Today, with over 200 million smartphones in circulation, mobile SEO is more important than ever before.
Ever since smartphones began taking off, mobile SEO has been getting more and more attention.
Throw in the Apple 6S and the Siri, which pulls the majority of its results from local searches, and the picture becomes quite clear: if you operate a local business, you can no longer afford to ignore mobile SEO.
What exactly does mobile SEO entail? How can you improve your mobile SEO?
Traditional Factors Matter
Mobile SEO utilizes some of the traditional SEO factors, as well as quite a few non-traditional ones.
To start with, you need to get a lot of backlinks to your website. These backlinks should be from well-established websites that already have solid reputations.
Unlike regular websites, however, you want to get backlinks from websites that are also based in your geographical area. This tells Google (and Apple) that you really are a local reputable business.
Citations and Google Places
Local searches don’t just depend on backlinks. They also depend on citations and your Google Places results.
A citation is the information contained on other web directories like the Yellow Pages or CitySearch. Your address, phone number, website information and so on should be the same across all these websites. This helps Google verify that you are who you say you are.
You should have a very complete Google Places listing. Make sure you have photos, descriptions, times of operation and as many positive reviews as possible.
The Keywords Are Different
The keywords you want to optimize for on mobiles are quite different than traditional SEO.
In traditional SEO, you’re typically targeting broader keywords that get more volume. On mobile SEO, however, your traffic will come mostly from short keywords that people come up with on the fly.
For an Italian restaurant, you might get searches like “Italian food,” “Pasta,” “Italian Restaurant” and on a Siri device “Good Italian food.”
The Mobile Website
Having an easy to navigate mobile website is a crucial part of a good mobile strategy.
Your mobile website should be simple and easy to use on any mobile screen, big or small. Break up large segments of information and try to provide just bite-sized bits of information on each page.
Make sure all the buttons on your site are big enough to be “clicked” on by a finger on a touch screen.
Is “Mobile SEO” the Same as “Local SEO?”
By and large, yes. Mobile SEO and local SEO are very similar, with the exception that mobile SEO also requires a user-friendly mobile website. Apart from that, the core techniques of ranking for local results and mobile results are the same.
As smartphones get more prevalent, mobile SEO is only going to get more competitive. If you own a local business, now is the time to get in the arena and take the edge before your competitors get in the game.