Mobile SEO vs Desktop SEO – Understanding The Nuances
The SEO landscape is rapidly changing to many ongoing algorithmic “enhancements” such as the recent panda and penguin updates (much to the delight of Navneet Panda) also largely due to rapid technological advances particularly in the mobile/smart phones and portable tablet industries.
Just a few years ago, search engines were strictly limited to users desktops and laptops. Today however, the internet has gone mobile allowing 24/7 accessibility through mobile devices such as the iPhone,iPads,Android devices,Bada handsets,Windows Phone and Blackberry to name a few.
Many users don’t realize but searching through a desktop search engine and mobile search engine will lead to different results. This means that the mobile search query may give a lower or higher ranking for your particular website service or product depending on your certain keywords and optimization efforts.
Mobile SEO – Why The Difference in Search Engine Results?
The primary reason there are differences in search results for mobile phones and desktop/laptop devices is the fact that the Mobile search algorithm has a “localized” variation from that of a desktop search using the devices geoIP functionality.
This distinct native mobile feature allows for more accurate results for local users looking for information about services and products near them. The different requirements in the desktop vs mobile search engine optimization field have lead to a new field in marketing called Mobile SEO.
What’s the Difference in Mobile SEO Search & Desktop Search?
There are several differences between mobile search requests and conventional searches made through laptop and desktop computers, these differences often alter the results page of a mobile search engine inquiry as compared to a laptop/desktop search engine inquiry. Differences such as:
– Modern Smartphones use different Operating Systems –Blackberry, Bada, Android OS and Apple iOS (iPhone & iPad) are the most common operating systems in Thailand for mobile phones. The main difference lies in the mobile applications developed to browse the net and the search engines these apps use. For example, android users need to login to their droid device or google account meaning that the user will have to do the search query while logged on to the Google network. This means that the search engine rankings for the inquiry/keyword made will be heavily influenced by the mobile users’ personalized search results rather than the actual search results achieved when a user is not logged into google.
– GeoIP based local results are more favored in Mobile search & Mobile SEO – mobile apps installed on today’s smart-phones often requires the knowledge of and tracking by the user smart-phones’ current geographical position ie GeoIP. Once GeoIP is activated the search engines will try to return location based results in the search engine query page and thereby favoring only those sites that are near to your current location. Local or Google places results are often very critical for location based search inquiries.
– Mobile Algorithms – The top search engine companies such as Google,Bing,Yahoo,Baidu and Yandex have created a very different search engine algorithm that is designed for mobile phones. The new mobile algorithm is a generally a combination of both the laptop/desktop algorithms along with the GeoIP based mobile search algorithm.
Mobile SEO‘d search results and its underlying algorithms and results are indeed very different than the desktop/laptop versions. While Mobile SEO is still a relatively new field, it is highly advisable that SME’s and start-up segment their marketing efforts between laptop/desktop & mobile/tablet users as the results and interactions are unique to the device on which they are seen.
Mobile SEO and mobile marketing should be incorporated in ALL marketing campaigns since mobile searches now account for over 30% of all inquires being made today with the number expected to surpass that of desktop/laptop users sometime next year.
If you want to learn more about mobile seo and how it can help your SME or startup please contact us today.
Written by +Sal Amer
