Semalt Expert Explains The Difference Between Desktop SEO And Mobile SEO

In digital marketing, most SEO strategies do not consider the devices that visitors use to reach the website. Most businesses quickly forget to optimize their websites for mobile phone performance when carrying out their website development. Recent studies have shown that cell phones are replacing desktops in surfing the internet at 4% rate. Furthermore, much of the search engine traffic is coming from the mobile phones, not desktop PC's like before.

Some businesses are taking up this advantage to fill in the market gap. For instance, most individuals use cell phones to browse the internet. In January this year, Google made it clear that one of the ways their algorithm ranks websites is the way how mobile sites are responding.

Search Engine Optimization involves increasing the visibility of a website online. Search engines are participating in this process. Most of their criteria includes making mobile friendly websites. From a web developer's point of view, most SEO tactics for mobile friendly websites work entirely different from how the desktop version works.

Mobile SEO is different from the typical desktop SEO. The expert of Semalt Digital Services, Ross Barber explains the aspects of this differentiation.

  • Localization of results. Google intentionally places local results higher for mobile devices. This enhancement makes local SEO perfectly suitable for mobile website. Geo-modified searches can reach mobile devices faster than they get to desktops. At the same time, similar approach on a desktop can lead to duplicate content on multiple domains. As a result, most companies ignore this difference. However, you can benefit from this by using canonical domains for your desktop website. At the same time, optimizing content on your mobile site will restore your link and page authority by 301 redirects.
  • Call-to-action buttons mapping. Most website users go to a website for information or purchase. Mobile phones require large spaced out buttons. This feature allows smartphone users not have trouble with their touch screen input. However, a mouse cursor can differentiate closely-spaced links and click each appropriately.
  • Content. In every digital marketing task, keywords and content are the main ideas. Search Engine Optimization revolves around keywords and content. However, the way one places keywords on a mobile website is not the way it goes on a desktop site. For instance, desktops require brand relevance and information coverage. For this reason, desktop content can reach up to 1000 words and be in a smaller font to incorporate content beautifully. However, this is not the case for mobile friendly websites. Phone browsers work the best with the large fonts and content ranging from 300 words to 700 words.

Conclusion

Many businesses fail to factor in mobile friendly initiatives when setting up their websites. There are many ways in which mobile SEO differs from the desktop SEO. For instance, mobile SEO technique assumes using less content in large fonts which is opposite to what Google wants from the content placement at the desktop PC. Many businesses that made their sites mobile friendly are already reaping benefits from this strategy. Therefore, these differences can help your SEO campaigns to increase reach out and get more visitors from mobile devices.