In 2012, there was a significant increase in the amount of press and attention that has been paid to mobile SEO by the search engines and the community as a whole. There is no doubt that mobile SEO is a rapidly growing discipline, and these changes and announcements will continue to increase in 2013.
There are a lot of different ways that mobilization platforms and well-meaning developers can hinder the usability of a mobile search listing or a mobile page itself. Mobile search is very action and conversion oriented, so it is not enough to rank.
With mobile SEO, it is more than just the usability of the page, but also the “usability” or utility of the search result itself. There are a lot of different types of pre-formatted mobile search results that can be displayed, so we need to make sure that the result is immediately useful for the searcher. If they are searching for a location, an interactive map should be returned, [if searching for] a product, then the appropriate products and reviews should be returned and so on. If the anticipated result is just a traditional blue link, then I want to make sure that the title tag and description tag are meaningful enough to get the click.
The terms you optimize a page for often have to be more mobile. Mobile searchers think more before they click on a result — they are in a rush, and page loads may be slow, so they are more likely to look through the top ranking results before clicking than a desktop searcher would be.
Rankings & Mobile Devices
* Searchers see the desktop version of the URL listed but when the searcher clicks, Google loads the mobile version, not the desktop version (this improves the user experience because the page loads faster).
* Page load times. Maile showed a case study that looked at the impact of an additional 1 second latency for pages loaded on Smartphones. The study found a 9.4% decrease in page views, a 9.3% increase in bounce rate, and a 3.5% drop in conversions.
* Must include supported content. Make sure that the mobile page serves only content supported on mobile devices. If you serve up a page that contains only content that the user can’t see (or video the user can’t play).
There are a lot of different ways that mobilization platforms and well-meaning developers can hinder the usability of a mobile search listing or a mobile page itself. Mobile search is very action and conversion oriented, so it is not enough to rank.
With mobile SEO, it is more than just the usability of the page, but also the “usability” or utility of the search result itself. There are a lot of different types of pre-formatted mobile search results that can be displayed, so we need to make sure that the result is immediately useful for the searcher. If they are searching for a location, an interactive map should be returned, [if searching for] a product, then the appropriate products and reviews should be returned and so on. If the anticipated result is just a traditional blue link, then I want to make sure that the title tag and description tag are meaningful enough to get the click.
The terms you optimize a page for often have to be more mobile. Mobile searchers think more before they click on a result — they are in a rush, and page loads may be slow, so they are more likely to look through the top ranking results before clicking than a desktop searcher would be.
Rankings & Mobile Devices
* Searchers see the desktop version of the URL listed but when the searcher clicks, Google loads the mobile version, not the desktop version (this improves the user experience because the page loads faster).
* Page load times. Maile showed a case study that looked at the impact of an additional 1 second latency for pages loaded on Smartphones. The study found a 9.4% decrease in page views, a 9.3% increase in bounce rate, and a 3.5% drop in conversions.
* Must include supported content. Make sure that the mobile page serves only content supported on mobile devices. If you serve up a page that contains only content that the user can’t see (or video the user can’t play).
