TRAFFIC
SEO FOR
MOBILE AND TABLET
The step-by-step guide to nailing mobile SEO in 2014, by Janet Plumpton, SEO Strategist at Latitude
Digital Marketing.
2014 IS looKInG like a big year for
mobile SEO. The latest quarterly Walker
Sands Communications mobile traffic
report indicates that traffic from mobile
devices now accounts for 28 percent of
total website traffic, which is a huge annual
uplift of 67 percent. Smartphones and
tablets now drive one out of every three
minutes spent with digital media. Growth
in tablet shipments reported a 53 percent
uplift in 2013 – if these stats show anything
it is that mobile search has to be a crucial
consideration of any successful digital
campaign in 2014. What pointers should
affiliates be aware of to ensure their mobile
and tablet offerings perform optimally in
2014? W e will be looking at a number of
best practice considerations in addition
to how best to capitalise on traffic to your
website across all devices, including tablets.
user experience? If not, why not? You may
already have a mobile website or you may
still be deciding what the best option is.
Your site will likely fall into one (or a
mixture) of the following categories:
1. Separate mobile website
This method requires additional
technical recommendations to ensure that
search engines understand that your site
has a mobile offering and that they can
find it and index the pages accordingly.
Mobile sitemaps are required and
canonical/alternate tags are needed.
Whilst there are additional
recommendations, the separate mobile
site can often be the more straightforward
solution from a development standpoint.
●●
Canonical
and ‘rel=alternate’ tags need to
be created on like for like pages.
●●
Mobile site map required.
2. Responsive mobile site
This is what Google recommends.
There is no need to make changes to the
structure or mark up, and you don’t need a
site map for mobile or additional tags.
The site simply adapts to the device.
Smarter yet, many responsive designs will
adapt for desktop, tablet and mobile.
The downside is that this can be
complicated from a development
perspective and some responsive sites are
not all that SEO-friendly.
Check list
●●
Set
up mobile traffic segments.
Have you had a good look at your website
across all devices to get an understanding of
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●●
Some responsive sites are not
●●
Google
What does your site look like
across all devices?
Check list
SEO-friendly despite being
recommended by Google.
●●
Could be slow to load due to file size.
●●
Avoid Flash as search engines
cannot crawl it.
Analytics (or tracking of choice)
to be implemented on the mobile
subdomain/domain.
●●
Implement Google Webmaster Tools on
the mobile subdomain/domain.
mGAMING