven decisions. You’re never going to please everyone but you can strive to please the largest volume of people visiting your site by testing and verifying changes with hard data.