Winning with Local Mobile
A recent talk at CickZ live event in New York by Jori Ford, head of SEO at Spothero, demonstrated the local search nature of mobile search.
She revealed that 20% of all searched have local intent and that:
- 94 percent of smartphone users search for location info
- 51 percent visited a store
- 48 percent called a store
- 29 percent made a purchase
Whilst these are generic to a retail business, this mobile user behaviour is nothing new to your patients and potential patients. We are all using our mobiles devices in a more integrated manner for every aspect of our lives.
The talk suggested though that any local business (a dental practice) cannot ignore these behaviours and should be embracing the chance to gain competitive advantage from mobile search.
Whilst this rather strong business speak may sound overboard for a dental practice, your competition (other local practices), will no doubt be starting to think the same way. And mobile search, by nature of a smaller screen, intensifies the competition for top places and exposure in rankings and search.
Here are some the quick must-have wins for mobile SEO
1) Claim you web business listing (and optimise this properly)
Claiming your local listings and in particular your Google local listing has been a standard in local SEO for some time, but with mobile it is even more important.
Some specific tips include:
- Use the business service category in your business description (dentist/cosmetic dentist/hygienist etc)
- Update Google + with links to the top pages of your website
- Give you opening hours and make sure these are kept up-to-date.
2) Use Schema Markup
Adding micro data to a local business website is a technical element of coding designed to make it easier for search engines to find mentions of your local business around the website. All those citation submissions could be having a greater impact on your local mobile SEO if you help the search engines join the dots. The quicker and easier a search engine can do this, the happier it is to rank it.
3) Create How-to-Videos
Jori recommends creating how-to -videos to capture the longer tail keyword as Google will show results for these enquiry search terms with a location factor. So if a user in your town is searching for ‘how to repair my denture’, and our video explaining how dentures can be repaired, and possibly replaced with a more stable dental implant, then you will be winning in giving this user an experience online which will have them go straight to your website to find out more.
4) Make sure a menu is available on mobile
Your website on a mobile device needs to be mobile friendly, but also user friendly. There is a fine balance between stripping down the content so that it is easy to view, and making sure there is enough content for your visitor to experience. Those who ‘live’ on their mobile devices are well used to reading/viewing large pieces of content and information on the device and use their phone to research more and more. The menu function gives this option.
Talk to Dental Design on 01202 677277 about how mobile specific SEO can build your online marketing presence.
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