Mobile SEO – Why Most Companies Still Don’t Get It (and why that can be good for you)

Why most companies still don’t get mobile for SEO

Mobile SEO is a thing.  It’s not going away. Just because you don’t use your phone to search the web and do most of your email interaction doesn’t mean over 57% of the population doesn’t.

Many business people and site owners seemingly “know” that all their customers do or don’t do things on the webs. That is until they look at the data. Sometimes it is a self-fulfilling prophesy. I just talked with a prospect who told me that he was getting crushed by his competition, and showed me his analytics showing that 90% of his traffic that he got (very few) leads from was from desktops. I showed him this was because his site was not optimized and it was literally unusable from phones, leading to the incorrect assumption that his desktop traffic was the most important. I then showed him how his largest two competitors used mobile to easily take market share from him. I also showed him that due to the way his site was built, he was losing rankings in Google.

Thankfully this story ends well and he realized what was really going on and is re-building a 4 year old website. However, there are those out there that feel that mobile SEO is basically snake oil and voodoo and believe their referrals are enough to keep their business afloat as the world moves forward.

If you are one of these holdouts competitors and you embrace mobile SEO, you will beat them out like a boss.

 

Google is Serious about Mobile SEO

Google just released yet another element to show you how important mobile seo is.

Google put out two tools for mobile seo. The first is a mobile scorecard and the second is a mobile impact calculator.

Google is making it ridiculously easy for site owners to understand just how seriously they are taking mobile SEO.

Chrome even released it’s speed insight tools, that show how having a great mobile experience will drastically impact your local search rankings.

They even give you great hints as to what your mobile seo benchmarks should be, like your site loading within 3 seconds (a loooong time if you ask me), and elements like schema markup so the mobile search results give visitors the best information for mobile results.

 

Here are some tips for seeing how your mobile seo is doing:

Actually get on your phone, shut off wi-fi and then type in your company name in a google search. Where do you come up in results? Try some keywords you think you should be ranking on, and see how you do. You can even compare your mobile search to your desktop search, it is often different.

When you see the results, are the sections of your website displayed, (about us, pricing, services or products you offer)?

Go to your website.

How quickly did your website load? Was it under 3 seconds? This is the benchmark that Google is now using to see how you will rank.

Is your menu correctly displayed for mobile?

Is everything readable?  Can you pinch in or out and see how elements on the site get larger or smaller?

Do images or word columns flow or are they cut off?

Do elements overlap each other, or do the things you have on your desktop site neatly flow down in a row?

Are there elements that are not displayed on your mobile site, leaving big grey boxes (things like flash or large movies that are not optimized)?

Are there clickable links to your phone number and address? Google and iPhones actually do this automatically if everything is set up right.

Conclusion and mobile seo advice for the future

There are a lot of elements that are in play to create a great mobile experience. You can look at how mobile seo might be impacting you. We would love to talk to you about how your mobile experience can boost your brand seo. Contact us and we can help.