Keyword Research Tips to Ignite Your Mobile SEO Strategy
It’s beyond obvious that mobile-based search is growing fast. People use their smartphones to search for almost anything, spanning from local restaurants to specific products. It’s thus important that your business respects the power of mobile SEO as means to earn quality web traffic. 
The primary reason to do mobile keyword research for your SEO strategy is to pinpoint unique search terms that your mobile target market uses on a smartphone (and not on a PC or laptop.) In some keyword categories such as local restaurants, over one-third of their web traffic stems from mobile-based search.
If you fail consider the potential of mobile SEO and corresponding search terms, you could be optimizing your website for the wrong keywords. Below we share three powerful tips to aid your mobile keyword research efforts.
By taking advantage of these tips and resources, you can better position your mobile SEO strategy to reflect the smartphone search behaviors of your target audience.
Define Mobile SEO Goals and Metrics to Measure Success
Mobile SEO is a unique realm in that most businesses must define success in creative manner. Although web traffic (or hits on website) is great way to track SEO performance, traffic doesn’t always yield sales or conversions. For this reason, you’ll want to be very specific in how you measure the success of your mobile SEO campaign.
One of the best metrics to define success in any search marketing campaign is conversions. If you’re mobile SEO strategy is successful in driving traffic, but not conversions, then it’s clear that the usability of your mobile website is not ideal. You may want to consider a mobile-friendly redesign of your website, or try integrating effective calls-to-action to drive more immediate conversions.
Mobile Keyword Research & Discovery
To embark upon your mobile keyword research endeavors, you must utilize the right resources to discover ideal search terms. We recommend taking advantage of the follow Google tools to for mobile keyword research:
- Google AdWords Keyword Tool – Under the “advanced search settings” you can choose to filter the results to show only search volumes from mobile devices. This will enable you to determine precisely how popular certain keywords are for mobile SEO. Additionally, you can further set your research to show in specific geographic areas.
- Google Webmaster Tools – This is a great resource to determine how visitors find your website using mobile devices. You can look under the “Queries” section to pinpoint the types of search terms that visitors have used to find your website.
- Google Analytics – Under the “Audiences” section, click into “mobile” option, then “overview.” This section on Analytics will enable you to see keywords that tablet and mobile users queried to visit your website.
Keyword Selection
Now that you have pinpointed a handful of keywords for your mobile SEO strategy, you need to select the optimal choices for mobile website optimization.
While the search volume of keyword phrases can help you determine the amount of traffic and overall keyword competitiveness, search volume is not entirely sufficient on its own. You’ll want to actually search the keywords manually and get a lay of the mobile search results. Here you define who (competition) is ranking atop the results, as well as what the results look like (localized with Google Maps?)
In some cases you can uncover mobile search marketing strategies beyond SEO. If no one is bidding on a profitable keyword phrase in AdWords, perhaps a mobile PPC strategy is great option to supplement SEO. A paid search ad can be a highly effective way to make a bold appearance in a user’s smartphone search results. The SERP real estate is minimal, making a top ad placement even more alluring.
