Mobile Phone Search Engine Optimisation

Why mobile SEO is critical for your website

Mobile phones have dramatically changed our lives, we utilise their functionality for so many day to day things. One of these is the way we use them is to access information from websites at any time of the day, every day of the week.
Consequently, this has changed SEO, Search Engine Optimisation or simply getting on top of Google and having your website easily found and stand out.

Having a website built and fully optimised for mobile SEO is a key fundamental and crucial because it helps you reach your customers in the right place, at the right time and gives them the very best experience.

Mobile website traffic has now eclipsed desktop web traffic, not surprising given the convenience and ease of use of mobile phones. Studies have found that people often grab the nearest device, usually their smartphone, to search and look for something on the web to help inform themselves about products or services before making a decision to action, call or buy. In fact, according to Google research, smartphone users have higher buyer intent than desktop users. They’re focused and ready to buy!

Mobile SEO and Google’s mobile-first index

Way back in 2016, Google announced the introduction of the Google mobile-first index, meaning Google firstly looks at your website from a mobile phone perspective. Google now uses mobile-first indexing when evaluating all new websites. To get Google to discover and understand your website properly you must ensure and optimise your website so it’s what’s known as mobile crawlable and friendly.

You also need to avoid having your website load unnecessary or large pieces of data and thus when it loads and appears on your mobile phone it’s lightning-fast if you want Google to rank it well. Whilst there are many factors for mobile SEO, one critical factor is the website’s speed. It’s well known that a website that is slow to load on mobile phones, generally longer than a few seconds means your visitors may simply give up, move on and go elsewhere. What’s more it simply, overtime won’t rank well with Google.

This, of course, is in addition to around 200 other factors that are taken into account by Google when evaluating and ranking a website accordingly! Just a few of these include having a well-scripted website with content that is relevant, useful and unique, as well as having the mobile-friendly website correctly structured and formatted. There are also many, many other SEO and other back-end elements, many unseen by the casual user, that are correctly formatted and optimised. What’s more with mobile SEO you have to now consider Google voice search more as users are simply using new and different keyword search terms using Google voice search to find their products and services.

Mobile Search v Desktop search

If we look at the big picture and how mobile web searches have changed over the years, we can look at the total percentage of websites accessed via mobile phone from 2013 to 2019.

Mobile Search v Desktop search

As the web continues to evolve, having a fully optimised mobile and search engine friendly website is critically important. Many websites, some built even just a few years ago should now be audited and reviewed to see if they are fully up to date for mobile phone usage and meet the latest Google standards. Unfortunately, for many websites, many of these may need significant updates to maximise their exposure on the web.

If you need your website reviewed, audited, updated or simply advice on how you can increase the performance of your website, you can contact Clark Marketing & Design on 03 9739 5445 or check out more about our SEO service Melbourne.

Interesting Mobile Use and Google Search Statistics

• 63% of Google searches are done via mobile devices. Only 5 years ago, the figure was nearly half that—34%
  Google captures 95% of the mobile search engine market in the U.S
• Roughly a third of all mobile Google searches are related to location.
• 65% of clicks on paid Google search results come from mobile devices.
• The average Click Through Rate for a Google search advert on mobile is 4.1%. That’s nearly a full percentage point higher than the average CTR for a desktop ad—3.17%.
• Travel & Hospitality advertisers drive higher Click Through Rates on paid mobile results than anyone else.
• 50% of “near me” Google searches done via mobile result in a store visit.
• Internet users aged 25-34 spend 3 hours and 45 minutes browsing on their mobile devices in 2019.The global
• Internet population as of October 2019 reached 4,48 billion active users with over 4 billion browsing on their mobile devices.