Mobile SEO

Mobile visitors to websites is increasing exponentially. Basically all companies today have visibility online and traffic from mobile users is growing every day. If the trend continues, the question is: When the internet has more visitors from mobile phones than from desktops?
The next question is: How have you prepared?
According to statcounter the trend is clear: desktop traffic decreases and mobile traffic increases. This past year, the percentage shift was 6-7%, but it is an accelerating trend, there is probably no doubt. The exponential growth of mobile traffic is a fact, and mobile SEO becomes essential for Corporate Websites.
Mobile SEO is becoming a new way to look at search engine optimization. You have an audience with new needs and you have a websites with new conditions.

There are three main areas related to mobile SEO:

Behaviour.

Mobile users have a behavior that is different from what we are used to from desktop users. A mobile user is often in motion and writes short phrases (according to Google an average of 15 characters) and want the quick and concise information. If a site does not load quickly or if the information is difficult to access from a mobile phone you will lose that visitor. And that particular visitor is many likely a customer and the person may be on the way to the physical location. Therfore it is imortant to focus more on mobile users.
We know that a mobile visitor rarely go deeper into the site than 2-3 levels. It is therefore important to present information early on the site. In Google analytics, you can easily see how many pages a mobile visitor visits compared to a desktop and a tablet.
We know that iPad visitors stay an average of one second longer on the site than iphone visitors. This says something about an ipad visitor often lies on the couch, unlike an iPhone visitor who is most likely on the move. How and what information is presented in relation to these two target groups’ behavior can be crucial for the visitor to become a customer. An iPad visitor want entertainment while an iPhone visitors most likely want information.

Design – Important in mobile SEO.

The user experience is everything for a mobile user. How a site’s content is presented in a mobile phone is a big part of the user experience. Available contact with a clickable phone number can help many visitors to find what they looking for.
Behind the design is technology. There are three different solutions, Google themselves recommend all three but seems clearly prefer the responsive solution.

Responsive Design – Responsive Design means that a site’s appearance is related to the user’s screen size.
Separately Mobile Domain – a separate mobile domain means that you reaches it at a completely separate domain such as mobile.yourdomain.com
Dynamic Server – Dynamic server is an option that makes it possible to dynamically control the content on the site. Example, one can show different content on the same URL depending on whether they come from a mobile device or a desktop computer.

How you should think about these solutions depends on the business and as always, there are both good and bad examples. But for most websites is a responsive solution probably the best solution.
From an SEO perspective, I would like Google encourages you to use the responsive solution when dealing with mobile SEO. By using a separately domain Google’s spiders have to crowl your website multiple times and this means that there is a risk of duplicate content. You will not have the same problem with a responsive solution.

Geography and Google Places.

Geographic search is becoming more common today, especially in the mobile phone. There is a clear relationship between mobile search and geographic search which even Google has seen. This is probably why Google Places is so well-suited for smart phones.
We know how a well adapted Google Places account can provide a significantly increased organic traffic, we also know that Google gives Places increasingly visibility and location.
In addition to location services, you should try to customize the site to geographic search. If, for example, you offers a service that can be linked to a geographical location. Then use a special landing page for this location.