In this Digital Age, it is hard to imagine a world without smartphones. This century’s biggest technological advancements were made in mobile devices and ensuring their reach to the common man. This led to a boom in smartphone use and therefore businesses went mobile as well. With businesses going mobile, the need for mobile SEO services increased. This means that users were performing searches on their mobile devices far more times than their Personal Computers (PCs) or laptops. Hence, the need for SEO mobile services rose significantly.
SEO mobile services go for a mobile-first strategy. This means that whenever you set up your online business, the strategy focuses on optimizing your site for mobile in the first place. This is necessary due to a large number of users relying on mobile searches for your product or services.
Let’s start with understanding what mobile SEO is.
Mobile SEO – What is it really?
Mobile SEO constitutes the optimization of your site for smartphone and tablet users so that not only it becomes mobile user friendly but also ranks higher in search results.
In simple words, take traditional SEO and apply it to your website on mobile devices and related sources to achieve mobile SEO. This will increase the rankings of your product or service for all users across multiple mobile devices like tablets, smartphones, and other handheld devices.
Now that we have established the basics of mobile SEO, let’s go through the delicacies surrounding the importance of SEO mobile services below.
What is Included in SEO Mobile Services?
SEO mobile services usually consist of the following elements:
- Analysis of the current state of your website w.r.t mobile SEO
- Creation of a robust plan to deploy mobile SEO across your site
- Improvement of currently present anomalies within the UX of your website
- Running campaign based on a mobile-first strategy for generating traffic
- Improving the overall search ranking of your website
- Optimize the loading speed of your site
The Importance of Mobile SEO Services
- Statistics Say it All – As mentioned earlier, there has been a big boom in mobile searches. So big that an estimated 58% of all Google searches are performed through a mobile device as compared to desktop searches. This does not finish here, Google overhauled their search algorithm after the fact that 27.8 billion more searches are done on mobile than desktop.
- Google’s Mobile-Friendly Update – Back in April 2015, Google rolled out its update for mobile devices. Google tweaked its algorithm to cater better search results for mobile users across the globe. This resulted in better visibility for websites that were well-optimized for mobile viewing.
- Penalty for non-mobile SEO – After their mobile-first update, Google penalized those websites that were not mobile-friendly by ranking them lower down the order in search results. Therefore, by tweaking their whole algorithm for “Mobile-first”, Google made it inevitable for site owners to make mobile SEO a priority.
Now, you may be wondering about the mobile-first terminology and what exactly Google means by indexing sites by this metric. This is discussed below.
Mobile-First Index by Google
Before Google rolled out this index, it used to take into account a mix of mobile and desktop results for ranking searches. However, after this update, the ranking was done on a purely mobile version of your website pages. Therefore, the mobile-first index is an index used by Google to rank mobile favoring websites higher than other non-mobile-optimized sites.
When someone searched on their mobile, Google showed them mobile results. While if you did the same search on the desktop, you got the results optimized for the desktop. However, as of now, the device does not matter because Google gets you results from its mobile index no matter what device you use.
Next, we will look at the ways you can make your site mobile-friendly to deploy SEO mobile services for your site.
Making Your Site Mobile-Friendly for Mobile SEO
You can use three options for making your site mobile-first. These include:
1. Mobile URL
Having a URL for your site that starts with “m.” is one of the ways to let people know that your site is fit for mobile use. Suppose you have a website xyz.com. The mobile version will be m.xyz.com, where the “m.” shows it is the mobile version of your site. This lets your website judge what device the user is using and directs them to the relevant URL for that optimized device.
However, we do not recommend going for this option to make your site fit for mobile SEO. The reason is that for an ‘m.’ site, you will need separate URLs for each content because you will be working SEO on your desktop site and mobile site as well. Moreover, separate URLs are very difficult and cumbersome to manage too.
2. Dynamic URL Serving
This means serving the content of your website dynamically so that it remains on the same URL but it shows the optimized website depending upon the device of the user. Dynamic URL serving is a far better way to make your site mobile-friendly for SEO than the ‘m.’ mobile URL version.
Things may seem perfectly set up with dynamic serving but it has inherent issues. You need to stay on your toes for any new devices and their respective models that come into the market. The reason is you need to constantly create different content optimized for new models. If your site is not optimized for these new devices, dynamic serving will be useless and so will be mobile SEO. Therefore, this technique is also not ideal for keeping your site mobile-friendly, and further, it will have inherent issues as discussed above for your mobile SEO needs.
3. Responsive Design
This is by far the best way to optimize the mobile-friendliness of your site. A responsive design makes sure that your site responds to each individual user based on the type of device they use. This is done without the need to have any separate URLs for your site.
The responsive design yields a mobile SEO-friendly site overall. This is due to the following reasons:
- There is no duplicate content issue which is good for mobile SEO.
- Single URL for all of your content boosts sharing links to and from your site.
- There are no redirects involved as in ‘m.’ or dynamic URL. Redirects can slow down your site and therefore do not bode well for mobile SEO.
- Last but not the least, the responsive design is very user-friendly. This means that the User Experience (UX) is unaltered across all devices which is good for mobile SEO.
4. Mobile Usability Test by Google
To fully check your site for any mobile usability problems you can use the tool found in Google Search Console. In your Google Search Console account, you will find the option of ‘Mobile Usability’ in the sidebar. Clicking on it will allow Google to check your site for mobile optimization-related issues and it will present data if users may have issues in surfing your site.
5. Performance Reporting and Analytics for Mobile SEO
A good mobile SEO service provider keeps you updated on the performance of the mobile SEO campaign. It is said that what you can measure, you can improve. The same holds true for your mobile SEO campaign. The insights you will get for each period of your campaign will help you in deciding the future course of action for your SEO campaign. This way you will always stay one step ahead of the curve with regards to your mobile SEO.
After all, it is a very competitive market out there with every business deploying SEO for their site. Performance reporting will not only help you in building a viable mobile-friendly platform for your business but you will also be able to surpass your competitors.
Conclusion – Key Takeaways
Technology is evolving with every passing minute and so are the business needs for SEO. Mobile SEO services are at an all-time high due to the reasons stated above. Before you go searching for an SEO agency for your mobile SEO needs, make sure to set realistic goals for your SEO campaign. Without any sure way of moving forward with the SEO campaign, you may end up losing your hard-earned money. Therefore, discuss your mobile SEO goals with your SEO agency and try to get a custom SEO package for your business.
SEO is an ongoing process in an ever-changing environment. Keep yourself up to date with regards to any mobile SEO changes. Google still penalizes sites that are not mobile-friendly. You may keep on investing in traditional SEO services for your main desktop site without realizing the importance of a responsive website. The mobile-first index by Google is a blessing in disguise as it caters to a very large audience of mobile device users. Therefore, we urge you to get a responsive design for your site and deploy SEO mobile services for the best results!
