We’ll wrap up our discussion on mobile SEO by going into finer detail about how exactly mobile SEO is changing the landscape of web marketing. With desktop sites, scale plays a major role in page ranking and search relevance. However, with mobile sites, this is no longer the case. More importance is given to proximity of location or vertical business/product/service category suitability. That is, no longer do big brand names/chain stores have an automatic advantage in results pages. For example, in terms of mobile queries, Sally’s Organic Groceries Shop now has just as much of a chance in a local search results page as does Whole Foods. Local mobile search opens more doors for businesses of all shapes and sizes, so if you are just starting out and want to get noticed, you’ll definitely want to optimize your mobile site so that you can start taking advantage of the perks local searches can grant to smaller businesses. In addition, another helpful content marketing suggestion for mobile devices/smartphones is to submit your site to places that are responsible for a lot of mobile traffic (such as the most relevant directories).
One of the best SEO tips for mobile devices is to make sure that your site is easily accessible and clear. It is imperative that your site be crawlable at the code level. Did you use the correct robots.text file instructions? Are you using Flash? Are all of the pages you want indexed stored in the public domain? These are things that any SEO would ask when optimizing a desktop website, and mobile sites are no different.
Lastly, never underestimate the importance of outbound links/inbound links as ways to increase your site’s credibility. As with traditional SEO, links to your mobile site from a well-known, popular site will carry a lot more weight than links coming from a blog with zero followers. Building up links and incorporating them into your keyword strategy is a powerful tool for internet marketing. Although mobile SEO changes the playing field a little, SEO firms will be pleased to know that the traditional best SEO practices for desktop sites are, for the most part, still applicable to mobile sites. The most important difference that we want to take away from this series (for now) is that mobile activity tends to be a lot more local than the traditional web activity.