Franchise marketing companies are finally beginning to understand the importance of having a strong mobile marketing strategy in place. Yahoo’s Gemini platform is specifically targeting mobile users with action-oriented advertising, and business owners around the globe are mobile-optimizing their websites to keep huge swaths of on-the-go audiences happy.
Still, many franchise marketing companies are still not fully aware of the differences between desktop and mobile search ranking factors. Worse still, many are trying to force a rigid, one-size-fits-all approach to cover both mobile and desktop marketing campaigns. Many of these franchise marketing companies are only capable of tracking desktop rankings, reducing their mobile marketing strategy to a stab-in-the-dark approach that wastes budgets without measurable results.
This desktop bias is being left in the dust. In May 2015, Google confirmed that more searches occur on mobile devices than on desktop computers in at least 10 different countries, including the US and Japan. Sticking to an antiquated desktop-only marketing approach means that some franchise marketing companies are leaving over 50% of their clients’ audiences untapped, or at least un-optimized!
Does that mean that franchise marketing companies should customize mobile search strategies?
Yes, absolutely – and we’ll show you how.
Read on for a breakdown of some of the strategies we have observed driving mobile sites to Google’s top-10 positions.
Technical tweaks for mobile-specific strategies:
- Speed – Your site speed is even more important for on-the-go users. Top-10 ranking sites took an average of 1.10 seconds to load. Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool can help you rate your own performance.
- Flash – The popularity of Flash elements in mobile rankings has dropped considerably. HTML5 is the way to go.
- Keyword inclusion in domain – Don’t overthink this. Domain names should emphasize your branding now rather than keywords, since Google’s Exact Match Domain (EMD) update in 2012 lowered the positive impact of keyword inclusion.
Building the perfect user experience for mobile users:
- Bullet points – Use bullet points lists to keep your content scannable. This was something that was consistently found in top-ranking mobile sites. Additionally, these lists were shorter than the desktop counterparts.
- Internal linking – Mobile content should have slightly fewer internal links than desktop content, because browsing with multiple tabs can sometimes be unwieldy for mobile users. Still, meaningful links are very important. Choose wisely, and position them for easy-clicking.
- Visuals – Top-ranking mobile sites had less than half of the image content that desktop pages did. High-ranking mobile sites averaged 4 images per page compared to 9 for desktop sites. Show some restraint when using images, and ensure that they do not sacrifice your loading speed!
Keep your content mobile-friendly.
- Keep up with keywords – Mobile content keyword rose from 2.7 in 2014 to 5.48 in 2015, more than doubling. This change is notable, but still pales in comparison to the average keyword saturation used for desktop content at 10.22. Keep your keywords relevant, visible, but natural within the text.
- Content length – Average content length is on the rise for top-ranking mobile sites, though it is still nowhere near the desktop standard. Strong mobile sites in 2015 average 868 words per page – shorter than desktop content, but still more than enough to write a fully-informative piece about your product or service.
These mobile ranking findings should help franchise marketing companies access on-the-go audiences that their previous approach has been neglecting. If you are seeking a franchise marketing company with serious mobile marketing skills, then contact 360 to learn how we can get your brand in front of relevant audiences, wherever they may be!