As someone who has been working in the Finance industry for the past 5 months, nothing has intrigued me more than Facebook’s high-profile IPO and the disaster that has spawned from it. The biggest problem currently surrounding Facebook is how it will keep its revenues growing during a time where smartphone usage worldwide is increasing at an enormous rate. Although there is a very big problem surrounding the rise of smartphone usage and how to keep advertisement revenue growing for companies, it is not the only problem facing companies because of the worldwide popularity of Smartphones. Companies are now left with the problem of how to progress their Mobile SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
What is SEO?
SEO is the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine‘s “natural” or un-paid (“organic” or “algorithmic”) search results. In short, it is making sure that your company appears high up in a search engine search (Google being the most important) over a variety of different search terms. People using Google or any other search engine every day, and for a company to be in the top 5 of search results is a major priority. Research has shown that almost no results are looked at past this point.
The Problem?
While traditional SEO will always be an important part of any companies marketing plan, the rise of smartphones has paved the way for a new element of SEO: Mobile Search Engine Optimization. This is something that SMB’s may overlook when they are conducting their business, as many believe that if they have decent SEO on computers, then that will automaticaly transfer over to the mobile platform. However, this is not necessarily the case as most companies are starting to find out.
The Solution
Fortunately for us, search engine giant Google has been nice enough to provide a list of ways to fix this issue, in relatively simple fashion. Below are a list of 5 helpful tips to get your company started with mobile SEO:
1) Pick mobile friendly Keywords: On average, mobile keyword strings are around 25% shorter and users tend not to search for entirely the same keywords as they would from a mobile device as they would from their desktop. This should be kept in mind when creating keywords for a webpage.
2) Ensure your Site is Mobile Friendly: I cannot count the times that I have tried to visit a website on my Iphone and have been completely disapointed with the usability of it compared to on my computer. Companies need to make sure these days that their websites can be accessed with almost the same experience from both a computer, phone, or a tablet.
3) Speed: This point ties into the second point above. Consumers do not like slow sites on regular computers, and that is even more so on mobile devices. Companies must make sure that speed is optimized for use on mobile devices in order to give users an experience that they would like to be able to come back to again and again.