Who says Google can't favor your site?
Well they can, if you follow the right process. A research statistics by Google revealed that, "72% of consumers want mobile-friendly sites and 67% of consumers are willing to buy a product or use a service on a mobile-friendly site."
Forget about the penalty that you got (if any), and just focus on the rewards of the moment. And remember that most SEO advice no longer works.
Google mobile friendly update is almost 30 days old, and a lot of sites have lost their rankings. Some others benefitted from it. More so, what can you do right now to improve your search traffic and rankings? This update is for your good, see it that way.
With the advent of smartphones and the onset of a zillion applications, content marketers round the globe seem to have gone berserk over the hack to create a much fruitful and productive experience for mobile users. Truly, mobile users want a unique experience. See the data below:
The curtain-call given to all users by the release of Google’s new mobile friendly update seems no less than a cyclone of due consideration to improve the responsiveness of each website and user interface on smartphones and tablet devices.
Being a content marketer, devising and deciphering the code to entice maximum users are what you might be trying to tap.
Enough said, the discussion to follow will proliferate over 10 ways to befriend this ‘Mobilegeddon’ with highest efficacy. Stay close, as these just might be the hacks you were searching for, since ever.
1. The Things It Would Affect
While you might have left no stone unturned to improve your rankings, bear in mind that the update will only work on searches coming from mobile devices.
Truly, desktop, laptop and other devices may not count; the update would also affect the search results in all languages around the globe.
An important thing to consider over here is that this might actually boost the ranking of individual pages, but required that it’s legible enough for the crawlers to track it.
So, instead of worrying about improving the ranking of your whole website, it’s time to get down to some serious work and paying close attention to every individual page of the website being surfed by users over their mobile phones.
2. A Dire Need to Keep your Audience in Mind
While the update might just work to make your website’s efficacy creep up in huge numbers, but Google doesn’t make the purchasing decisions, right?
For you to draw out optimum results out of it, keep your content marketing strategy in line with the interests of your customers.
However, it’s also imperative for you to follow the guidelines as set forth by Google, there’s no data more reliable than what you have derived about the audience.
There definitely will be certain alterations you need, to make to your content more appropriate according to the update’s requirements, but not keeping it as per the audience would only take things wayward.
3. Not Keeping It Mobile-Friendly Will Affect SEO Rankings Too
A valid point to consider, but the point was made quite clear by Zineb from Google on a panel at SMX Munich when he blurted a plain ‘no’ without any hesitation.
However, this clearly indicated that the new index which clings on with the update finds co-relation with a new crawler in the picture. Plus, there also seems a major change to the infrastructure they are using to index or evaluate mobile search results, which excludes those from desktops.
That stated, needless to say that you should make your website passable enough for mobile devices, just in case there are any repercussions like increased bounce rate on desktops.
4. Websites Redirecting to Mobile Sub-domains Just Might Make It
Yes, you’re read it right. The interesting point to note is that immediately after the mobile-friendly tag was rolled out, websites with mDot (m.) domains started ranking high in the mobile SERPS.
It seems like that mobile subdomains have been received as quite a mobile-friendly signal. But the algorithm has been kept fresh for no relevance to be given to historical data indicating which websites has fewer signals of mobility for adaptive content.
However, amusingly a multitude of Google officials have backed-off from the claims of a responsive design, saying that it’s the least error-prone to index – although, sheer willingness to consider other mobile architectures have eluded these claims.
5. Brevity of Content Matters
Content matters. But the structure is what dictates its effectiveness. When you understand buyer psychology, it makes it easy for you to address their specific needs, and help them make smart decisions in every buying phase they are.
This is why you've to write content with brevity – avoid fluffs and give people tips and action steps to implement right away.
How the users interact with your content on a mobile device can be quite different from desktop users. Goes without saying that your website should serve both mobile and desktop audience with due relevance kept at crux.
Keeping it pertinent for mobile usage includes working on three major areas:
- The first being your site’s home page, which should offer appropriate call to action for the different focal points of your website.
- The next in queue are the interior pages which need to provide a concise overview at the top, for the users to scan them with ease.
- And last but not the least- your blog content, which has to focus on providing a snapshot of the information to be covered. This makes it easy for the user to determine whether they want to dive-deep or not.
6. The Headlines Need To Be Enticing Enough
According to Ted Nicholas, "73% of buying decision will be made at the point of the headline." This shows that the headline is the most important element of your post or copy."
With smartphone apps and mobile content, it's your duty to make clicking easy and fun. There is a major challenge which is a short attention span. A recent data by SAP found that, "customer's attention span is now 8 seconds, which is 1 second less than a goldfish.
Now for this to work, the way you craft your content headlines stays as a major constraint to be addressed.
A prominent solution can be offering a teaser of the content to draw the user in and then laying out the whole piece.
However, you might not want to skip clearly articulating the information they are bound to find, along with showing some empathy for their grievances and pain points.
7. Understand the Desktop Keywords and Mobile Ones
The first question that might have boggled your mind is whether or not you can find out if your top keywords are mobile or desktop ones?
Actually, this update is set to do a much better job with that. It has figured out an algorithm to correctly anticipate the user intent for a specific query. Get to find out which keywords are driving the most traffic for mobile or desktop.
This means that the searcher’s result (in the form of local listings) are ought to display above the organic rankings when it comes to smartphones.
These might also be the keywords falling under PPC (pay per click) category, for Google has diversified the number of ‘sponsored’ results that show up on mobile devices- especially android.
Hence, for you to figure out the keywords that are mobile oriented, webmaster or Google analytics tools might do the drill, which will clearly show the mobile only queries. Apart from these, Search Metrics and Brightedge also function well in regard to smaller operations.
Although the headlines seem to have buzzed the air with a plethora of speculations already, but Google mobile-friendly update seems quite opposite to an Armageddon. It’s a great opportunity to serve your online audience with content that’s easy to map and track.
Hopefully, the aforementioned points find some use in your content marketing strategy and make your efforts more focused and mobile-friendly, for smartphones are soon to be the future of digital media.
Conclusion
Every Google update can favor you, if you understand that Google isn't doing anything new. Rather, Google is simply doing their business, and because you need them to improve your traffic, you've to always optimize your site to suit their rules.
As usual, did you notice any slight drop in your search traffic and rankings, since Google mobile friendly update rolled on on April 21st?
About Anshuman Kukreti – He is a professional writer and a keen follower of the global digital market. An engineer by qualification and an artist at heart, he writes on various topics related to content marketing trends and online courses pertaining to the same. Reach him @ LinkedIn, Twitter and Google+.