What’s this about?
This is an extract from TWIS SEO News & Updates 25 August 2017 .
Read about BrightEdge’s latest research showing that mobile device traffic now accounts for 57% of search and how to check the mobile / desktop split in your market sector versus your site’s performance .
Click here to contact me to discuss how to optimise your site so it appears as often as it should do in mobile search.
#SEO #SEONews #MobileSearch #MobileFirst #KeywordResearch #GoogleAnalytics
New BrightEdge Research Shows Mobile is 57% of Google Search Traffic
Summary – 57% of Search Traffic Now Mobile:
- BrightEdge, the enterprise SEO tool company, released research this week that showed mobile now accounts for 57% of Google search traffic.
- The second key finding from their research was that 79% of search results differed across desktop and mobile. They believe this is an example of Google’s Mobile First Index surfacing already. I’m not convinced by this.
Actions to take – 57% of Search Traffic Now Mobile:
- Check your favourite analytics package to understand the % of traffic coming to your website from mobile devices, or good old desktop from all sources, not just organic search traffic.
- If you haven’t done so already, you should have checked your Keyword Research for the current split in search volumes between mobile and desktop.
- Ideally, the two splits should be aligned – the split of organic search traffic received is equivalent to the split in organic keyword volumes.
- If the splits are not aligned, you are under-optimised for one type of search and not performing as you should be.
- Review your mobile / desktop optimisation and take action depending on where the issue lies.
- In most cases, there is an under-representation in mobile search results. In which case, you need to undertake optimisation on your mobile site.
- Click here to contact me to discuss how to optimise your site to appear in both desktop and mobile search results.
Discussion – 57% of Search Traffic Now Mobile:
That 57% of Google search traffic now comes mobile devices should not really surprise anyone, but is the stat slightly misleading? What I would really like to see it a better drill-down of the data to really expose where mobile is hot, and where desktop still rules. BrightEdge and other tools often release good headline data, which doesn’t always stand up to scrutiny.
For instance, the vast majority of local search, or search with what Google calls “local intent”, is carried out on mobile. It was something like 33% back in 2010, so I’d imagine it to be significantly higher now.
I’m less enamoured of their Mobile First Index conclusion. Google has been pretty open about when the Mobile First Index will roll out, indicating 2018 as a likely landing date, and stating it will rollout out in batches ( Google’s Mobile First Index Will Be A Staged Rollout). A recent report using SEMRush data had just under 20% of websites using a separate URL between the desktop and mobile versions of Google’s SERP. It’s not beyond the realms of possibility that the 20% difference in BrightEdge’s data is simply different URLs for the same content. You’d hope they checked that, but I see no evidence for it.
More info:
The State of SEO Mid-2017 Released
TL;DR
- 57% of traffic now comes from mobile.
- 79% of SERP differ between mobile and desktop.
- There will be different splits depending on your particular keyword set.
- You need to make sure you match the market.
- Read The State of SEO in mid-2017.
- Read about how Google’s Mobile First Index is not Mobile Friendly.
- Finally, get your content ranking well on Google by starting to understand Find Crawl Index.
Thanks for reading. If you would like to discuss what these changes mean for your web property, or would like to know how to implement them, please feel free to contact me.
