6 Things Small Business Owners Should Know about Mobile SEO
Internet marketing plays a critical role in determining whether modern businesses succeed or fail. Effective SEO can go a long way toward boosting discoverability, but only if it is tweaked to perform across every available platform. Here are six things every small business owner should know about optimizing for mobile SEO.
It's not new. Since 2016, consumers have used mobile devices to search the internet more than desktops. Most business owners regard mobile search as a secondary consideration after traditional desktop SEO. In reality, mobile has rapidly become the primary way people find the information and products they want.
Headlines are more important. One major difference between desktop SEO and mobile SEO centers on headlines. Since mobile users tend to browse on smaller devices, headlines should be short and sweet. They should also be especially captivating, since mobile users tend to have shorter attention spans.
Dimensions matter a lot. When developing a website or landing page, it's very important to consider screen sizes. Since mobile consumers browse the internet via a wide variety of devices, a company's website must automatically render its content to accommodate each one. The content must also be fully responsive, with every link behaving exactly as it should. If you aren't sure whether your website or landing page is mobile-friendly, you can test it via this resource from Google. Among other things, you can determine whether your content is too wide for a mobile screen, if your text is too small, if clickable elements are too close together, and if your viewport hasn't been set to appropriately render your page for mobile devices. Not only does the resource notify you of any potential issues, it will actually give you a look at how your page will appear on a consumer's mobile device.
Loading speeds are critical. Even if your site ranks number one for your targeted search term, you will have disappointing results if your content takes a long time to load. Since mobile users tend to be in a big hurry, your pages should load in an instant. If it doesn't, you can expect your bounce rates to soar.
Voice optimization is a big part of the equation. According to Google, about 20 percent of mobile queries are already voice searches, and research suggests that this number will swell to 50 percent by 2020. To stay ahead of the curve, you will need to optimize your mobile sites for searches through devices like Alexa, Google Home, Siri, and others. This is best accomplished by optimizing your business's local listing and by targeting more long-tail keywords. Content and headlines should also be crafted to mimic the way people speak, and analytics should be leveraged to see what works and what does not.
It's not all that different. Many business owners feel overwhelmed when confronted with the task of optimizing their web campaigns for mobile. In reality, however, mobile SEO isn't that much different from traditional SEO. In most cases, businesses don't need to alter their existing SEO strategy all that much. While there are some key differences between mobile SEO and traditional SEO, the changes typically don't take that long to implement.
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