Using Google Analytics to Help Boost SEO of Your Mobile Website
Using Google Analytics to Help Boost SEO of Your Mobile
Website
The exciting world of mobile search engine optimization (SEO) is
here and it's all about being relevant to the end user. Google has
already developed a mobile website specific bot that trolls and
ranks mobile sites based on their relevancy, design and
user-friendliness. This movement towards relevant and accurate
mobile content creates some particular challenges for mobile
website designers. How can you be sure that your website is
mobile friendly? What pages are your mobile users looking at?
What items should you have on your menu and what search terms
should you be coveting to rank well?
There are plenty of existing analytic tools like Google
Analytics that can be leveraged to help you answer these questions.
The challenge is... you have to know where to look.
Google Analytics may be a platform built for traditional websites
but it tracks your mobile visitors just the same. The following
tricks using Google Analytics will help you understand the needs of
your mobile users so you can build a better mobile website.
Search Popular Content by Operating System
Understanding the pages your mobile users are visiting helps you
build the architecture for your mobile site. Here's how you
can use Google Analytics to determine the information architecture
of your site:
1. Under the content section of your
Google Analytics click on "Top Content" which will show you the
most popular web pages.
2. Then, on the table it produces,
you'll notice a drop down that has a variety of options. Set it to
"Operating System".
3. Google Analytics only displays 10
rows of results by default. Change this setting to 500 on the
bottom right of your page.
4. Click the "Export" button at the top
of the page and export the data in a CSV file.
5. Open this exported file in Excel,
apply an auto filter, and filter your operating system results by
iPhone, Blackberry, iPad, iPod and Android.
Once complete, you should see a results list that looks
something like what we have below:
In this example you can easily identify the most popular pages
for mobile users including: Homepage, Location-Hours, Admission and
Events, which will help you make an informed decision about which
items to include on the main menu.
Search Keywords by Operating System
When it comes to search engine queries, there's a fundamental
difference between the keywords used by desktop and mobile
users. For example, 50% of mobile search queries contain 3
keywords or less1 and nearly 100% of searches have a
local intent - meaning individuals are searching for something
close by2. By analyzing the keywords your mobile
visitors are using to find your site, you can better understand the
types of keywords you will want your mobile site to rank well for.
You can use Google Analytics to do this by simply clicking Content
> Entrance Keywords and repeating steps 2 through 5
above.
Use this mobile search information to help direct your mobile
content, menu items, meta-tags, images and more. This will
ensure your website is ranking high for the keywords that your
mobile users are using, making it easier for them to find your
site.
Search Goals by Operating System
Since we've already determined that mobile search behaviour
differs based on the platform, it should come as no surprise that
the online spending behaviour of mobile users is also unique.
For this particular mobile SEO trick, you must have had goals
setup for a variety of your profit generating pages for a while -
whether that is for events, products, e-mail collection or contact
us pages. Here's how to find which of your sales funnels are
performing the best on mobile devices:
1. Click the "Visitors" Tab
2. Click the "Browser Capabilities"
Section
3. Click "Operating Systems"
4. Finally, click on the individual
"Goal Sets" and look at the statistics for mobile operating
systems.
You can use this information to determine the specific profit
generating channels that your mobile users are frequenting.
Ultimately, this will help you ensure that when you build your
mobile website you maintain and enhance these channels.
Conclusion
Even before you begin the development of your mobile website,
you likely already have analytics in place that you can leverage to
ensure your new site will meet the needs of your mobile visitors.
Looking into the analytics can provide a lot of interesting
information about your mobile users so we suggest you try looking
at the on-site search queries, exit pages, browser sizes to get a
better sense of the mobile audiences preferences and uses.
Once you've begun the production phase, be sure to include Google
Analytics for Mobile on your site and continuously refine your
mobile site based on the needs of your customers.
If you have a mobile website development project in
mind, email us or call us at 780-414-0975 today.
1
http://searchengineland.com/the-mobile-web-is-finally-here-are-you-ready-39683
2
http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/153023/MobileSurveymobilehci11.pdf