If your business has an online presence, then you probably have your SEO on lock. What most businesses, however, overlook is mobile SEO, which is just as important as ordinary SEO.
Mobile SEO is optimizing your site for mobile devices’ search engines. That way, your business site ranks higher on search engine results pages (SERPs), making it easier for potential and current customers to find it.
Most businesses with a mobile strategy already have mobile SEO in place and for good reasons. We spend, on average, 5.4 hours on our phones every day. Plus, with well over 3.5 billion mobile internet users worldwide, mobile SEO is not something you want to overlook.
In this piece, we’ll look at everything you need to learn about optimizing your SEO and why it’s so important for local businesses.
What Is Mobile SEO?
SEO abbreviates search engine optimization and is a collection of tactics and strategies employed by websites to increase their ranking on SERPs like Google, Edge, and the likes. Mobile SEO is the same as ordinary SEO but optimized for your mobile sites.
It’s a critical part of most companies’ mobile digital marketing strategies and most thriving local businesses, especially online stores, implement it.
What Makes Mobile and Computer Sites So Different?
You already know that PC sites are rarely the same as mobile sites, or at least they don’t look the same. Web designers make texts and images smaller for mobile sites because of the smaller screens. Apart from the visual aspects, there’s also a functionality difference between these two types of websites.
There’s a high chance that someone that’s surfing the internet on the phone for whatever reason is looking for immediate gratification.
That means that they’re actually looking to purchase the product or get the service in the immediate future. That’s unlike someone that’s looking up products and services reviews or comparing them on a desktop computer.
Best Strategies and Tactics for Mobile SEO
We’ve clearly established that SEO is pretty important and not just for your PC site, but also your mobile site. So you’re probably wondering how to tweak your mobile site for better ranking on SERPs.
If you’re wondering how you can improve your mobile SEO, here’s how you do it:-
Have Site Design on Lock
Your first step for optimizing your site for mobile devices is getting the design right. As mentioned earlier, you have to make images and texts smaller for the smaller screens on mobile devices.
Site design for mobile devices means that no matter how large or small a screen is, the site will fit the entire screen. That way, you can be able to present text, images and clearly, even on smartwatch screens.
Use Accelerate Mobile Pages Markup
Accelerated Mobile Pages markup or AMP markup is a markup on the HTML5 source code meant to make web pages on mobile devices load faster. That’s because web pages on 3G and 4G internet are noticeably slower on mobile devices.
By using AMP markup, your site is more likely to rank high on search engine results pages. You might even get paid for results from some searches. You can also pack a lot of content into one search result to show your customers there’s much more from where that came from.
Retain Local Appeal
For local businesses, a huge chunk of their customers come from the locality or surrounding regions. Anyone searching for a local business expects local search results. So as much as you’d like to get your brand name out there, don’t forget to keep it local.
To do so, make sure you use local keywords. For instance, if you have a bakery, you could use “lovely bakery in ‘enter area name.’” Also, make sure your content revolves around local subjects and events to enhance the local appeal.
Lastly, include your city’s or state’s name on your site’s metadata to “localize” it.
Avoid Flash
Try your best not to use the Flash plugin for your mobile site. That’s because Flash may not be compatible with many of your visitors’ mobile phones. That means you’ll be locking a large percentage of your visitors from some of your content.
Try using HTML5 instead, which works on all mobile browsers across multiple devices.
Allow Javascript, Images, and CSS
We’re long past the days when webmasters blocked these three elements because some phones couldn’t support them. It’s a new decade, and almost all, if not all, mobile devices support all three of these elements.
These elements help Google understand your site’s overall responsiveness, which is a crucial page ranking factor.
Tweak Your Titles and Meta Descriptions
While making SEO changes on your site, don’t forget about titles and Meta descriptions. Sure, you already have them, and they’re incredible, so it seems like there’s no point in changing them. However, remember for mobile sites that the titles and Meta descriptions have to fit into smaller screens.
As such, you need both your titles and Meta descriptions to be brief and to-the-point. However, be careful when doing this, you don’t want them to lose the quality of information.
Mobile SEO Is Extremely Important
Mobile SEO is absolutely essential, especially for local businesses, which are in a much more competitive field. Implementing SEO for mobile devices is easy for the most part; however, don’t be afraid to call in the professionals if you need some extra help.
If you need to refine your SEO strategy to incorporate mobile SEO, then contact us today for professional and expedient service.
