SEO Tips For Internet Marketers

Gone are the days when the only way to go online was to use a big, clunky computer at home; an ever-growing percentage of people now use smartphones to access the Internet on the move.

Surfing online with a smartphone is a completely different experience than a typical desktop PC with these noticeable differences:

- The download speed is a lot slower
- The screen resolution is a lot smaller (typically 320px by 480px)
- Website navigation is done with a touchscreen and not a mouse

Currently Google are making subtle changes to their results for smartphone devices, these have been recorded with high accuracy at the start of 2011.  Recently Google have added buttons to the smartphone version of the Google homepage, these apply to local businesses such as restaurants, pubs, bars, etc.:

With IP location and Geo-Positioning on most smarthphones, an incredible amount of searches performed on these devices are local searches.  30% of restaurant queries are now done on mobile phones, as you’d imagine people want to find a nearby restaurant that’s recommended whilst they are out and about: see more on this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-xh-lNpNhs

If you rely on local search engine traffic then it’s really important to have a listing on Google Maps, these listings add credibility to your business helping with SEO and also act as a free listing in local searches.  Smartphone searches on Google bring up local Google map listings more often than the normal desktop version, optimising your Google Local listing could really pay off for some businesses.

If you have an ecommerce site then Google Shopping results regularly appear in mobile searches and as the screen size is so small they can dominate the screen when scrolling past them.  Most ecommerce platforms such as Magento have an easy way to connect you product lists to Google Base (now called Google Merchant Center).  Give Google as much information as you can on the merchant center, thumbnails that really stand out will help your product click-through-rates also.

PPC ads might be a good option if you run a competitive local business such as a taxi firm or a restaurant which people will need on the move.  You can secure a top position in Google’s mobile results with relevant Google advert, these take up quite a bit of room and are likely to get clicked on.  If you are really on the ball then you can target your ads to only show on mobile devices and only at the times of the day when you really need them, the most savvy restaurant owner could even turn ads on when the restaurant isn’t entirely full!

People searching for services often will look for some type of rating to go along with it so make sure you encourage plenty of positive reviews on your Google listing. Also hunt out all the top directories for your area, for example TripAdvisor ratings are trusted enough by Google to appear in their local listing pages, hunt out which directories work well for your niche.

As Google announces special Adwords targeting filters towards tablet devices (to go alongside mobile only ads), what features of a website could hold it back in smartphone tweaked Google searches in the near future?

- Mobile friendly dimensions – The most used dimensions of smartphone screens is a resolution of 320 by 480 pixels which is far smaller than most websites built around the 1024px or 1280px resolution of PC monitors.  This means the user has to do some dreaded left and right scrolling to see the whole data which gives an awful user experience.  As Google wants to give it’s users the best experience possible and allow them to find out the right results they could possible demote listings which aren’t mobile friendly in some fashion to smartphone users.

- Mobile friendly navigation – Most smartphones use a touch screen to allow the user to navigate around the programs and browser and they seem to be moving away from the pen-like ‘stylus’ and just relying on finger touch.  This means that tiny little text links on website become frustratingly hard to actually press in practice with a relatively wide finger jab, something which may put Google off a little on smartphone SERPs.  Also dropdown navigation doesn’t always work on smartphones and you can only access limited content, this maybe something to consider checking on your own site.

- Fast Load Times - Browsing on a 3G or 4G network is painfully slow at times; statistics have shown that smartphone users will wait a lot longer to download the page as it’s currently the norm.  Whilst mobile phone networks become faster there is still no excuse not to optimise your site for speed,  this already plays a small role in Google’s normal ranking algorithm and could have a greater effect on smartphone results where it’s impact is felt greater.  A website with say a 2MB homepage with lots of rich content may take over a minute to appear on a smartphone device, by then the user may give up trying to load the page or forget why they visited it in the first place!

Whatever happens with Google’s smartphone search engine results in the future be sure that you make your website as useful as possible on the ever-increasingly popular technology.  Now is the time to act and get up top before you are playing catch-up with the webmasters who designed for the future.

Labels: Expect, Future, SmartPhone