Optimizing Mobile SEO for Micro-Moments and Consumer Behaviors

Posted on Jul 5, 2024 in Training and Employment Advise

MICROMOMENTS:

BE THERE: You need to be there for them. The ‘share of intent’ is how many times a brand was there as a fraction of all category-relevant searches. BE USEFUL: You need to be useful and meet their needs in those moments. That means connecting people to what they’re looking for in real time and providing relevant information when they need it. I-WANT-TO-KNOW MOMENTS BE QUICK: ‘I WANT IT NOW’ Consumers expect your mobile site and app to indulge their need for speed by being quick and easy. Start with that goal and think about how you can cut the number of steps a user must take to reach it.

  • Implement One-Click functionality.
  • Help the user fill in forms.
  • Provide alternatives to finish the transaction.

Being quick ACTUALLY means knowing what your customer wants before they want it. First, check out your top mobile content and searches in analytics. What are your customers doing on your mobile site?

  • Put the big stuff first: The calls-to-action for the primary activities on your site or app should be in a prominent spot on your homepage, with secondary actions hidden behind menus.
  • Be location-aware: Take advantage of the built-in GPS capabilities of smartphones by providing driving directions and showing customers stores near them where a product is in stock.
  • Look at past behavior: If a consumer has already been to your company’s website, made a purchase or left items in their shopping cart, you know a lot about their needs.

SHOPPING MICRO-MOMENTS

  • I-need-some-ideas moments: Happen when people have general awareness of the product category they’re interested in, such as living room furniture, but they haven’t yet narrowed down their choices to an exact product.
  • Which-one’s-best moments: These are also known as consideration moments, that happen when people turn to their phones in short bursts of activity to compare prices, brands and specs, and read product reviews from trusted sources.
  • I-want-to-buy-it moments: Happen when the research is done and it is decision time. People make a choice about which brand or retailer to buy from, and whether to buy online or in-store.

CONSUMER BEHAVIORS

  • THE ‘WELL-ADVISED’ CONSUMER: People today want to be empowered to make the right decision, big or small, and they’re turning to their phones for advice to guide them.
  • THE ‘RIGHT HERE’ CONSUMER: People just assume their smartphone will know where they are and will deliver information accordingly.
  • THE ‘RIGHT NOW’ CONSUMER: Every day, people are becoming more reliant on their smartphones to help make last-minute purchases or spur-of-the-moment decisions. They expect brands to respond by understanding their needs and addressing them right now.

USER MIND STATES

  • A spark: This is when something either just pops into your head or you’re triggered by something you see. One consumer told us her boots, which were a couple of years old, had been wearing out. ‘I thought, ‘I wonder if I can still find those’, so I just did a search on my phone’.
  • An urgent need: You are on your way home and need to pick up dinner. You run out of something and need to see if the closest store is open. Or you got a little turned around so you need directions. Where do you turn? Your phone.
  • In-store assistance: Shoppers usually use their phones to look for better prices while they’re in the store. But shoppers are doing a lot more than showrooming. They’re using their phones to look for coupons, read reviews, and search for guidance.
  • Micro-productivity: Stuck in a waiting room? Sitting in the back of a taxi? Commuting by train? Why not cross something else off your list? ‘I go through this whole list of things that I might need to do during that … 45 minutes of my train ride. I knew I wanted to buy the shirts. I had my phone right then, right there, so I could do it’.
  • Planning ahead: People are using search to plan a lot of things on their phones now, from weekend excursions to trips to the local mall. It is beyond booking rooms or renting cars.

MOBILE CUSTOMER JOURNEY

  • Find the sweet spot where your customers’ goals and your own align: It is important to acknowledge that your customers’ goals might be different from yours. Consider how your marketing and communication strategies can help your customers reach their goals while also getting you closer to yours.
  • Identify all of the communication touchpoints in your customer’s journey: When do you traditionally communicate or engage with customers? Make a list of these moments and group them based on when they happen during the journey: pre-purchase, purchase, and post-purchase.
  • Recognize pain points and moments of delight: Could your customers be happy that your website makes browsing easy, but frustrated at how confusing it is to purchase a product?
  • Experience the customer journey yourself: Imagining how your customers might feel during their journey is valuable, but actually experiencing it for yourself can uncover much-needed insights. Open a mobile browser and experience what it’s like to be your customer.

CHARACTERISTICS MOBILE CUSTOMER JOURNEY

  • Customers turn to their smartphones to be productive
  • The mobile journey is a ‘call to adventure’
  • Customers use mobile sites because they’re familiar and can deliver desired information, but poorly designed sites send customers away
  • Mobile apps are easier to use and save time, but they signify ‘a relationship’ and must earn a coveted spot on smartphones

BEACONS

La estrategia de beacons se refiere al uso de dispositivos pequeños y de bajo consumo de energía, llamados ‘beacons’ (balizas), que emiten señales de Bluetooth para interactuar con dispositivos móviles cercanos, como smartphones y tablets.

MOBILE SEO

Mobile SEO is the practice of optimizing your website for users on smartphones and tablets. Mobile optimization also includes making your site resources accessible to search engine spiders.

Being Google the main search engine in mobile devices (95% of all mobile searches are done on Google), it is important to know how they modify their algorithm so that it’s optimized for mobile users FIRST.

In some ways, desktop SEO tactics also work for mobile SEO, but in a slightly different form. Three major themes still apply: focus on performance, user experience and content. In desktop SEO you’ll often focus more on the general public, while mobile SEO has more of a local focus.

For the same search query, different results may pop up depending on what device you are using. Plus, there are other factors that influence the mobile search results, like the location you’re at. This means that getting a good ranking for your product or content on desktop doesn’t guarantee the same result on mobile.

You can no longer present less information on your mobile site than on your desktop site. Your content must be identical on both, because you will only rank based on the information on your mobile page

MOBILE SEO: WEB DESIGN

RESPONSIVE DESIGN: Google prefers responsive design because you only have one site that adapts to the device it is used on.

DYNAMIC SERVING: When you serve content dynamically, all your content is on the same URL, but you show each user different HTML/CSS depending on the device they are using.

SEPARATE SITE: It is by far the worst way to configure your site for mobile SEO, and it is not very popular nowadays.

MOBILE SEO: PAGE SPEED

Optimizing performance is a continuous process. Your site will never be fast enough because there’s always more you can improve. By keeping a close watch on how your mobile site is performing, you can immediately jump onto every opportunity to improve it

MOBILE SEO: KEYWORDS

To get mobile SEO right, you need to know how your site is currently performing and what your visitors are doing right now. For example, will people use the same keywords on mobile to find you? People often change how they search while using a mobile device.

MOBILE SEO: VOICE SEARCH

To prepare for voice search, you need to take a good look at your current content. Ask yourself, does it answer any question a user might have?

MOBILE SEO: USER EXPERIENCE:

WRITE FOR THE SMALL SCREEN: People read a lot on their smartphones, but you have to make it as easy as possible for them to do so:

  • Don’t use too many long sentences.
  • Keep your paragraphs to around four sentences.
  • Make sure there is tons of contrast between text and background (people use phones outside, which can make low-contrast text harder to read).
  • Break up text using bullet points, lists and headings.

WRITE BETTER META DESCRIPTIONS AND TITLES

MOBILE SEO: OPTIMIZE FOR LOCAL

  • Write locally oriented content: It’s one of the best things you can do to improve local rankings.
  • Google My Business: Sign up and fill in your details. Here, you can keep your data up to date, respond to reviews and upload photos, among other things.
  • Reviews: Ask your customers for reviews, mark them up with structured data and present them on a page on your site.
  • Photos: Take pictures of your business and add them to Google My Business

MOBILE SEO: AMP

Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) are stripped-down versions of webpages designed to load quickly on mobile devices. Google will choose to serve the cached copy of the landing page, which offers the fastest loading.

For e-commerce purposes and other dynamic types of pages, AMP fell short. Does it make sense to use AMP in e-commerce?

  • AMP puts serious limits on your page’s functionality: You won’t have full control of your ads, you can’t use pop-ups, it can hurt your link-building and your content will look more generic and similar to others.
  • AMP may not last forever: With 5G just around the corner, it is probable that in a close future, page speed will be really increased and no solution like AMP will be needed anymore

MOBILE SEO: PWA

Progressive Web App (PWA) is a web app that uses modern web capabilities to deliver an app-like experience to users. These apps meet certain requirements, are deployed to servers, accessible through URLs, and indexed by search engines.

MOBILE SEO: STRUCTURED DATA

Structured data is code in a specific format written in such a way that search engines understand it. Search engines read the code and use it to display search results in a specific and much richer way called rich snippets. Structured data is important for SEO because it makes it easier for Google to understand what your website is about. Rich snippets can hook you up with review stars, recipe images and event dates in the SERPs, all of which can significantly increase your organic CTR.

BENEFITS OF BEACON MARKETING

High click-through rates: Click-through rates of beacon campaigns are way superior than competing technologies. Social media marketing, such as Facebook and Twitter ads also witness click-through rates lower than average CTR of beacon campaigns.

Excellent ROI: Beacons are deemed as a cost-effective option and are powered by replaceable batteries while the option of businesses can opt for USB beacons, where no battery replacement is required either. The low cost, coupled with minimal effort for setting up and using them is what makes beacons a cost effective method to level up your marketing strategy.

Online retargeting with Facebook and Google Ads: Retargeting is emerging as a compelling use case in the proximity marketing space. Beacons allow marketers to deepen the connection with their customers even after they have left the store. Marketers can retarget users who viewed the campaign in-store, on Facebook and Google Ads

Measure offline analytics and customer behavior: There are platforms that gather all the analytics information from beacons, which helps marketers understand customer’s spending habits and product preferences, enabling them to create highly personalized and targeted beacon campaigns.

BEACON STRATEGIES

  • Location targeting: Beacons let you target users with messages based on their specific location.
  • Mapping: The ability to ‘see’ where consumers go in-store and attribute actions to these journeys, for example to know how many buy a product after seeing promotional signs.
  • Frequency: Measure how often people visit the same locations, how long they spend there and how these relate to sales.
  • In-store messaging: Send promotional offers to people as they look through your store or business location
  • Guide users: With full beacon systems, you can guide people through entire shopping centers, stadiums, airports and entire cities.
  • Gamification: Brands are using beacons to create treasure hunts and gamify the consumer process.
  • Cross-selling: Target shoppers with related products, special offers and other purchases as they queue up to pay.
  • Loyalty: Send loyalty rewards to people as they complete purchases. Customer recalls: Send promotions and other messages to people who leave without buying anything to entice them back into the store