The year 2013 saw major Google updates like the Penguin and Panda refreshes along with the biggest of all, the Hummingbird.  In 2014, inbound marketers and SEOs need to adapt themselves to the changing trends in technology. So, where exactly is SEO heading in 2014 and why mobile traffic should not be ignored.

Mobile Devices will continue to grow in 2014

As per the recent news coming from industry sources, mobile market is on a boom and is set to surpass the PC market in the year 2014. This trend will be seen mostly on Google’s Android devices which are getting sold at an amazing speed. We can expect a significant growth in terms of traffic coming from mobile devices in 2014. The growth would be such that you will need to perform some additional steps for making your website mobile optimized.

The table below lists the countries as per their population and the number of mobile phones per 100 citizens. 9 out of the top 20 countries of the world (in terms of population) have exceeded the number of having more than one mobile device per citizen. The highest growth has been experienced in Russia, Italy, Brazil and Germany. Other countries like India, China, Japan, Mexico etc. are hotspots for mobile companies where a tremendous growth is expected in the coming year.

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Source: Wikipedia

There are over 1 billion Android devices already activated and Google activates more than 1.5 million every single day. These are huge numbers and indicate the way the World is heading in 2014. As per a research report published by marketsandmarkets, global smartphones market is set to reach a whopping US$150.3 billion in the year 2014.

Mobile Traffic is shooting up

Traffic coming from mobile devices are sky rocketing. As per the details given by Larry Page (founder of Google) more than 40% of traffic coming to YouTube (the world’s number 1 video sharing site) are from mobile devices.  These are huge numbers and this is the reason why Google is hurriedly making changes into its core search algorithm and reinventing (like the recent launch of Hummingbird) in order to serve the rising demands of mobile phone users. It is important to note here that the queries entered through a mobile device are largely different than what is entered using a desktop. Hummingbird update specifically caters to the long tail queries of smartphone users.

As per a recent report published by Cisco, some interesting mobile market trends can be witnessed in the next 5 years:

  • The global mobile data traffic will be more than 10 exabytes by the end of 2017.
  • The number of mobile devices will exceed the world’s population in 2013 (this target has not been achieved yet but is expected to get completed in 2014).
  • Tablets are set to exceed more than 10 percent of mobile traffic in 2015.
  • Tablet traffic will surpass 1 exabyte per month in 2017.

The global web traffic coming from mobile, smartphones and other small screen hand held devices have been on a rise for the past 20 months. On the contrary, web traffic coming from desktop devices are on a decline. This clearly gets reflected in the graph given below:

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14 Changes for a Mobile Optimized Site

Considering the tremendous growth of web traffic coming from mobile devices, there are certainly some useful changes which you must implement on your website in order to serve the demands of the increasing mobile users. These changes are given below:

1-     Identify the Needs of Mobile Users

Mobile search queries are different from normal desktop queries. Reinvent the way you research keywords for your mobile audience. Identify the queries from mobile devices that are leading users to your site. You can see this via Google Webmasters Tools by moving into the search queries section and filtering the queries by show only mobile devices. It is absolutely fine if you are unable to track any search volume for the search queries but you need to create a separate sheet for a cluster of words relating to a single keyword and make changes on your site accordingly. The most important part is identifying the intent of the mobile users and the search query section will give you an idea of exactly what the mobile audience is looking for in your site.

2-     Have a Responsive Design

A responsive design is one which lets your site show uniformly irrespective of the device any user uses to visit your site. Having a responsive design will enable both your desktop users and mobile users to navigate the site in proper manner. Most of the companies make the mistake of focusing the site for desktop users and neglecting the mobile audience who are unable to navigate the heavier functionalities used for desktop audience.  You can make use of tools like responsinator for checking your responsive design.

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You can also opt for a separate mobile site if you are not ready to try hands on responsive web design.

3-     Add Device Specific Functionality

The users who visit your website using mobile devices do not use a single device. You would be amazed to see but different users use different versions of mobile OS and mobile browsers which can hamper the progress of better serving your mobile audience. Hence, it is important to identify the devices and platforms which your audiences are using and add functionalities specifically for them. Remember, in the older days, we use to test our website in every version of the desktop browser to see if the site opens up properly or not? The same strategy, you need to follow here.

4-     Maintain Site Speed

Site speed is an important factor whenever we are discussing about mobile users. Mobile audiences want instant answers; they do not want to wait. This is the reason that you need to have your mobile website really fast. You may use the Google Page Speed Insights tool to track the performance of your website speed on all devices.

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5-     Optimize Your Images

In order to speed up your website, you will need to optimize your images. Remember, image optimization does not simply means to add an alt text. Instead, you need to crop the images and reduce the size of the image in order to enable loading at an amazingly faster speed. Also, avoid the use of too many heavy images, funky JavaScript or flash. This may hamper the experience of mobile users as not all devices are yet ready for flash.

6-     Use Fetch as Googlebot Mobile

When you have made the required changes to satisfy the needs of your mobile audience, test the site using fetch as Googlebot Mobile. This will enable to identify any crawling issues which Google is facing while indexing your mobile optimized site.

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7-     Keep Navigation Easy

Navigation plays an important role in the overall user experience. Keeping the navigation easy and user friendly will help to reduce the bounce rate and increase the rate of conversions. Text navigation is always preferred and the use of breadcrumbs is always good.

8-     Add Click to Call

In order to initiate direct customer centric actions, addition of click to call interface can be a great idea. You can add telephone number links by adding a very basic syntax as given below:

<a href=”tel:+18xxxxxxxx”>Click to Call Us</a>

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9-     Enable Indexing of Mobile Apps

In order to let users visit your app directly from the Google search results, you need to add the support of deep links and enable the indexing of mobile apps. This is a very necessary change if you are already having a business app. Enabling deep link support will allow Google to index the contents of your app and chances that your app will get ranked for direct app related key phrases will increase. However, the user searching should have the app supported version in the mobile device.

10-  Use Rich Snippets for Apps

Rich snippets allow the users to get detailed reviews about a particular app and help to make a quicker decision regarding the installation of apps. Therefore, having schema data in your apps can greatly enhance the visibility of your apps in the Google search results. With the help of Schema.org vocabulary, you can add review, offers, application and OS related Meta data in your apps. This will help the search engines understand the contents of your app and also allow them to judge the social popularity of the app. An app having accurate Meta data and high social popularity, ratings and reviews will be ranked higher in the search results. An enhanced and user friendly app means more traffic for your business. A high traffic can lead to more conversions. Hence, one of the necessities of mobile world is the creation of apps.

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11-  Use Hummingbird Friendly Content

Mobile users often type in locally relevant long queries which follow a QA based pattern. It is better that you start adding QA pattern content on your website specifically to cater the needs of mobile visitors. Locally relevant content would always be given preference so make sure to add unique and relevant information with respect to the keywords you want to target.

12-  Add a Mobile Sitemap  

In order to enable easy crawling of your mobile friendly website, add a mobile sitemap and check whether Google can easily crawl the contents of your mobile site. This is extremely important if your business wants to perform well in the search engine results. A sample mobile sitemap is shown below:

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″ ?>

<urlset xmlns=”http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9″

xmlns:mobile=”http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-mobile/1.0″>

<url>

<loc>http://mobile.yoursite.com/url1.html</loc>

<mobile:mobile/>

</url>

</urlset>

13-  Focus on Local but Don’t Leave Global

If your business caters to both the local and global markets then have more focus on the local markets. Locally relevant long tail keyword researches should be given priority but on the longer run focus should be made on making the site popular at a global level. Hence, both type of keyword research and market focused content should be added on the site in order to help the search engines understand the local relevance of the content.

14-  Enable Social Love Sharing

SEO is incomplete without social media. If the users are not loving your site and sharing it on popular social channels like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google Plus, StumbleUpon etc. then you might be missing something. In order to enable easy social sharing of your content, add social sharing buttons on the responsive design. Make it easy for the user to share content from your site on their social networks.

Mobile SEO Tools that Will Ease Up Your Tasks

SEOs simply love tools and to cater the needs of the ever-rising mobile market, there are several mobile SEO tools that you will simply love to use. Some of the best known Mobile SEO tools are given below:

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        • Screenfly–  – To test your website in any screen size like desktop, television, mobile phones and tablets.

Don’t Ignore Google Guidelines and always be ready for Updates

Last but not the least; do not ignore the Google guidelines for designing mobile optimized websites. Google has a special tutorial for building Smartphone optimized websites. Choose the functionality that will help you to serve your users better.

With the way Google is moving forward with its algorithmic updates, we can expect a lot more updates coming in 2014. The best way to keep your site safe and to leverage on the affects of these updates is to follow the Google guidelines. Natural backlinks and relevant content are the key to success. Mobile SEO is waiting for a big bash in 2014 so keep your website mobile ready!