SEO Blog

It’s going to be a big year for the mobile Internet. Whilst it has been growing in momentum over the past decade, now it appears that the technology, range, speed and accessibility have combined to make for a revolution.

For anybody who has used the Internet on a mobile device, you will know that it is quite different. Due to the smaller screen and certain loading limitations (for example many are still unable to open JavaScript) websites don’t appear the same, if in fact they appear at all.

In terms of SEO though there’s very little you can do to actively tap into this market. There are paid search and other mobile marketing opportunities, but as far as search engine rankings go, mobile Internet maintains the status quo set by conventional online search. What does change though is the ability to promote products within the immediate surroundings of the mobile Internet user.

We move around constantly, sometimes in our set commuting pattern, other times to places we are less familiar. Using your location, as transmitted by the device itself, some search results will be tailored to include businesses within the surrounding area. Clearly there is an element of chance involved in this; however, there is never any harm in doing a little extra optimisation for local search.

Local search is, after all, a vital part of any website’s SEO. If you are serious about optimising your site in every conceivable way and providing it with the best opportunity to attract targeted traffic, then you really can’t overlook local search.

You might need to do something as simple as sign up to Google maps to get yourself shown within your immediate surroundings, especially where mobile search is concerned. Very few websites have been designed with mobile search in mind, purely because it would alienate their conventional visitors. Equally not everybody has the budget to create a special, stripped back mobile-only site. So quite often you will rely on these portable Internet users gleaning enough information, usually a phone number or address, to be able to contact you. Exactly what Google Maps provides in fact.

Essentially SEO is about visibility in search. As search engines and the Internet diversify to new devices, the same underlying principle remains the same, it’s just the subtleties that change across the various media.

So in terms of SEO, the best thing you can do to tap into this new wave of portable Internet-ready devices is to get on top of your local search. This will invariably become more important with time and even the simplest thing like signing up to the local directories like Yell, Google and the other search engines could help you to attract this new roaming custom.