Mobile SEO

01.16.2015 | in Tips | by Benjamin Sullivan

Everyone wants SEO value, but there have been holdouts on the mobile browsing revolution for as long as the platform has been a reality. Google has been at work putting an end to all that, by rewarding sites that are optimized for mobile with improved SEO rankings. Of course, this means that sites rooted in their ways are being forced to adapt to mobile browsers, or suffer the penalties of a reduced presence in search results. It's great for users who browse from a smartphone or tablet more often than a desktop or laptop, but it also means that businesses and website owners need to get to work optimizing for these changes and more.

Here are the facts: Google's SEO algorithm in charge of distributing rankings has been tailored to recognize sites that accommodate and enhance browsing from mobile devices. This has multiple implications. On the one hand, if your site isn't optimized for mobile it's likely that Google is hanging you out to dry. On the other hand, even your mobile site may be losing out on potential SEO value if it isn't notably enhancing the mobile browsing experience when ranked against your competitors. Their content could be less relevant, their design less intuitive, but they're still racking up those points if they have custom, mobile-friendly UI elements or other creative solutions.

Responsive design is not the 'best' place to start - it's the only place to start. The question is no longer a matter of whether or not a responsive design and, by extension, a moderate increase in user satisfaction is worth the cost of overhauling your website. It's a question of whether these websites can continue to afford to avoid modern technologies and remain competitive. With the benefits of scaling to different screen sizes and Google's preference of single-URL web solutions for SEO ranking, the answer is almost certainly no.

Think of a single-URL solution as an opportunity for your users to visit one website across all of their devices. The benefits quickly add up when you factor in social sharing etiquette (paste a link and leave a comment), SEO indexing for all of the content on the single URL, faster load times, and fewer crawls from search engine ranking systems. When you hit the finish line, it's clear that the underlying advantages all add up to a way stronger SEO contender, and all of these benefits are the result of a responsive design.

We're always campaigning for website owners to consider going responsive and to sidestep any new projects that don't guarantee a responsive design right out of the gate. Now, more than ever, it's vital for web and marketing efforts to concede that mobile is here to stay and that standard web optimization practices have, and will continue to shift onto the platform. What matters is how business owners choose to respond - to capitalize on this mobile web landscape in the same way they have with desktop browsing and the opportunities therein.

• SEO
• Mobile