Expanding the theme, Evolution of Mobile SEO : Is Your Website Mobile Friendly?, we ask: Are You Ready for What’s Coming?

Google is never likely to sit still. The company wants to enhance their competitiveness while giving users the best solutions. Here are a few tips on how you can gear up for the ever unfolding future:

1. Getting the ‘Mobile Friendly’ Designation in Mobile SERPs has affected search rankings on smartphones. Unblocking CSS and JavaScript plays a vital part in nailing the Mobile Friendly designation, according to Google Webmaster. Googlebot needs to see your site like an average user. By always allowing Googlebot access to the JavaScript, CSS, and image files used by your website you achieve optimal rendering and indexing,
2. Deep linking has become one of the key signals for positive web rankings and to drive traffic to the Apps. They appear in the Google SERP individually or as part of a mobile App Pack. An “App Pack” is a group of related apps that rank together for a given query. It’s shown together in a box separated from the inline organic search results.

Screenshot from Cindy Krum and Linkdex webinar

3. Demystifying ASO: Keep your App Store Optimization title tags short and descriptive. It’s to your benefit to have exact match keywords in the title and description tag. There are advantages as well as disadvantages to having a mobile app rather than a web page. For queries that are almost similar to the app name, mobile websites get pushed down below the fold.
4. Google NOW has evolved into the user’s personal knowledge graph. Users are adding data and increasing content to their big data mix with info cards as the most ideal and personalized result format for users. Google gives the right information at just the right time assisting you around the clock with relevant suggestions.

 

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5. Mobile Results going full screen on Page #1:Music info cards, hotel booking search, flight booking search, TV info cards, map queries, restaurants and menus, etc. take up the top fold of the search results.

In this example, for a search query “hotels”, Sheraton Denver Downtown Hotel  takes up the first fold.

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6. Google avoids blue links or websites from showing above the fold on Mobile. Results that are likely to come up for search are Info cards, Answer boxes, Knowledge Graph results and other cards.

Your task:  Optimize for mobile search and Google Now.  Apps, Images, Videos and Google+ for business need to be optimized for placement at the top of the Mobile search results.

7. App like sites, instead of mobile websites: The numbers speak. Users spent 80% of their time on Apps and 20% of their time on Website. 
8. Personalized Info Cards are generated by different Apps: Google integrates with different Apps to generate info cards, for example adding transcripts and lyrics to videos and music, displaying them in answer boxes. Google makes these changes to deliver the best mobile experience for searchers, giving them exactly what they want at the right time.