OK, so you have opted to revamp your website for the increasing number of ‘tappy shoppers’ using mobile devices and responsive websites. But what does that mean for your SEO and how people discover you?
There are a number of things you can do to take advantage of both the responsive nature of your site – which means it hopefully is being seen by more people – and the fact that, being mobile, it is also getting some location and context driven traffic too.
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So here are a few pointers:
Go local
Most mobile search results are largely influenced by geo-specific parameters. This means you have to tweak your website to meet local SEO pointers. This enables Google to identify your optimized website as a suitable result for display in local searches — mobile being one of the most important ones.
So make sure you get listed in the search engines that phone users rely upon. Google Places and Yelp are the prime candidates, and if you have the right systems in place. Google Mobile ads are also good.
While doing this make sure you also use meta-tags that reflect location attributes and are also geared for mobile.
Use shorter keywords
Mobile and tablet users are not going to want to do much typing – or speaking, if they are using Siri or similar – so you need to make sure you have shorter keywords and keywords that show up more regularly on mobile to help consumers finds you.
Another interesting user experience with regard to mobile searches is that people are more prone to tap the keyword suggestions that Google offers when they start searching for specific terms.
Take note of Google’s recommendations and target your keywords based on them. You can get Google’s recommended keywords either while you begin searching for keyword phrases, or on Google AdWords Keyword Tool.
Make full use of keywords in text
While keywords are good for search when tagging, make sure you use them carefully and judiciously within the headlines and the text of your site entries for maximum effect. It will not only help you stand out from the crowd, but it helps with the SEO.
Keyword your URLs
While it helps to have your keywords in your headline and body text, it also helps to have a good, short URL that also features the key keyword. Not only does it help with search engine relevancy, but also URLs often get used as anchor text around the web (mostly through copying and pasting).
Box clever with images
Having images on a keyword-targeted page can also be a great help with SEO – and it can directly and indirectly boost your rankings. Images also have an opportunity to show up in an image search result.
Granted, Google’s latest interface has sort of lowered the traffic for image search directly, but it is still worth having keyword tagged images on there. And we are poised to enter the era of visual search, so you may as well get in there now.
For search engines, the image’s title, filename, surrounding text, and alt attribute all matter from a ranking perspective. In particular, those doing SEO should know that when an image is linked, the alt attribute is treated similarly to anchor text in a text link.
Don’t block bots
Search engines still crawl the web using automated bots, and probably will for at least the next decade or more. Robots.txt and meta robots can be used to intelligently limit what engines see, but be cautious not to make errors that prevent them from crawling and indexing your content.
Use your mobile analytics
Google’s Mobile section in Web Analytics offers insights into the number of visits from mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.
As a webmaster/SEO, you can tweak the results to include metrics such as keywords and so track which keywords are driving traffic. Even a cursory look reveals a lot and can give you ideas for small tweaks that will energize your mobile SEO efforts.
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