Why Your Mobile SEO May Need PPC
UPDATE: Video transcript available for ‘Why Your Mobile SEO May Need PPC’.
Well it’s another day ending in the letter “y” so it’s time for Google to make a change. This time it’s PPC. Several reports came in this week of people seeing a fourth ad below the usual top 3. This will further push down organic results. Google for its part has said they are only testing but that real estate on the small screen is already gone.
The small screen is dominated by PPC
Have a look at these screen shots.
They are the first 2 screens on mobile for the search “SEO”. You can see quite clearly that there are no organic results here. Even the third ad is on the second screen. New studies have shown that 12 – 15 yo can’t tell the difference between ads and organic results. Is Google betting that this trend will continue as they get older?
SEO is not dead though, on mobile there is still plenty of traffic for a lot of searches. As you will see from the video, one of our client’s mobile organic traffic is up 50% YoY. Mobile PPC traffic though is up 190%. Their budgets are the same as last year. This indicates their mobile PPC CTR has gone through the roof!
Mobile opportunities
If you do find your number one spot is not getting the traffic from mobile it once was, this could be the reason. So what are your options? Well you could start an adwords campaign and play directly into Google’s hands but as you saw if you get the number 3 spot you are below the fold anyway.
Google My Business
Formerly known as Google Places, formerly known as Maps Business listings. Follow today’s pointers in the video. If you do, you can also use the stars ratings in your Google ads.
Featured Answers
This is relatively new and I’m am still looking to see what clients we can apply it to but I have seen it on mobile as well as desktop. Typically this would sit above places listings. You can read more about how to get the featured answers spots here. Are you seeing similar numbers in your mobile traffic? We’re seeing mobile organic traffic higher but mobile PPC is way up.
Jim’s been here for a while, you know who he is.
