It may be hard to believe that we are already full steam ahead into 2017, but we are going strong and mobile is dominating internet search results and will continue to grow and expand as we go forward.
Since mobile represents more than 65% of the time that people spend using digital media, Google has realized that it needs to make changes in order to accommodate the current king of website traffic.
Their algorithm is now mobile friendlier than ever since rolling it out last May and this algorithm has now focused on giving a boost to mobile friendly websites.
Jack from www.orbonline.co.uk said: ‘Having a mobile friendly site in today’s society is a major part of making your site as accessible as possible, using this to your advantage is what many digital marketing companies do.’
With that in mind, here are some areas to focus on to improve your mobile website and user experience going into 2017 and beyond.
The Google Mobile Search Index
Search engine optimization experts have speculated for many years that Google was going to develop a mobile search index. But now there is absolutely no doubt about it since they recently announced that experiments are underway with a separate mobile search index.
As of this time in early 2017, they are only experimenting on a very small scale. And it hasn’t had any negative impact on the search results in any significant way at this point.
But since they are developing this current prototype, it’s quite obvious that they are going to have a much larger rollout at some point in the near future.
And before long, you could expect Google’s mobile search index to include all of its mobile traffic.
What does this mean for SEO?
Well, it’s a little too early to tell since they are only experimenting with this new index on a much smaller scale.
Ultimately, SEO’s and Internet marketers are going to have to become much more serious about mobile marketing and devote a lot more of their resources to make sure that the mobile experiences they provide are helpful for their visitors.
According to MKE custom software developers, “On average, adults spend 2.8 hours per day on their mobile devices. What a great way to market to your clients and crush your competition at the same time.”
Voice Search Focus
Over the last few years, voice searches are at an all-time high and they are only increasing with the advent of virtual assistants like Google Home, Amazon Alexa, Siri, and Cortana to name just a few of the most popular.
Why is voice search becoming so popular?
Well, the search engines are making it easier than ever to use virtual assistants on their mobile devices. As a matter of fact, during a keynote speech at Google I/O last year, the speaker said that 20% of Google’s search volume on mobile devices comes from voice queries.
What does this mean for you as a marketer?
Well, it means that you have to begin optimizing your website for voice searches. In fact, if you aren’t optimizing for voice, you are potentially losing out on 20% of the traffic being generated on mobile devices via Google.
Mobile Friendly Content
If you truly want to achieve high search rankings in Google mobile, you’ll need to focus on creating a content experience that is more in line with mobile users.
Obviously, you want to keep voice search in mind.
You have to start thinking about long tail keywords, words and phrases that users will speak into their mobile devices to search, and make sure other conversational phrases are contained within your content so that people can find it online via the search engines.
Conclusion
The mobile web is currently changing search engine optimization. To stay relevant in the game, you’ll need to focus on mobile SEO trends going forward.
