We thought that the COVID-19 lockdown would change the amount of time spent on their mobile phones. But surprisingly, mobile phone usage increased drastically during the pandemic. Since most of the businesses shifted online, people started searching for products and services on their mobile phones more than ever.
But one thing that did not change was that people still look for companies located near them. Or maybe it is Google that keeps showing local businesses nearest to the user for a particular search query. Either way, SEO experts estimate that almost one-third of all Google searches end up looking at local businesses located nearest to the user.
That is why local SEO is the fourth most important factor that affects search engine rankings. It has also been noticed that local SEO efforts can be crucial to grow mobile phone marketing. That is why every business must have a mobile-optimized website or a smartphone app to improve user experience as well as local SEO.
If you feel that you need additional help to combine your mobile marketing and local SEO efforts, you can talk to SEO consultants from your area. For example, if your business is in Plano, Texas, you can consult affordable and ethical Plano SEO experts who will guide you to achieve the desired results.
So let us see how your local SEO efforts can optimize your mobile marketing as well.
Local SEO Optimized Content
You will surely have a mobile-friendly webpage that has a localized schema markup. The schema markup helps by adding structured data to your website to ensure that search engines like Google find your content relevant to a local search query. This method may not yield immediate results, but it can make your website more visible and attract more traffic to it over time.
You should also include local keywords in the titles and meta descriptions for the pages on your mobile website. Consider focusing on long-tail keywords that will drive more local traffic from smartphone users in your area. Think of user intent when you choose your keywords.
Most people use phrases like “near me” or “open now” while searching for products or services from local businesses around them on their mobile phones. Adapt a keyword strategy that can help you make your business visible to these people. A keyword like “Mexican restaurant in Plano, TX” will fetch more traffic than general keywords.
Optimum Mobile User Experience
If you want more customers to land on your website through their mobile phones, make sure that your mobile-friendly website is a responsive design. In fact, your website should be able to adapt to any device or browser to provide optimum compatibility.
Surprisingly, a lot of business owners forget to focus on the user experience from a mobile website. It is not reasonable to expect a user to browse on the desktop version website on their mobile phone. Sometimes, even if they include a mobile-friendly site, they forget to optimize the loading speed.
A desktop website can take a long time to load on a smartphone, which can drive your local customers away. Therefore, there are a few more things in mind while integrating responsive mobile-friendly website design. Users should be able to navigate through the mobile website using their thumb only.
Also, make sure that your call to action (CTA) buttons stand out on the web page and yet do not take up too much screen space. Mobile-friendly websites should have a font that is large enough to read on a small screen. These efforts will prove useful to enhance your local SEO and also improve your mobile marketing efforts.
You can also consider creating a parallel website for mobile phone users with a separate URL. It allows you to customize a mobile-friendly website experience without compromising the elements on the desktop version.
Local Link Building
You should always create content for your products and services in a way that other people would want to link them to their websites, especially people from blogging or the media industry. Link building is an integral part of local SEO strategy that can help your website in several ways, such as:
- Become a part of directory links
- Achieve local media coverage
- Acquire industry influencers and guest bloggers
- Put your landing page link as citations on various sources
When you are building local links for your business website, make sure that you remember to feature on mobile-friendly sites. You should also ensure that the links present in your content lead to mobile-friendly websites.
It can hurt your local SEO as well as user experience if a person clicks on a link on your content and reaches a page not optimized for mobile usage. You will find your links appearing on sites with higher domain authority automatically when you take the right steps to build strong backlinks on your website.
Consumers are looking for every product or service online these days, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic. So if you want your business to be visible for smartphone users, you will have to direct your efforts towards local SEO while keeping mobile users in mind. It will ensure that people land on your website when they are looking for your products or services on their smartphones.