The increasing adoption of responsive design is paving an easier path for mobile SEO within browsers; it's not always the ultimate silver bullet, but it's a welcome relief to brands looking for a single-site solution to cross platform content. But mobile devices have ushered in a whole new set of search challenges in the form of apps, forcing SEO professionals to diversify their search strategy beyond the browser.
Search is widely acknowledged to be the number one mobile browser activity – actually, it's the number one mobile activity overall. The browser factor is no surprise – it's logical that most of us would automatically transfer our desktop search behaviors to our mobile devices.
But an increasing number of us seem to prefer apps for many mobile activities, search included. The top 10 U.S. mobile smartphone apps are either directly search-focused (e.g. the Google Search and Maps apps) or search-oriented in nature (e.g. Google Play, iTunes), according to comScore.
The reasons we're gravitating toward apps are fairly obvious – the interfaces tend to be more user-friendly, the content and results more streamlined. The reasons why this shift in behavior matters are less readily apparent but rest assured that the move toward app-based search is a game-changer for search marketers.
Why?
- As users gravitate more and more towards apps for search, the types of content a search leads to will diversify – it's not just about browser-based content anymore.
- Search destinations will diversify as well – most brands must focus on apps from the major engines while also striving for visibility within niche engine apps and directories.
- The old SEO rules still apply, but new SEO best practices are evolving as apps become more and more popular and the search ecosystem splinters into myriad proprietary indexes and directories.
Mobile SEO: Browser Basics
To succeed as this app-based search ecosystem evolves, brands need to understand the relevant apps on the market, the value proposition of each, and how to build rank and findability.
Desktop preferences seem to translate to mobile search in a big way – if you're a Google person on the desktop, you'll be using Google your mobile device as well. Or Bing, or Yahoo, and so forth.
