We can’t emphasize how important it is to optimize for mobile use especially as Google continues to focus its efforts on rewarding mobile marketing. Earlier this year, Google released a number of efforts that boosted the page rankings of mobile-friendly websites on mobile search results. The updates greatly benefit users doing mobile searches, since it is now easier to find higher quality content and more relevant results that can be read on their mobile devices without having to tap or zoom.
Anyway, the following are a few things you should know about these recent mobile updates:
While mobile marketing has been catching on quickly over the last few years, these updates will help drive mobile optimization even harder.
According to a number of recent tests, Google’s new mobile algorithms updates could affect upwards of 40 percent of the Fortune 500 websites.In fact, you may be surprised at how many top brands have yet to optimize their websites for mobile use. Studies done only two years ago showed that barely one-third of the Fortune 500 were prepared for mobile search.
If you look at the top 20 companies listed on the Fortune 500, you’ll find that six of them are not mobile-friendly while one of them had no response.
Why is Google so obsessed with emphasizing mobile optimization? Google understands that there will be over 2 billion smartphone users by the time the next year rolls around and that, according to numerous experts, almost 33 percent of the world’s population will use smartphones by the year 2018. So, taking this data into consideration, Google has made these updates to, first of all, make their searches better for mobile users. Secondly, these updates will help ensure that Google retains its position as a useful search engine in the mobile age – something that isn’t a given, especially with mobile properties such as Facebook making big splashes. In fact, Facebook went from having a 5.4 percent market share of worldwide mobile ad spending back in 2012 to 21.7 percent only two years later!
Let’s say you have a website that ranks on the first page for numerous searches. If your website is not optimized for mobile use, then you won’t be ranked on the first page for those same searches done on mobile devices. This will actually have an enormous effect on you. As smartphone ownership increases, so do the number of mobile searches.
According to a recent study, mobile traffic to websites grew 35 percent over the course of one year, while 28 percent of all online revenue was actually generated by mobile devices. Basically, if your webpages aren’t optimized for mobile use, you are going to begin feeling the effect of missing out on website traffic, and even online revenue, if you haven’t already.
To see if Google’s recent updates are going to affect you, you’ll need to figure out whether your web pages are mobile-friendly or not. You can use several Google tools, such as Google’s Webmasters Tools Mobile Usability Report feature or the Mobile-Friendly Test, in order to go through your website to see if it’s optimized for mobile use.
You’ll most likely experience a significant decrease in mobile traffic if your web pages are not mobile optimized, but Google has stated that as soon as you make the changes necessary to make your website mobile-friendly, they will re-process all of your website’s pages automatically. Just keep in mind that this can take as little as a couple of hours to as long as 72 hours to complete.
In the process of making your web pages mobile-friendly, there are a number of common mistakes that can be made. The following are 7 of the most common mobile mistakes that you should take extra precaution to avoid:
If you haven’t optimized the pages of your website for mobile use as of yet, then you need to get on that immediately – especially now that Google has released its mobile-friendly updates. If you don’t optimize your website, you are going to begin experiencing a big drop in the amount of mobile web traffic that you are receiving. However, as you go about optimizing your website for mobile use, be careful not to make any of the seven most common mobile mistakes.
Since mobile search results are all about getting local relevant keywords to rank for your business, finding the right tool to search for and to keep track of your local ranking keywords is extremely important. This is why you may want to check out RankReveal.
Not only will RankReveal help keep track of your ranking keywords, it will also help you to discover all the local ranking keywords within your niche, including those that you may not be aware of. You can then build your strategy around those keywords that you want to rank for your business.
If you are interested to find out how to get all of these geo-specific information, you can always check out RankReveal. Our software can help you discover all your ranking keywords based on different localities. Click here to find out more about RankReveal now.
Updated: 25/5/15
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