Tip #1: Make Pages Accessible To Mobile Searchers

This tip may seem like a no-brainer in a world where at least 25% of all search traffic comes from mobile devices and 90% of consumers use multiple screens sequentially before making a conversion; but unfortunately, many have still failed to get with the program.

In Q2 2011, PureOxygen Mobile did a study of the top 75 retail brands in the 2012 IR 300 and found that only 19% of them served mobile content to smartphones. Even worse — more than 30% of them redirected all mobile traffic to the site’s home page.

You can do better. Yes, providing unique mobile content can be a key differentiator for your business (depending on your users); but, you have to crawl before you can walk.

Serving mobile users the same information and services as those using desktop computers or tablet devices (a concept known as “One Web“) is important; it creates a consistent brand message and ensures that searchers who find a page on your site will be able to find some equivalent version of that page on a mobile device.

Responsive Web design and adaptive content are popular solutions, but they are not the only ones. Platforms like Moovweb, for example, unify content across all versions of a site, while allowing for a more customized mobile experience.

Apps have seen a resurgence in popularity recently (see Flurry and Nielsen’s study on time spent in apps); but, if you don’t have an accessible mobile site first, then you’re not going to be visible in Google search for most queries. Having an app is great, but not at the cost of sacrificing valuable mobile Web traffic.

If you’re a retailer, and you still serve desktop pages to mobile users or only have a mobile app, you may not be in business for long. Remember, we live in a world where more than 25% of total search traffic comes from mobile devices, and mobile devices are one of many that consumers use before making a conversion.

Tip #2: Be Careful When Selecting Mobile Platforms

Long-time readers of my column should know that I don’t often recommend the platforms that so many large brands select to make their content mobile-friendly. These platforms are often cheap, and you get what you pay for. (See the problems Staples and Mercedes had with their mobile sites, for example.)

Many of these platforms create duplicate content and/or have major search usability issues that prevent them from being indexed in search results.

Some platforms are better than others, of course. When looking for a partner to help take your site mobile, make sure they can answer “yes” to the following questions. If they can’t, look elsewhere:

• Does your platform add tracking parameters to the URL or host the site in two places, which might create duplicate content issues?
• If dynamic serving is used, can you serve the vary HTTP header to Googlebot? And if mobile URLs are used, can you implement switchboard tags with the platform?
• Does the platform allow you to make content changes for each device, based on keyword research?

Tip #3: Foreground Local Information If Applicable

Not all m-commerce providers have a local presence; but, if you do, you should know that mobile searchers often want information on local stores.

Retail searchers are more likely to be looking for local information, according to Google, who said the single most important retail task for mobile users is getting directions to or operating hours for a local store.

In fact, if we look at a large retailer like Sports Authority — which I think does a good job of aligning search intent with content — you can see that the searches with a high mobile volume are largely location searches.

Searches for Sports Authority locations index high on mobile devices.

By making it easy for all searchers to find a location near them, Sports Authority is also making it as easy as possible for mobile searchers to find what they’re most likely to be looking for.

The first thing mobile visitors to m.sportsauthority.com see is the store locator.

All retailers with a local presence should take note.

Tip #4: Regardless Of Mobile Configuration Strategy, Follow Google’s Guidelines

This is applicable to everyone, but especially to complex retail sites that may be using multiple platforms to provide content: follow Google’s guidelines for smartphone and/or feature phone sites. There are a few complex e-commerce sites that are responsive, like Curry’s (UK retailer), but most of them are not.

In fact, of the 11 retailers in the SEMRush top 100 sites, none of them are responsive. Eight of them actually use mobile URLs, and one uses dynamic serving. I don’t know whether responsive design makes sense for their users and their business (it may not), but if they do want to create a dedicated mobile site, they should at least implement bidirectional annotations. As of this writing, none of them have.

Naturally, these sites wouldn’t be among the top 100 if they were bad at SEO — but think about how much better they could be doing if they helped Google properly recognize and distribute their mobile content. It’s really not that difficult, as Google has detailed instructions on how to implement. Recently, Google even published a list of common mistakes in smartphone sites, complete with tips on how to avoid these errors.

Tip #5: Make Price Comparison & Buying Easy On Mobile Devices

As a new homeowner, I’ve recently found myself shopping quite a bit on my smartphone, including what’s known as “showrooming,” or using a mobile device in-store to find the best price and compare features. And, I’m not alone on this — according to a recent Harris Poll, 43% of Americans engage in showrooming. Google has said that on average 2% of mobile searchers search in-store, but that figure doubles in the Shopping category.

Some businesses, like Sears, are actually encouraging showrooming on their mobile sites by providing mobile searchers with a price scanner which allows them to compare prices of items they’re looking at to items for sale at Sears.

Sears’ mobile site includes a price scanner so that shoppers can easily compare prices in-store.

Amazon also has an app that works similarly, but I like the fact that this functionality is available on a website so that it can be linked to and shared. All link equity eventually helps the main domain become more visible in search.

Following the above five tips will make life easier for mobile searchers and ultimately ensure your success as a marketer doing retail or mobile commerce optimization.

Next month, I’ll be resolution-friendly once again, talking case studies that demonstrate mobile SEO success. If you have a great one, reach out, and I may publish it with your permission.

When he posted Luke Wroblewski’s results of sites that have seen success with responsive Web design to Google+ with the caption #rwd #ftw, I wanted to remind Google and other responsive Web design advocates that responsive Web design, while great for some sites, is not the right solution for others.

This was great feedback to get, as I tried to get an official response from Google to the post last month, and this acknowledgement from a Google representative is at least some indicator that responsive Web design can have problems for the user and isn’t the right solution in all cases.

So, are these extreme examples that don’t apply to the majority of sites in question, as John Mueller says, and many responsive Web design advocates seem to think? Let’s look at the data by issue and see.

Unfortunately for SEOs and site owners, there’s not an exhaustive list of sites whose information architecture does not match their consumer demand somewhere to easily prove if this holds true.

Instead, for the next two proofs, I’m going to use three examples from .Net magazine’s list of the top 25 responsive web sites of 2012: Starbucks.com, Microsoft.com and Disney.com. If these sites that are held as paragons of future-friendly Web design have these issues, this should at least demonstrate that these are not edge cases, but less extreme problems that we need to address today.

1.  Many Top Responsive Sites Have Poor Information Architecture

Last month I referenced an audit that I did of Mercedes’ mobile site in which the traditional website had site architecture issues that prevented the transcoded pages from appearing in mobile search results, as well. Because the same content is used in responsive Web design, these problems would exist with retrofit responsive sites. Microsoft, Disney and Starbucks all have IA issues that their responsive redesign (or retrofit, in most cases) didn’t solve.

For example, Starbucks did a great job of highlighting the local aspect of their website, as search data shows the great majority of users are looking for a store, especially if they’re using the site on a mobile device.

Starbucks does a nice job at highlighting the Store Locator given their users’ tendency to search for a store near them, but their information architecture has other problems when it comes to searchers.

The rest of the website is not as friendly to searchers and users, however. You can see from the data below that the priority based on search volume is not aligned with the prominence of each feature on the mobile site.

Comparing Starbucks responsive site architecture to searcher interest reveals potentially profitable gaps.

I’ve explained the methodology of this chart in detail earlier at Marketing Land, but what I’ve basically done here is categorize branded keywords where the total volume is 1,000 or more searches per month and compare them with the features on the site.

Sometimes, the search intent is aligned closely with the prominence on the website, but in many cases, it’s not. For example, coupons are absent from the home page, but you can find expired ones through search. And, more people are looking for Starbucks jobs than are looking for anything around the brand except stores and coupons. Yet, the feature is buried at the bottom of the page. These may have been features that Starbucks chose to suppress for business reasons, as search volume can’t be the only driving factor when considering what goes on a site, but for features like calorie counters and order recommendations, this doesn’t seem likely.

As I said in the last column, these problems could be fixed with a complete redesign, responsive or not, but the point is that responsive sites can and often do have major information architecture issues that will prevent them from being visible in search engines. So, if you’re saying “responsive sites are better for SEO,” as many do, and your responsive site has major information architecture issues, what are you really saying?

I haven’t done the same exercise for Microsoft or Disney, but it’s clear that they also have issues when it comes to aligning search behavior to information architecture.

Disney, for example, has major problems when it comes to the concept of games. We know from a recent investor event that games are important to Disney’s business, but it’s hard to tell from looking at their site. A searcher entering [disney games] in a search engine will go to this page, where they are compelled to play games like Mickey Delivery Dash, or Phineas and Ferb:

Disney’s responsive site entices mobile users to play a game that they have no chance of playing.

However, when they try to play the game that they’re told by the graphic to play, this happens:

For a site to be responsive, it should work everywhere. Not so for this critically-acclaimed responsive site.

And sometimes even this happens:

Sometimes responsive sites provide less than responsive user experiences.

When you return to the Games page and click on Online Games in the footer, it redirects you to the top of the page; and when you click on Video Games in the footer, this happens:

Our quest to play games on a responsive site ends with this, as would quests from the majority of mobile searchers.

I can’t play video games on my phone now?

This is an award-winning, future-friendly site, but if you were one of the people who did one of the 30,000 searches a month from a mobile device on Google, Bing or Yahoo! on [Disney games], you’re probably not going to think it’s that great. And you’re certainly not going to think of it as being responsive to your needs regardless of what platform you happen to be using.

Microsoft has a similar situation if you navigate to Downloads on their site. Very popular category, but don’t be misled into thinking you can actually download anything if you click there. If you can figure out that the three lines and three dots in the upper right-hand corner is a menu, you get a category with downloads like this:

Microsoft’s responsive web site offers free downloads to mobile searchers that mobile searchers can never receive.

Windows downloads weren’t relevant to my Android phone, so I clicked on Free downloads and was taken here:

This page was presented when I clicked on Free downloads in my mobile web browser, not my PC.

Get the most out of my PC? What PC? I thought I was supposed to be getting some free downloads, and that this site was responsive to my needs. Again, a poor user experience and content that’s platform-specific and not labeled as such is not good for the searcher experience, and not good for SEO.

So, I profiled three large business websites that have gone responsive and found problems with all three, which tells me these information architecture problems in responsive sites are probably more common than some people think.

And, for those of you who still say responsive Web design is best for SEO, this is award-winning responsive Web design, and nothing about it is good for the searcher experience, or SEO.

2. Many Top Responsive Websites Don’t Use Mobile-Specific Keywords

Not everyone understands how to use the new keywords that searchers are putting in mobile devices to their advantage, and that’s fine. It’s a relatively new phenomenon that some of us are finding success with, but not everyone’s there yet. I’ve written a pretty extensive guide for those of you who may be new to the subject.

Those who do understand this may see the same opportunities that I do when I look at Starbucks’ keywords that come primarily from mobile devices. When we sort our master keyword list by mobile percent of total volume and look at those keywords where more than 70% of the total volume comes from mobile devices, we see a lot of people en route to a Starbucks.

Amazingly 46 people a month ask their desktop computer to help navigate them to a Starbucks.

Many local businesses say that most of their revenue comes from driving a lead to a store, and so, these keywords that indicate a searcher’s intent to go to a physical Starbucks location are probably some of the most valuable leads that the website gets. But, with responsive design, the opportunity is squandered.

Many of these searches lead to Google pages to specific directions, and the website will never get credit for the lead. In cases where directions don’t show up, such as [drive thru starbucks]:

Some queries with local intent don’t include maps in mobile results.

Or worse, when incorrect information shows up, such as [24 hour starbucks] (I’m in Chicago):

Not going to walk to San Francisco from Chicago for a latte, Google.

Starbucks has the opportunity to provide a better user experience to people who are looking for these things, and to get a valuable website lead in the process.

How do we do this? How about a crawlable page that lists all 24 hour Starbucks locations and another that lists all locations with drive thrus? Right now, there is no page like that because the site relies on search filters, which aren’t crawlable (see problem #1 above). If we created that page and used HTML5 to tap into the phone’s GPS, we could provide them with the nearest location of these types as soon as they clicked through to the page.

As it is, it sends a searcher to the Store Locator page, where the searcher will hopefully recognize the small funnel shape is a filter icon, and then click on it. When that happens, you can select the type of Starbucks that you’re interested in, and then click Apply. When that happens, you go back to a map, where you need to zoom in or hit the scope button to find your location, and hopefully it shows the location nearest you.

But why would Starbucks want to make their most valuable leads go through that experience when they could show them what they’re looking for with one click? They might be able to do this with a responsive design, but it’s kind of unlikely that anyone would, since advocates so often argue against the mobile context and wouldn’t be looking for opportunities like this in the first place. Smart SEOs can avoid the same mistakes and get more converting traffic from natural search in the process.

Disney also has keywords like this in mobile content like games, apps and wallpaper. They do have their mobile apps listed on their site, but as we saw above, the keyword “mobile games” isn’t mentioned, and they don’t list mobile wallpaper or have wallpaper on their responsive website, it seems. This is a big miss for SEO, as there are thousands of searches for games and wallpaper, and Disney won’t get any of them with this “responsive” site.

Non-branded games searches have as much search volume on mobile devices as many of Disney’s most popular brands.

There are also plenty of issues on all of these sites, not just with mobile keywords, but with keywords that become meaningless in a mobile context. Examples from Disney and Microsoft make this clear in point 1 above, but Starbucks is not immune at dealing with these adaptive content issues.

Here’s what happens if you’re one of the people who has done one of the 8,500 searches per month for [Starbucks coupons] from a mobile device in the US. Not only do you not get what you’re looking for (again, possible business reasons that may make sense), but you’re told to click the Print Coupon Button to redeem the nonexistent coupon:

Starbucks responsive web site asks you to print out a coupon from your mobile phone, and gives you how-to instructions that you’ll never be able to follow.

It’s like one bad user experience piled onto another, and it’s all due to making a site responsive without understanding how that changes the meaning of the content and the relevance of the queries.

Could all of these issues be resolved using responsive Web design? Maybe. But, because responsive Web designers and SEOs are not currently looking for them, this is likely to be an edge case, if it happens at all.

3. Many Responsive Websites Are Slow

Yes, to all of you who commented that responsive websites can be fast if done correctly. I agree with you; but, that’s not the point. The point is: “fast responsive website,” while not exactly an oxymoron, is certainly an edge case.

I’m not the only one saying this, either. Most of you are, in fact, as the majority of commenters who objected to this point in last month’s article told me it’s the developers’ fault, not responsive design’s. But, as an SEO, I don’t care whose fault it is, only that it happens. If responsive websites are slow, as many are, they could be bad for the searcher experience and bad for SEO.

And, as I said in the comments, it happens a lot. According to Akamai performance evangelist Guy Podjarny, “You can’t escape this fact. A responsive website tuned to perform optimally would not be as fast as a dedicated mdot site tuned equally well. Or, more realistically, an average responsive website would always be slower than an average mdot site.” In other words, slow responsive sites are not the exception, but the rule.

4. Responsive Websites Are Losing More Than 10% Of Global Mobile Web Traffic

As a marketer, do you frequently avoid the potential to connect with 158 million visitors and 98 billion page views? Because this is currently what you’re missing if you ignore global feature phone users on just the Opera browser, as of December 2012.

According to their most recent State of the Mobile Web report, Opera reported that 229,000,000 visitors had 143,000,000,000 pageviews globally from either Opera Mobile or Opera Mini. They also said that 68% of their visits come from something other than a smartphone. If you do the math, you get the figures mentioned above.

Given that Opera has 15.4% market share, we can extrapolate that this is 10.63% of total mobile Web market share worldwide.

You can make a business decision about whether ignoring 10% of the global mobile Web traffic is something you’re willing to do, but this is certainly too large a number to be an outlier.

As some of you said in the comments last month, build a site mobile first, and responsive would give some sort of experience to feature phone users as well. But, there are two problems with this:

• it’s not recommended by Google, which recommends separate sites or dynamic-serving-only for a site that works on feature phones and smartphones
• building mobile first may make you future-friendly while alienating a lot of primary desktop users in the present

Many companies you would think would be mobile first, like the Weather Channel, don’t see mobile first as being a viable strategy for another couple of years.

5. All Responsive Sites Don’t Delight Users With Mobile-Only Features

By nature, this last one is not an edge case, as responsive design is about making the same content available to all platforms, not about adding functionality depending on what devices are supported.

As explained last month, we have the ability as marketers to use mobile-specific features like GPS, camera, accelerometer, etc., to create app-like experiences on the Web that will rival what’s possible in native apps, but be seen and enjoyed by everyone, regardless of platform.

And, I still don’t know why we as marketers are content to do without this so we can make our sites responsive. One Web is a good start, but we should be doing more.

I had a discussion with the Thunder Tech user experience team on their blog last month, and they argued that these experiences belong in apps and not websites. However, this is the difference between User Experience and SEO. As SEOs, we should want to make the experiences that people really find engaging as visible as possible, and the Web, unlike native apps, has 100% reach.

With  HTML5, we can make increasingly app-like experiences available on the Web, and this kind of content is likely not just to bring qualified traffic, but also links, shares and all of the signals that Google relies on to understand that our sites are authoritative. How is it better for SEO when we’re content to leave all of these things at the door in order to make our sites responsive?

I don’t know how common the practice of building app-like experiences on the Web is, but I did find an example of one brand that is seeing great results after building a more app-like mobile Web experience through dynamic serving. Hopefully, more of you in the future will follow suit.

According to Nielsen and Business Insider, consumers spend more time in apps than on the mobile web. While games and social networking are part of the story, how much are webmasters to blame for not making web experiences more app-like and engaging?

If you’ve made it to the end of this post, you have seen many instances where the five things I discussed last month are evident, and definitely not outliers. Google may still consider these things edge cases, but if you see that searchers are getting stranded, confused and unable to convert, it could help your business and the user if you fix it.

So, the next time someone tells you that responsive Web design is always best for SEO, you now have examples of many responsive sites, some of which are critically-acclaimed, that are not helping themselves at all with SEO. I think you can do better.

TL; DR Recap

Problems responsive websites have with SEO are common because:

• Several critically-acclaimed responsive we sites have major information architecture issues that are preventing searchers from completing a task, and businesses from generating revenue from these leads.
• These same websites ignore keywords that are most important to mobile searchers, to the detriment of the business and the user.
• Though responsive sites can be made fast, most of them aren’t.
• Google doesn’t recommend responsive Web design for capturing feature phone traffic, and that is more than 10% of the total mobile Web traffic available.
• Responsive sites can’t by nature allow for content that’s not multi-platform, and these experiences can often help users, build organic links and generate revenue for a business.

In reality, mobile URLs could be the best option for SEO, depending on your circumstances.

The Madness Of Crowds

For example, though I praised her in my last column for sharing her mobile SEO process, and in general, I think she provides good information on mobile SEO, Aleyda Solis also provides this flowchart in her process as a way of helping businesses understand their options for developing mobile sites based on what is preferable for SEO:

Flowchart represents the myth of responsive web design’s superiority for SEO.

In fact, Google never introduced such a hierarchy when they announced their preference for responsive Web design last June. All they said was they prefer responsive Web design, and if it’s not best for your user, then they support dynamic serving and mobile URLs. The one URL argument for dynamic serving and responsive design’s superiority is moot with the introduction of switchboard tags, as Google can now understand which site should appear when, regardless of URL structure.

Let me say that again, as those who write about these issues don’t seem to be getting it otherwise:

The one URL argument for dynamic serving and responsive design’s superiority is moot with the introduction of switchboard tags, as Google can now understand which site should appear when, regardless of URL structure.

Not just doing that for Aleyda’s benefit, as Aleyda presents mostly good information, and many others are making the same honest mistake.

In a recent poll of SEO firms and MBAs, 100% of respondents said that responsive Web design is preferable for SEO than separate mobile sites. Really? Always?

Really, it seems these days everywhere you turn there’s someone somewhere claiming that responsive Web design is preferable to separate mobile sites for SEO because all of the links go to one URL. To this I say…

For example, in the otherwise excellent new book Mobile Marketing an Hour a Day by industry veterans Noah Elkin and Rachel Pasqua, Covario’s Nick Roshon states his preference for responsive Web design for SEO, citing consolidated link equity as evidence of responsive Web design’s superiority for SEO. He even gives this curious statement: “While Responsive Web Design may be harder to implement, and there may be user experience reasons to go with alternative mobile web design standards, the benefits of going responsive are undeniable.”

Actually, they could be deniable, depending on the site that’s going responsive. In fact, the benefits of responsive Web design are often negated by the cons. If mobile URLs or dynamic serving provides a better user experience, then Google does not suggest that you make your site responsive, but instead provides options to give you the same benefits of consolidated link equity on mobile URLs.

Unfortunately, Google did not mention any of the instances when responsive Web design provides an inferior user experience, leaving it up to individual webmasters. They’re very concerned with confusing webmasters, it seems, and didn’t want to confuse the issue, I assume, by getting into those scenarios where responsive Web design would not be preferred.

When I reached out to them for this article, Google has officially declined to comment. However, based on the limited information they have provided, empirical evidence of what’s working in SERPs, and my twelve years optimizing content professionally, this is a list of five things that will make mobile URLs or dynamic serving a more attractive option for you for mobile SEO.

1.  When Desktop Website Does Not Contain Categories Mobile Searchers Are Looking For

In the example I used on the Stone Temple blog in January, Mercedes has serious information architecture issues that are preventing it from connecting to searchers in general. Their content for car types is not accessible, let alone optimized, and making that site accessible to smartphones and tablets is not going to solve these serious information architecture issues. Mercedes could redesign their site, and then make it responsive, and that would solve some of their problems, but if they make their current site responsive, they will have the same issues that they do now.

Similarly, the desktop website doesn’t have information on mobile content like mobile wallpaper or apps. Why should it, in fact, when desktop searchers by and large aren’t looking for those things? Yet, mobile searchers are in droves, and if Mercedes simply makes their current site responsive, they will miss out on all that traffic.

Mercedes would miss out on traffic from the categories in green if they made their current site responsive.

Responsive Web design advocates: missing out on relevant traffic is not optimization.

2.  When Desktop Website Does Not Contain Keywords Mobile Searchers Are Using

As I explained in last month’s mobile keyword research guide, context can change the keywords searchers use and the frequency with which they use them.

For example [nearby] and [download apps] are two keywords that are likely used a lot more on mobile devices than they are on desktops and laptops (if they’re used on desktops and laptops at all).

Desktops and laptops lack GPS, so if a searcher asks Google for restaurants nearby on their laptop, they’re likely to get results based on IP address if they’re not logged in (which in the case of my laptop, the server in New York city, 800 miles away), and if they are logged in, results based on the city they’ve specified in their registration.

If a searcher asks her smartphone for restaurants nearby on the other hand, the results are much more accurate as they’re based on the position of her phone at the time of the query.

It’s likely because of this that many more people use the keyword nearby in mobile searches than they do in desktop searches. As you can see from this mobile % of total volume chart, most of these searches are coming from mobile phones. The two that don’t come from mobile phones specify a location, which Google desktop search needs if it’s going to provide accurate search results.

Certain keywords, like “nearby” are primarily used by mobile phone searchers, and can’t be used in a responsive design.

You can take this information into account and use these keywords in adaptive content on a responsive site, but it’s going to be more effective from an SEO standpoint to optimize both sites with different keywords depending on the platform.

Look, Google may have announced their preference for responsive Web design, but they also tell webmasters in their Webmaster Guidelines, “Think about the words users would type to find your pages, and make sure that your site actually includes those words within it.”

In cases where mobile searchers and desktop searchers are using different keywords, the best option for SEO is the option that brings more qualified traffic: separate sites with targeted keywords.

3.  When Responsive Layout Increases Load Time Significantly

We already know that speed is a ranking factor for SEO, but we also know that Google wants to send searchers to the best possible experience. Sites using responsive Web design, which by nature include more code than mobile websites, generally take longer to load.

Apart from the ranking factor of page speed, this could increase your bounce rate and/or decrease your conversions. According to Google research, mobile searchers are a fickle group, and won’t stick around if you make them wait.

Recent research presented on http://www.howtogomo.com/en/d/why-go-mo/#reasons-mobile-matters shows the dangers of making mobile searchers wait.

Now of course, if you were just providing a desktop site that makes a user pinch and zoom to perform simple actions, providing a responsive site is a step up from that. But it’s not the ideal in this situation, which would be serving fast clean code with dynamic serving or separate mobile URLs.

Of course, there are ways, as covered by Sherwood Stranieri last year, that webmasters can speed up responsive sites, but they’re still unlikely to load as quickly as separate mobile sites.

4.  When Target Audience Primarily Uses Feature Phones

Don’t go responsive if you want to be visible to the red countries on this map, as they primarily use feature phones to access the Web.

This one, I didn’t have to speculate on, as Google has guidelines for developing for feature phones and smartphones that do not include responsive Web design. So, if you’re developing for an audience that uses feature phones (i.e., non-white, non-US-based, not affluent, and/or older), responsive Web design is not the best option for SEO.

5.  When It Prevents Product Innovation That Improves The User Experience

Google Now wins the Popular Science Innovation of the Year Award in 2012, as a direct result of not following Google’s own advice about responsive web design.

Yes, Google may have stated a preference for responsive Web design, but they also say this in their Quality Guidelines: “Think about what makes your website unique, valuable, or engaging. Make your website stand out from others in your field.”

Some businesses have taken this to heart with mobile, and have created products that can only be used on mobile devices that help their user do what they need to do faster.

Take banking, for example. JP Morgan Chase could have reformatted their desktop website for mobile visitors and called it a day. Instead they thought about the specific properties of mobile devices that they could use to make their customers’ lives easier. And for them it meant creating a separate mobile website, allowing for SMS banking, and creating a mobile app.

The mobile app has a feature called Quick Deposit which uses the device’s camera to allow users to take pictures of checks for deposit. It’s mobile-specific content, as it’s only available on tablet and smartphone, and it has been a huge success for Chase.

According to a recent press release, since launching Quick Deposit in 2010, consumers have used it to deposit more than $4 billion, and the number of active Chase mobile customers increased 42% between 2011 and 2012. The app now has 15 million registered users, and several awards including a 2011 Webby Award. And those 15 million registered users have expressed their gratitude with 4.2 out of five stars in Google Play with over 70k reviews as of this writing.

Had Chase not considered the unique characteristics of mobile devices and the utility that they could bring to consumers, but instead only reformatted adaptive content to appear in a mobile context, they wouldn’t have been able to have the success they’ve had, and wouldn’t have been able to serve their users as they did.

Or, take Google, for example. Their stated preference in responsive Web design hasn’t stopped them from making mobile-only content. One of these features is called Google Now. Released just seven months ago, it’s now a big differentiator for Android over iOS, with reviewers saying things like “But the jewel of Android 4.2 is absolutely Google Now, and its brilliance overshadows the still lacking aspects of the OS as a whole;” and “This latest Google Now ad has me hating Siri.”

Google Now has been such a big innovation for Google that it won them Popular Science’s Innovation of the Year, putting it in the company of such innovations as former award winners like the iPhone, the fluorescent lamp and the Mosaic Web browser.

Google could have made their content adaptive and responsive and not considered the mobile context. But they didn’t, and their business is better for it.

In fact, Google itself is an interesting organization; although they have stated a preference for responsive Web design, and the CEO has made disparaging remarks about mobile content, they also develop for mobile, tablet and desktop search separately, and on the mobile ads side, they have advocated strongly for experiences in which mobile context increases the relevance of the ad. Regardless of which side you’re on here, it’s possible to use Google viewpoints to justify your own. Think, instead, of your user, as that’s ultimately what will serve your business (and Google) best.

You may be making a responsive site because it’s easier to maintain, but is it preventing you from creating mobile-only content that your users will love, and that will differentiate your site from your competitors’ in the marketplace? If so, think twice about responsive Web design or adaptive content, as it’s not going to help your business — or your SEO — as much as mobile-specific content.

Granted, the two aren’t mutually exclusive, and the preferred method for mobile SEO that I detailed last year is still a hybrid of responsive pages and mobile-specific content.

A Revised Decision Tree

The message: if you’re thinking about mobile SEO, throw away the decision tree I mentioned earlier. Apart from the one URL fallacy, one of the decision points isn’t even SEO-specific, as it is more about the businesses’ resources than optimizing their content for search results.

Replace it with this. It’s not perfect, as deciding the proper configuration for your mobile content is a nuanced process; but it should get you closer to optimal than what’s been provided in the past.

Don’t Be A Responsive Bandwagoneer

Not everyone thinks responsive Web design is best for SEO, though it can sometimes seem that way to those of us who know better. Adam Audette and George Michie of Rimm-Kauffman Group said in their classic post on marketing as applied science, “Mobile websites: Responsive design helps, but smartphone users have fundamentally different needs and only a site designed to meet those unique needs will produce the best outcome for the user and for the business.”

This is a similar message offered by GigaOM Pro recently, which cites unique mobile use cases and speed as reasons why they advocate separate mobile sites. Likewise, when I interviewed veteran mobile SEO expert Cindy Krum for .Net Magazine, she said that she also advocates a hybrid approach: “I have been recommending a mixed solution for most of my clients – leveraging Responsive Design when it makes sense, and special mobile-only landing pages when keywords or use-cases cannot be appropriately addressed with a Responsive Design approach.”

Finally, Forrester Research, in their 2013 Mobile Trends for Marketers report, said that “Responsive design will be hyped once again in 2013.” Responsive design is not a “magic elixir” they say, because “1) The consistency of experiences across devices is only one small element of the overall picture; 2) companies will need divergent app and Web strategies as well as mobile content and service curation; 3) not every portable/mobile device will have a browser; and 4) supporting different use cases across devices requires a process to implement responsive design principles.”

If you’ve read this post and you still think responsive is best for SEO, that’s your prerogative; but your competitor who provides a better user experience with mobile landing pages might be getting more traffic from search.

TL;DR Recap

• It’s a popular myth that responsive Web design is always the best choice for SEO
• The one URL argument for dynamic serving and responsive design’s superiority is moot with the introduction of switchboard tags, as Google can now understand which site should appear when, regardless of URL structure.
• If any of these questions apply affirmatively to your business, dynamic serving or mobile URLs may be the best option for you for SEO:
  • Is desktop website missing categories mobile searchers are looking for?
  • Is desktop website missing keywords mobile searchers are looking for?
  • Is site speed important for conversions on your site?
  • Can the user experience be improved using mobile features not available on desktop (e.g. camera, scanner, GPS, etc.)?
  • Are you targeting any users with feature phones (i.e., non-U.S., non-affluent, non-white, older)?

Mobile Keyword Research Then & Now

One of the primary reasons for doing mobile keyword research is that you could be missing out on keywords that your audience uses on mobile that they don’t use on desktop (e.g., [keyword + “nearby”]).

There are some categories, such as restaurants, where upwards of 30% of the volume comes from mobile devices, and if you’re not taking that into account in your keyword research, you could be choosing the wrong target keywords for your intended audience.

If you still need to be convinced that you should do mobile-specific keyword research, please go here, here or here. For the rest of us, however, this is how to do mobile keyword research.

Mobile keyword research used to be a pain. When I wrote about it back in 2008, there were various emulators and autosuggest tools that could help you discover mobile-specific or mobile-centric keywords that your target audience used on mobile devices, but not the same kinds of keyword tools that existed for desktop search.

Today, there are good tools from Bing and Google specifically designed to help marketers cater to mobile searchers, which makes the process much easier and the data more accurate.

You may have your own process for doing mobile keyword research, but in order to advance the practice I’m sharing part of what we do here at Resolution Media. If there’s anything you do that helps, please mention in the comments, or do as Aleyda Solis did in a recent post and share your processes for mobile SEO. Together we can move the needle for this discipline and make it easier for all of us to reach mobile searchers.

Keep in mind these three steps aren’t mobile-specific, as they apply to desktop keyword research as well; but there are differences in tools, metrics, and process that makes mobile SEO keyword research unique.

1.  Define Goals & Success Metrics

Keyword research can’t be done successfully without an endgame. If you don’t know your goals for these keywords, it’s not worth the time and effort to discover the keywords.

How are you going to use this keyword research? If your content is adaptive or your site is responsive then knowing mobile-specific keywords isn’t going to help you that much, as your content needs to be reusable and device-agnostic.

On the other hand, if you’re researching for a site that is designed specifically for mobile URLs, you have the opportunity to use different keywords and content on your mobile pages. Either way, knowing what keywords your audience uses overall can help you meet your goals.

For example, if your content is adaptive and you want to ensure that you are accounting for mobile searchers, you can sort a keyword list by total search volume and select your target keywords based on volume and how closely the intent of the keyword matches your business goal.

If your content is strictly mobile, you can sort by mobile volume and/or % of total mobile volume to find keywords that are popular on that platform and have intent that matches your business goal. Either way, you need to define what you want your natural search traffic from mobile search to do once it reaches your site: click, buy, view, download, convert offline, etc.

2.  Keyword Discovery

Once this has been determined, you need to discover how mobile searchers find your site and how mobile searchers find your competitors and other sites like yours. Use the following tools to collect a list of keywords that you’ll then qualify in the third step.

Google Webmaster Tools

GWT can be used to discover how people are currently finding your site on mobile devices. If you’re not optimized for the most popular keywords, this information won’t help you discover it, but you can at least see where you’re ranking for search terms mobile searchers enter.

At the search queries report, filter search type by Mobile. This will give you just those keywords that come from mobile devices. Note that this report used to include information on both feature phone and smartphone keywords, but both have been combined into the Mobile category.

As such, these keywords are likely from smartphones, feature phones and tablets, although the interface doesn’t specifically say.

This report is especially useful because it allows you to see rankings, impressions, clicks and click-through -ate for mobile keywords, which can’t really be found anywhere else at the moment.

Google Analytics

To see mobile keywords in Google Analytics, go to Audience > Mobile > Overview in the right hand nav.

Now filter to exclude (not set) and (not provided) and include only mobile keywords.

This will give you keywords used by mobile and tablet users. If you want to separate tablet traffic, use the Mobile Devices report and the regular expression I mentioned here.

Google Keyword Tool

The Google Keyword Tool is the only mobile-only keyword tool that I’m aware of that gives you mobile-specific keywords that you’re not already optimized for if you enter a URL, category or keyword.

In the Google Keyword Tool, select all mobile devices in the Advanced Options and Filters, and you’ll get keywords from tablets, smartphones and feature phones. You also have the option to select only smartphones and tablets, or only feature phones.

As with traditional keyword research, think about how a user might find your site, but don’t confine yourself to a desktop context. As I mentioned a few months ago, smartphone usage doesn’t necessarily imply a mobile context, as 60% of smartphone usage occurs at home. However, mobile does in some cases lead to new types of search behavior.

Ask yourself what that might be for what you’re promoting (e.g., apps, nearby, phone numbers, hours, etc.), and see if new types of keywords are relevant to your audience in a mobile context.

Bing Ads Intelligence

Bing Ads Intelligence can’t generate mobile keywords as the Google Keyword Tool can, but it’s the only tool that I know of that can estimate tablet search volume.

Take the list of mobile-specific keywords that you’ve compiled so far and run a customized traffic report in Bing Ad Intelligence, selecting Smart Phones, Non-smart phones (i.e. feature phones) and Tablets.

Ultimately, this gives you a list of keywords with monthly impression share in Bing for various platforms.

There are no match types in the BAI traffic tool, so although it’s tempting to use this data to get a more complete picture of total share of voice, it’s not recommended.

The data, however, can be used to ensure Google data is accurate, and to give a second look to keywords that appear with a lot of volume in Bing, but not in Google.

Finally, this data can be used to estimate tablet traffic in Google, which I’ll cover in a later column.

Bing Ads Intelligence also allows you to get demographic info on your mobile users, which can be helpful if you’re building personas and you want to compare mobile personas with desktop.

Bing Search Suggest

Unfortunately at present, Bing Ads Intelligence doesn’t give you a way to discover mobile keywords, per se, but you can do that by using Bing’s autocomplete feature in mobile.

Simply type a word or character that you’re researching, and mobile-specific keywords appear in the interface. I confirmed with Bing that these were mobile-specific keywords in 2011.

App Keyword Research Tools

Neither Google nor Apple have a keyword tool for Apps, so if you are doing app store optimization it’s a little more difficult to get what you’re looking for.

As I explained in my list of the most popular app store searches from last year, the best place to get official information on app keyword popularity seems to be the engines themselves, which offer app-specific keywords in the autosuggest for their search engines.

Autocomplete in Google Play gives popular app queries after three characters.

Yahoo! app search suggest gives app specific keyword suggestions by typing in one character.

There are also paid tools available that help you get a better sense of popularity in a keyword tool format, such as MobileDevHQ.

MobileDevHQ’s keyword analysis tool is an unofficial keyword tool for mobile apps.

Keep in mind that the unofficial tools can only give you an approximation of search volume based on proprietary algorithms, so take it for what it’s worth. Until app store keyword tools are released, search suggest and these paid tools are all that’s available to help discover relevant keywords.

3.  Keyword Qualification

At this point, you should have a lot of mobile keywords, but how do you decide what are the best ones? Volume can help you estimate traffic and competitiveness, but it’s not enough on its own. Here are a few exercises that we use to help us make better business decisions with mobile keywords.

Count of Queries by Platform

The Google Webmaster Tools mobile search queries report is good because it’s one of the few that allows you to compare your desktop queries with your mobile queries and discover differences in the search behavior of users accessing your site from different devices.

To do this, simply download your Mobile and Web CSVs by using the filter in the search query report and downloading the tables that appear.

Then, use Excel to label those queries that only appear for desktop searches, those queries that only appear for mobile searches, and those that appear for both.

You can then get a better understanding of what kind of site you need to create by examining the variance in search behavior in a simple pivot table chart like the one below.

Obviously, the data is stronger the more queries you have; but, if the great majority of queries appear in both desktop and mobile, adaptive content or responsive design is probably the way to go.

But, if the opposite is true and there are a majority of desktop-only and mobile-only keywords, then this could be an indication that your audience uses different terms on mobile than they do in desktop search engines, and you should probably optimize certain pages (if not the whole site) to accommodate your audience.

Mobile/Non-Mobile Tag Cloud

To get a quick look at the kinds of things your mobile audience is interested in, it’s helpful to use tag clouds of the long-tail.

To do this, simply copy your keyword list into a tag cloud generator like TagCrowd, for both desktop and mobile keyword lists.

Tag cloud of searches to Mercedes Benz site from desktop users.

Tag cloud of long tail searches to Mercedes site from mobile devices.

Often, this will show you at a glance, keywords that are used more by mobile users than desktop users overall. For example, in the tag clouds above, you can see that the mobile searchers are using more specific models than desktop searchers when looking for a Mercedes. They also appear to be looking more for dealers and locations than desktop searchers.

Mobile % of Total Traffic Report

This last method shouldn’t be a surprise to regular readers, as I’ve mentioned it in the past and in a recent mobile site audit on the Stone Temple blog.

Once you have all of your keywords, you need to use the Google Keyword Tool to estimate exact match search volume. This way, you have a better sense of the total volume for a given keyword in Google, and aren’t leaving out 30% or more of the search volume when deciding on qualified keywords.

But, this report is most helpful for the Mobile % of Total Traffic metric. This metric gives us a sense of what people are interested in on mobile devices vs. desktop.

For the Mobile % of Total Traffic column, use conditional formatting to make everything above 30% green, everything between 15 and 29% yellow, and everything below 14% red.

These numbers were used because on average last year, one in every seven searches in Google came from a mobile device, and some industries (like restaurants) had as much as 30% on average.

The idea is that anything above 30% represents greater opportunity than the industries with the most mobile search traffic and should be recognized as such.

With this list, we can sort it by total volume and optimize one site, whether that’s responsive or contains adaptive content.

We can also decide what types of things should be foregrounded on our mobile site by looking at those terms that have both a lot of search volume and a lot of search volume in mobile relative to the total. For example, we might not foreground content related to used Mercedes on the mobile site, as it’s not nearly as popular on that platform.

We can also categorize this list and get a better sense of what belongs on the site holistically. This way, we avoid variance in search volume by keyword and only focus on the category.

There are other methods that we use at Resolution, such as persona development, understanding basic query intent, etc. However, this guide should give you a better idea of the tools available to keyword researchers looking to understand mobile searchers, as well as specific techniques that can be used to find keywords and concepts that mobile searchers use that are relevant to the brand you represent.

1.  Give More Tactical Advice On How To Do Mobile SEO Well

OK, you get it: you should be doing something to account for mobile searchers. You’re not one of the misinformed masses who believe that mobile SEO is a myth, or that mobility doesn’t matter in a multiscreen world or that mobile search results and desktop search results are the same. I know I spent a lot of time in past columns dispelling these myths, but going forward, I’m going to focus on real actionable insights for improving organic search traffic from mobile searchers.

I’ve done this in the past a bit. Regular readers will know that I’m not completely theoretical or strategic here. Early last year, I dove in deep to uncover 7 common examples of duplicate content created by mobile sites, and gave specific advice on how to best optimize a mobile site.

Starting next month, I’ll continue this trend and explain a little about how we do keyword research for mobile searchers at Resolution Media. This should help you bring your keyword research into the 21^st century, where not doing mobile keyword research could cost you insights into more than half of your audience, depending on your category.

As the percent of searchers using mobile devices continues to increase, mobile SEO might become redundant, as SEOs will need to account for mobility in order to do their jobs. When that happens, readers of this column will be ahead of the curve.

If you can’t wait until next month for new information, be sure to check out my recent guest post on the Stone Temple blog for two tips on how to do a simple mobile SEO audit.

What other mobile SEO topics do you want to see covered in detail this year? Please sound off in the comments.

2.  Give More Case Studies To Demonstrate Mobile SEO Success

It can be easy to think that all of this is theoretical; as we do a lot of talk about how and why to do mobile SEO here but not much demonstration of it has worked for businesses. And, honestly, in the beginning, a lot of it was more abstract than client-based.

Yet today, I know more of our clients are asking for mobile SEO help, so we have case studies about what works and what doesn’t when it comes to app store optimization and mobile SEO for sites.

Real world examples of mobile search results & looking at mobile SEO opportunities

In 2013, you can expect to hear more concrete examples about how some of the techniques that we talk about here have worked for real businesses like yours. Keep in mind that some of them may be anonymous, as I’m sometimes limited in terms of what data I can provide.

Still, all of the case studies should give you a better sense that mobile SEO isn’t a theoretical exercise that we will all be doing sometime in the distant future; but a real process that businesses use to their advantage today.

To this end, I’d love to hear from you all about what has worked for your business when it comes to mobile SEO. Have you had phenomenal success doing mobile specific keyword research or getting incremental links to your mobile site? If so, let me know and I’ll be happy to publish in a future column.

3.  Leave The Responsive vs. Mobile Web Debate In 2012

Finally, though many of us mobile search columnists here have spilled a lot of ink about the pros and cons of responsive Web design versus some other mobile configuration in 2012, this year it’s time to move forward.

Though I respect and frequently agree with him, I would have to disagree with Michael Martin’s assertion that the single URL approach is best for SEO, as we all know that Google now has switchboard tags to consolidate link equity in the event of duplicated pages across URLs, and that mobile URLs are one of three supported options for mobile SEO.

Yet, in spite of the fact that this was announced last June, I’m still seeing many people claiming that the single URL approach is best because of its SEO value– consolidating link equity in the absence of duplicate URLs. We know now that this is false.

If you want to make your site mobile and do well in search results, you now have three supported options: dynamic serving, responsive design and mobile URLs.

Google and Bing prefer responsive design if it makes sense for your users and you’re targeting smartphone users; but if it doesn’t and you’re not they can still make it work.

Of my more than thirty published articles last year, more than half of them were about when responsive Web design is appropriate for SEO and when it’s not. I don’t plan on talking about this much more in 2013, and I hope that others like me who write about mobile SEO leave it in the past as well.

I’m seeing mobile search and mobile SEO on too many “let’s stop talking about this next year” lists, and I think that’s a shame. To illustrate why, here are eight of the most popular reasons given for mobile SEO’s nonexistence, refuted:

1.  Mobile Search Behavior The Same As Desktop/Tablet/Laptop

The claim: When we analyze mobile search queries, it appears that mobile searchers are mostly looking for the same types of things that desktop/tablet/laptop searchers are looking for. There doesn’t appear to be a need to do additional keyword research since search behavior doesn’t vary by platform.

The reality: If you look at what visits you’re getting from mobile searchers in Web analytics, you’re looking at terms that you’ve already optimized for. If there are terms that mobile searchers use that desktop searchers don’t (or don’t as frequently), you really need to do mobile keyword research in order to uncover them.

If you’ve done mobile keyword research by using the Google AdWords Keyword Tool and comparing mobile percentage of total or the mobile ratio and you still don’t see a difference between mobile and desktop search behavior, it could be that your site and/or vertical is one in which there is not a lot of variance between what mobile searchers and desktop searchers are looking for.

It does not follow that there is no variance to be found. In fact, as we demonstrated earlier this year, for certain categories like Dining and Nightlife, Retail and Sports & Fitness, there’s a high degree of variance between how people search on desktops vs. smartphones.

Finding that value-add in mobile that isn’t a priority on desktop could not only better serve your user, but it could also differentiate you from your competitors who are putting efficiency ahead of optimization.

Research shows that mobile searchers and desktop searchers are often not searching for the same things.

2.  Mobile Search Results The Same As Desktop/Tablet/Laptop

The claim: When I look at the search results on my mobile device and compare them to results on my laptop, they appear to be the same.

The reality: Some results are the same or similar, and some results are not. Google, whom Statcounter reports as having 91% of the market share in the United States, and 96% worldwide, develops for mobile search, tablet search and desktop search separately.

While the goal ultimately is ubiquity between the user interfaces when it makes sense, the reality is that there are many differences between the interfaces, some of them significant.

Many differences between desktop and mobile search results, including blended app results on mobile but not desktop

In August of this year I discussed 16 differences between mobile search and desktop search (up from 14 in 2011), which may account for the study I did two years ago in which smartphone and desktop rankings in Google varied by 86%.

If you’ve read these articles and you still believe that mobile search and desktop search are the same, you’re either not paying attention or you’re ignoring the differences to your eventual detriment.

3.  Mobile Searchers Don’t Use Mobile Search Results

The claim: Because of Google Goggles, Google Now, Siri and other mobile search interfaces, and eventually wearable computing, the search results on mobile devices won’t be seen.

The reality: While this might describe a future state; at the moment, all of these technologies have so little market share that they have had minimal impact on mobile search or SEO. As I explained at SMX East this year, for all the attention it gets, Siri has a limited audience, with just 2.5% of the total search market share at most. It’s likely the other technologies have even less market share.

Even if the market share increases, however, it’s unlikely that autonomous search will ever replace traditional search results, as even Google Now and Google Goggles incorporate standard Web results into their interfaces.

And finally, the presence of new user interfaces like mobile visual search through Google Now doesn’t negate mobile SEO, but instead differentiates it even more from the traditional version.

4.  Buzzword That No One Understands

The claim: Mobile SEO is for salesmen looking to upsell, rather than an actual discipline.

The reality: This one is actually pretty offensive to people like me who specialize in mobile SEO and have been doing so for about eight years, as it claims that I’m either a charlatan or enjoy wasting my time. I sympathize with the sentiment, actually, as Googling [mobile SEO] does bring up a lot of results from sites that don’t always agree on what mobile SEO is and why it’s needed. But then, Googling [seo] will often give you similar results.

Like any discipline that is dynamic, relatively nascent and not regulated by official bodies, there is a lot of garbage out there since any idiot can claim to know something about the subject; and, if he or she is loud enough, others with the same ignorant opinion will take notice.

This confusion doesn’t mean that no one understands the subject, though, any more than claiming no one understands law or medicine, since there are a lot of different opinions about free speech and euthanasia.

That being said, there are a lot of charlatans adding mobile SEO services these days who just want to take your money. As with any SEO, do your homework and you can avoid the disreputable options.

5.  Mobile SEO Is Actually Local SEO

The claim: When people talk about mobile SEO, they really mean to say local SEO, as they’re describing techniques used to optimize for a local audience.

The reality: Some people say mobile SEO when they mean local SEO, but that doesn’t mean that all mobile SEO is local SEO. Local intent is more pronounced in mobile searches than it is in desktop searches because many mobile searchers have local intent; but not all of them do.

Apps, games, mobile wallpaper and other types of branded content are all opportunities for optimized content that aren’t local in nature, and are specific to users of mobile devices.

Furthermore, there are site architecture and marketing considerations for optimizing mobile sites and apps that have nothing to do with local search.

6.  Mobile SEO Is Just SEO For Mobile Searchers

The claim: There’s no difference between mobile SEO and traditional SEO, as mobile SEO is just SEO best practices applied to a mobile search paradigm.

The reality: Yes, mobile SEO is SEO applied to the mobile paradigm, but there are still plenty of differences between mobile SEO and traditional SEO, as I discussed last year. Early this year, I also gave 7 examples of duplicate content created only by mobile sites that someone versed only in traditional SEO probably wouldn’t find.

Clearly, mobile SEO isn’t an entirely different discipline from SEO, but it does require specialized knowledge that someone ignoring the term willfully isn’t likely to receive.

7.  Building A Site That Works Well On Multiple Devices Preferable To Optimizing Mobile Site

The claim: Smartphone users can access well-designed desktop websites, so there’s really no need for additional effort to understand mobile searchers and search engines.

The reality: Yes, Apple does not have a mobile website, but that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t be better optimized if they had one.

According to Google data from this year, 61% of prospects say that if they don’t find what they’re looking for right away on a mobile site, they’ll quickly go to another site. And abandonment rates from mobile search are five times higher than desktop. You may think pinching and zooming is no big deal, but does your target audience?

Image from Google 2012 study demonstrating mobile searcher preferences

Many businesses find that their conversion rates from search increased as a result of having a mobile site, not just a desktop site that works reasonably well on mobile devices — including TicketsNow, 1-800-Flowers, Jelly Belly, eBay,  Amazon, BMW and many others.

You may think your site works fine on mobile devices, but that doesn’t mean it’s optimized.

8. No Additional Linking Opportunities In Mobile SEO

The claim: Given that Google’s recommendation is responsive Web design, there’s no additional URL to build links to, and thus no additional opportunities for link building.

The reality: If you make your site mobile, you have the potential to get incremental authoritative links that you wouldn’t have otherwise received.

This applies, of course, if you have a mobile site, as you’ll be eligible to get followed links from authoritative sites like Google, dotMobi, Mashable, Mobile Awesomeness, PC World, Webby Awards, JQMGallery, and any place that talks about great mobile site design.

It also applies if you have a responsive website. You won’t have a separate URL, but you will have additional links from places that showcase responsive sites, like mediaqueri.es, .Net magazine, Smashing magazine et al.

So there you have it. Mobile SEO is many things, but definitely not a myth. Knowing this, will 2013 finally be the year that you account for it in your marketing plan? Ignoring it or pretending it doesn’t exist isn’t making it go away, and it’s certainly not making you any money.

Fortunately, not every SEO guru thinks mobile SEO is a myth. As the Art of SEO co-author, SEO veteran, Search Engine Land writer and Netconcepts founder Stephan Spencer recently said on Twitter…

TL; DR Recap:

Mobile SEO is not a myth because:

• Mobile search results are different
• Mobile search behavior is often different
• Mobile search results are still relevant
• There are experts in the discipline, though many non-experts still give their opinions
• Mobile SEO often involves local SEO, but there are techniques that make it distinct from local SEO
• Mobile SEO is SEO, but there are nuances related to designing for mobile searchers that traditional SEOs are often unaware of.
• Mobile sites convert more mobile searchers (i.e. are more optimized) than sites that work well on all devices
• Regardless of mobile configuration method, making site mobile can get you incremental authoritative links to help in ranking.

In my first column, I argued that the iPhone didn’t kill mobile SEO, saying that it instead made mobile searching mainstream, and ushered in a whole new type of searching that Google and SEOs would have to account for at some point.

I still believe this is true today, almost four years after that first article; but, there are many still who argue that mobile search doesn’t really matter—that search is search, and the devices that people use to search don’t necessarily give clues to their intent.

The Argument For Ubiquity

Google slide on ubiquity from their Inside Search event from June 2011

In the early days of mobile, many people thought it would create a medium completely separate from the Internet.

In early 2008, Al Ries wrote in AdAge about a phenomenon called MobileNet, which he said would be “an even bigger medium for active advertising than the Internet,” as though the Internet were one thing, and the MobileNet something different entirely.

He envisioned a time when a different kind of website would be constructed that would make use of scanners, GPS and voice recognition to provide a new kind of real-time utility to people that static information on the Internet wasn’t quite able to do.

Though he clearly got some things wrong (he called these sites dot-mobis, for example, when most of the sites made for mobile consumption today are actually dot-coms), his description of what was possible with these new devices sounds a lot like what many have done with the best mobile apps and sites today.

Yet, the mobile Web isn’t what a lot of people thought it was going to be. For one, it doesn’t always fit in your pocket. With the popularity of the iPad, consumers now have a mobile device that is technically mobile, but is large enough to be used mostly for entertainment and shopping at home.

Phablet anyone? The phone/tablet hybrid Galaxy Note is one such device that blurs the lines between mobile hardware. And, with the iPad Mini, Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire, many devices now exist that are not quite tablets, not quite smartphones, but a combination of the two.

With the looming Internet of Things, we also have Internet access in cars, picture frames, refrigerators and more that make it even more difficult to know from the hardware the intent of the target audience. Is someone looking for sports scores in his car mobile, per se? Is someone looking for recipes at his refrigerator mobile?

To further complicate matters, the mobile Web is also not always mobile. We know now that many users use their smartphones at home. According to Google research, 97% of consumers are in this category.

Google research also tells us that tasks are accomplished on multiple devices, and research started on a smartphone may lead to a conversion elsewhere. Also, that consumers expect information they put in or researched on one device to be available on another.

This is the principle of ubiquity, which Google highlighted at their Inside Search event last year, and which Google CEO Larry Page mentioned on his earnings call late last month. It has caused some to believe that the need for distinctions between mobile and desktop is as relevant today as the first Motorola Razr; but, this isn’t entirely true.

A Case For Mobile Search And Ubiquity

As regular readers of this column know, device fragmentation has led many to conclude that responsive design and adaptive content is an ideal solution for solving the problems inherent with device fragmentation and user intent.

NPR’s content strategy of Create Once Publish Everywhere (COPE) has become a model of efficiency for many in the mobile, content, design, and SEO communities.

Slide from Google’s recent study “The New Multi-Screen World” that shows the unique characteristics of smartphone users.

This is in direct contrast to the MobileNet model, which demands that brands consider the mobile context and the unique use cases that it might create, and publish separate content to address those use cases, if it is beneficial to the user and the brand.

What we as marketers need to realize is that these two philosophies need not be mutually exclusive. Yes, mobile users aren’t necessarily mobile and might be looking for the same content that desktop users are looking for.

But also, yes, a person’s informational needs are likely different based on the device that they use, and optimization would entail creating native landing pages tailored to that device.

Consider the following:

• In the same research where Google examines multi-screen behavior, it concludes that “consumers shop differently across devices, so businesses should tailor the experience to each channel. It’s also important to optimize the shopping experience across all devices. For example, consumers need to find what they are looking for quickly and need a streamlined path to conversion on smartphones.”
• Google also says in the same research, “Consumers turn to their devices in various contexts. Marketing and websites should reflect the needs of a consumer on a specific screen, and conversion goals should be adjusted to account for the inherent differences in each device”
• Google recommends responsive design for smartphone experiences to most webmasters, but has separate user interfaces and algorithms for mobile and tablet search.
• In May of this year we introduced the mobile variance by category concept, which demonstrated that people search differently depending on their context. Google has since confirmed this, most recently in What Users Want from Mobile Sites Today and The Meaning of Mobile, indicating how mobile typically differs from every other channel. Microsoft has released similar research about mobile’s role in the consumer journey with similar results. It may be a myth, as Brad Frost says, that mobile users don’t want access to the same content that desktop users have; but that doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t prefer that we catered the experience to their specific device, especially if their needs are much different on mobile than they are on desktop.

It might not be the most efficient model, but if we want to continue to be relevant to our users, and ultimately monetize mobile as a channel, we need to understand how mobile search is different from desktop and tablet search, changing our websites and marketing accordingly.

Many of us may find similar behavior on desktops and mobile devices, presenting similar content. But, that doesn’t mean that multiscreen behavior and a desire for ubiquity have negated the need for platform-specific content. MobileNet, along with WAP search, dotMobis, iMode et al may be distant memories for most these days; however, mobile search and catering to a specific platform with websites and marketing matters as much (if not more, since there are more mobile users today) than it ever has.

In February, there was a major spam crackdown by Apple which resulted in many developers being banned from the app store for things like auto reviews.

At the end of June, there was a small ranking change which weighed keywords less heavily and focused on ratings and downloads.

Last month, there was iOS 6, which transformed the app store rankings into a horizontal scrolling card display interface, and gave less popular apps even less visibility, according to some developers.

And now, Apple has shut down Chomp, which they acquired in February of this year to help them with App Store search. This is unfortunate for those of us interested in optimizing apps, as Chomp was one of the best sources of app keywords on the Internet.

On their site, they had app store search suggest, but also listed popular app queries, and they also had app store search reports, which they discontinued in February of this year.

Apple search engine Chomp released data that said 83% of app searchers are looking for function rather than name. Are you using the right keywords to help them find you?

There are still good sources of app store keywords out there. iTunes , Google Play and Yahoo! App Search still offer search suggest to help searchers find what they’re looking for. Since these suggestions are ordered by popularity, it is easy to get a sense of which keywords are more popular.

Selecting the most relevant, high-volume phrases has the same effect in app search that it does in Web search — driving qualified traffic to apps from app search. And since searching is the most popular method of app discovery, app store SEO can be a lucrative enterprise for those who do it right.

Adding single characters in iTunes and Google Play and entering all of the keywords that appear can be a large task. Appcod.es has a paid keyword tool that has its own ranking algorithm if you prefer not to go through the process every time you do keyword research for apps. The algorithm isn’t public, but they’ve compared it to popularity from the app store and Google Play and are confident of the results.

I did this process for iTunes keywords back in 2009 and shared the results on my blog. However, since app store keywords are often time-sensitive, many of those keywords are now out of date.

So I did it again with both Google Play and Chomp in June and am listing the results here. Keep in mind these are the most popular keywords, and because of that, they might not be the most qualified for your specific app. In their app store best practices,

Apple cautions against using common keywords like these and recommends using more unique keywords, as there is less competition. Nonetheless, if you have a popular app, and some of the keywords below are relevant to it, including the most-relevant keywords could connect you with a larger audience than simply adding unique, low-volume keywords.

A caveat, I haven’t been able to enter one character into Google Play recently, as the minimum appears to be three before Google serves up a search result. Nonetheless, in June, the search suggest worked with just one character, and that’s how I got the results below.

Top 100 Keywords For Chomp*

Top 100 Keywords For Google Play*

*According to search suggest for Chomp and Google Play in June 2012. Ordered by mobile search volume estimates from Google’s keyword tool.

The two lists result in 397 unique keywords, and only 22 of the keywords are shared. Looking at the two lists, it’s clear that app store searchers put in more software-based keywords than they do in Google search, which makes sense since that’s all that the app store offers. Many of the keywords that you see correspond with popular apps or games, while others are related only to the app function.

If you’re thinking of building an app, check this list before you develop, as you might get ideas for categories of apps people are looking for to build your own niche in. If you’re submitting keywords for an existing app, check here first to make sure you’re using keywords that app searchers are actually looking for.

App store rankings will change as Google and Apple change their algorithms and user interfaces, but app store SEO that’s based on solid keyword research will benefit users and search engines for as long as consumers are looking for apps.

Today, I’m going to go into detail on number fourteen on that list: Smartphone Icons in Google Smartphone Search. What do they look like? When do they appear? How do webmasters get them? If you haven’t seen them before, they appear next to the URL in Google smartphone search.

Here, you can see them in the organic listings for both the second and fourth visible listings on the page:

This new incarnation is interesting, because they’ve added the word “Mobile” to every icon since I first saw them at the beginning of August.

They also appear for paid results, as you can see from this screenshot of the query [whirlpool appliances].

As far as I can tell, they only appear if you use the search box on the home screen in Android with the native browser, as I’ve done the same searches in Chrome with no smartphone icons. If the test succeeds this will likely change, as Chrome is the default browser in new Motorola devices. For now, though, it only works on the native Android browser in Android.

It also works on the iPhone, according to the unscientific survey I sent out to coworkers and friends. Of the seven respondents who could see these icons, five of them were using iPhones. Don’t know about the browser differences, as we didn’t see any change in the iPhones we tested on.

Here’s the full breakdown by operating system and handset so far:

Of the sample, 43% of the respondents who saw the icons used an iPhone 4, and 71% of them used some sort of iPhone. However, it’s not a given that if you have an iPhone 4 you’ll see these icons, as many of the respondents searching from this device saw nothing.

The operating system breakdown is similar, but it’s important to note that the smartphone icons are only appearing for Android handsets with Jelly Bean (Android 4.1) installed. Although, again, one handset running Jelly Bean did not see the icons, so having Jelly Bean doesn’t necessarily guarantee that you’ll see the icons.

The great majority of Google users aren’t seeing these icons, with only 14% of the 50 US-based respondents even reporting seeing an icon in search results.

If you haven’t yet participated in this survey, help the mobile SEO community learn more about this important update by answering the simple 2 question survey here.

At any rate, though the test currently affects a relatively small percent of the total available Google search volume (approximately 14% of about 20% of the total search volume), there’s a good chance that this update will be rolled out to a larger audience at a later date.

If it does, it could affect click through rate to sites in smartphone search results significantly. Only Google knows what the results of this test are, and if users are reacting positively to the change. If they are everyone will likely see this change in the future.

Four Ways You May Be Able To Get Icons To Appear

Knowing the figures that Google has quoted on HowToGoMo.com and elsewhere that show that mobile users prefer usable content on their phone, it’s likely that the majority of smartphone users will find this user interface change more useful than cluttered.

While the effect is to be determined, there are things that webmasters can do to ensure smartphone icons appear next to their sites for eligible users, and to get as much traffic possible in light of this SERP change:

1. Obviously, you need mobile content. If you are still on the fence, or are in the camp that believes desktop content that looks okay on a smartphone is good enough, you will competing for attention with sites that exclaim to the user that their site will work once they click through. Go with responsive design, dynamic serving, mobile URLs or some combination if you want a mobile icon in smartphone results.
2. Regardless of what mobile configuration you implement, follow Google’s guidelines for creating smartphone and feature phone content. There were a few examples where icons appeared to be included simply because the mobile site was redirected for smart phone user agents (including smartphone Googlebot), but I didn’t find any examples where Google’s guidelines were followed and the smartphone icon didn’t appear. There are also many examples that I’ve discovered where content was properly redirected, but that wasn’t enough to see a mobile icon, so include switchboard tags as well if you use mobile URLs.
3. If you do use mobile URLs, it’s important that you design your site in such a way that all of your desktop pages are either properly redirected and annotated with canonical tags to the equivalent desktop page or made responsive. There are good reasons to use mobile URLs rather than responsive web design in some cases, but if you make a mobile site that is a condensed version of the desktop site with mobile-specific features, be sure to have that desktop content formatted for mobile, either through mobile URLs and switchboard tags, dynamic serving or responsive web design, as these URLs will appear in Google smartphone search even if they’re not mobile-optimized, and even if they’re not linked anywhere from the mobile site.
4. Buy mobile paid search ads. This won’t help you get smartphone icons organically, but it will help your visibility overall. Since Google increases quality score for sites that deliver mobile optimized landing pages to mobile searchers, it’s very likely that all of the paid search ads on the page will have smartphone icons. Ideally, you have mobile-optimized pages that also entice the searcher to click through with their usability, but regardless it can’t hurt to get as much real estate on the pint-sized SERP as possible. You may be new to that game, given that you’re reading a mobile SEO column, so here’s a great primer from Rachel Pasqua if you need more info.

Have you tested what effect these icons have had on your traffic and conversions? Early data suggests CTR can go up 3% or more because of these icons, but I haven’t seen a lot of data to demonstrate the effect on webmasters. Please share your results in the comments if you’ve seen any.

Did you even know that Google mobile search results (whether tablet, feature phone or smartphone) can be different from desktop results?

In May of last year, I shared 14 ways they’re different. This year some differences have disappeared and others have taken their place, but in all, there are at least 16 known differences between Google smartphone results and Google desktop results as of this writing.

Google announces separate changes for mobile and desktop in their search quality updates, so the fact that there are some differences between mobile and desktop results that marketers should be aware of shouldn’t be too controversial by now. Yet, I know this is a counterintuitive and even an unpopular notion in SEO at the moment.

In June, Pierre Far of Google said that smartphone results are “basically the same,” as desktop results. And in the beginning of 2012, Rand Fishkin of SEOMoz said the impact of mobile on SEO would be “negligible” due to search results that were “pretty device agnostic.”

Yet, in spite of these comments, I’ve cataloged at least 16 differences below. If you’ve been keeping track, that’s two more than in May of last year, so mobile and desktop search results don’t seem to be varying any less over time.

1.  Local results Are More Likely In Mobile

Google Places listings sometimes appear higher in mobile results than they do in desktop, and domains with local intent are more likely to appear. Figure 1:  Web search results don’t even appear above the fold for query [chicago restaurants"], and only one listing appears above the fold for the Chrome incognito result, where 7 local results and a Web result appear above the fold on desktop.

If you have a local business that you’re interested in optimizing, this makes Google+ Local optimization essential, and may even call for domains with geo-modified keywords, depending on your situation.

This tactic may conflict with a desktop SEO strategy that would consolidate link equity into one canonical domain; but it may be most effective for mobile visibility. The key to making the right decision for your business is fully understanding the situation and possible consequences of your actions. Not ignoring mobile search.

2.  Autocomplete Results Appear Before Results In Mobile App Search

Optimizing for mobile suggest with a search call to action in broadcast advertising may help users find the high-priority content surrounding your brand that they might not have found otherwise. Autocomplete also searches your phone if you have it enabled.

3.  Certain Queries Have Interactive Results In Mobile

These push Web rankings down (see [weather] in Android and iPhone search, for example): In Jelly Bean’s updated search experience, a female voice also answers simple questions, negating the need to view the search results at all.

Marketers who target these types of queries with interactive results may see a lower CTR, which might affect their selection of keywords in the first place. This would affect both their mobile and desktop campaigns.

4.  Android Users Are Always Logged In

This means personalized results are shown more often than in desktop search. This might call for on-site messaging related to actions that change personalized search results, such as “bookmark this site for easier access in Google.”

5.  Positions Of Vertical Results Likely Different In Smartphone Results

For example, video results are broken up on second line instead of placed on same line. Image results often appear higher in mobile search results. Image search optimization and video SEO often have a low priority in enterprise SEO, but if mobile is important to the business goals, this may change the overall priority.

6.  Smartphone Results Have Different Filters

These can appear at the top (or bottom in Jelly Bean) (Web, Images, Places, more versus Web, Images, Videos, Maps, News, Shopping, Gmail, more). Fewer places to filter may mean a higher CTR in mobile search.

7.  Blended Mobile Ranking Algorithm

This was demonstrated for mobile queries at Searchology 2009. While it’s unclear how many queries this applies to in the U.S. at present, the post-Panda user-focused search results make it likely to grow in the coming years. Update: I asked Pierre Far whether this was still a factor and he wasn’t aware of the algorithm.

It’s clear, however, that in some queries, such as [download free ringtones], app store content appears on mobile and not on desktop, which is one application of Google’s patent for the algorithm that Scott Huffman demonstrated at Searchology 2009.

8.  Google Play or iTunes Results For Queries That Include “Download” Or “App”

If your target keywords for desktop SEO include these keywords, they may have different results with lower click through rates in mobile search. What’s more, certain queries are more likely to produce iTunes or Google Play results, pushing all core web search results down.

9.  CTR & Bounce Rate More Likely To Vary In Mobile

If CTR and bounce rate data is used to determine ranking in smartphone results, CTR and bounce rate are more likely to vary in mobile smartphone listings.

As listings in search suggest, abbreviated title line breaks and descriptions, unusable desktop sites in mobile results, increased engagement of mobile users and the variations in ranking and UI mentioned above are all likely to change click through rates and bounce rates for smartphone searches.

It’s hard to know exactly how, though, as currently we have seemingly conflicting information from Google that mobile users scroll more than desktop users and that there’s a 90% drop off in CTR in mobile search results after position 4.

10.  Knowledge Graph Nested Within Results In Mobile

Whereas it appears on the right in desktop, in mobile, knowledge graph information can make your Web search listing even less visible on a smartphone.

Knowledge graph results for Miley Cyrus appear in the Web results in smartphone results, and to the right of desktop results.

Knowledge graph results for Miley Cyrus appear in the web results in smartphone results, and to the right of desktop results

11.  Knowledge Graph Doesn’t Appear For Some Queries In Mobile

Even if the same query is returned in desktop search. Not sure how this is determined, but it’s clear for some queries (like medal count), knowledge graph information is listed in desktop and not in mobile.

Fewer distractions could mean higher click through rates on an organic mobile listing than the same one in desktop.

12.  Mobile URLs Listed Per Skip Redirect

This could increase click through rate for brands with mobile URLs that properly indicate as much to Google.

Desktop listing shows www in URL, while smartphone shows m. in URL, as is typical with Skip Redirect

13.  Mobile Instant Preview Allows You to Thumb Through Results Quickly

This is a UI change, but in mobile results it acts as a visual SERP, allowing users to bypass the traditional search results altogether. Others have speculated that this could increase CTR to mobile friendly pages.

14.  Smartphone Icons Indicate Smartphone Friendly Content

This is just a test at the moment, but could, like mobile URLs, increase CTR from smartphone searchers who prefer mobile friendly content.

15.  Google Now Provides Search Results With No Queries

The search results come in the form of cards, regularly performing routine searches in the background. Being aware of which types of searches are performed most often (e.g. sports, traffic, weather, etc).

Query-free Google Now results

16. Google Goggles Provides Entirely Different Results, Based On Visual Queries

Like image search with image upload on the desktop, but with different results

As with last year’s list, there may be more than 16 differences here, but these are the ones I was easily able to find. If you know of more differences between smartphone search results and desktop search results in Google, please leave them in the comments.

I understand that if you’re just concerned with Web search, you may not think this is a game changer, as many of these differences don’t affect core Web search results. This is probably where Rand Fishkin and Pierre Far were coming from, as many users just aren’t going to notice or care that smartphone search results are slightly different than desktop results in 16 different ways.

However, long gone are the days of the ten blue links, and rapidly diminishing are the days when you can afford to ignore mobile nuances if you want to get traffic from mobile search.

A busy webmaster dealing with Penguin cleanup may not think of mobile search differences as an opportunity worthy of prioritization, but for an optimizer looking for more qualified traffic to her sites, understanding the differences between mobile search and desktop search might be what’s needed to take a search campaign to the next level.