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10 Tips for Effective Mobile SEO

By Adam Riff | @AdamRiff | SVP, Digital Strategy

Editor’s note: The following is an excerpt of an op-ed that was originally published in Search Engine Land.

There is little doubt that mobile search is the hot topic in the SEO world at the moment. Some brands are now finding that more than 30 percent of all searches come from mobile devices,according to Mobile Marketer. It’s fair to say that mobile search is quickly moving out of the Stone Age and into the digital age.

That’s the premise of a new insight paper, Mobile SEO Best Practices, published recently by my company, MediaWhiz (disclosure: I lead MediaWhiz’s search marketing and digital strategy divisions). In addition to a list of our top-10 tips for effective mobile SEO, the paper offers marketers a step-by-step guide to delivering effective mobile search campaigns.

The tips range from the simple (e.g., understanding the differences in how people search on mobile devices compared to their searches on desktops) to the complex, such as best practices to ensure a site’s mobile content can be properly viewed and crawled by search engines.

Below are my top-10 tips for effective mobile SEO. What are yours? Share your tips in the comments section.

1. Be A Search Psychologist

Searchers using mobile devices enter keyword queries differently than they do with desktop applications. They use shorter tail phrases.

Often, their searches are more local in nature and more prone to rely on Google’s Autocomplete feature complete a query. When optimizing meta title and descriptions, it is important to optimize for these shorter tail queries.

2. Think Social-first, Mobile-second

Mobile users tend to want to be “entertained,” and in many instances, they are connected 24/7 to their social media networks via apps. Content displayed for mobile users should be “entertaining.” When developing online content, think social-first, mobile-second.

Mobile sites should have social media links embedded on every page, as many smartphone users are connected to their social networks 24/7. Doing so will increase exposure, traffic and engagement by ensuring content is easily shared across social networks.

The examples below from Macy’s and Tiffany’s show how a social-first, mobile-second mindset with site design leads to more visually appealing mobile sites.