Content for Mobile Only Websites

[RedBeardMarketer]

Much of the time developers design a website either with mobile as an after thought or in equal proportions.

I, however, am curious about designing a site that will be 100% focused on mobile.

As far as I know, there is some controversy as to whether Google crawls the "desktop" version of the website and looks for a few mobile factors and if those factors are preset will then return it as a result or if Google has a algo completely for mobile sites.

My question to you folks is about content for a website whose focus is 100% mobile. I am not worried about design, images setup. Just the written word. The website is NOT a blog but rather sells local services in a given city. I have a series of KWs that I want to rank for but unlike a desktop focused website where I can add a lot of content to a landing page, I am limited. Does any one have an opinion or a resource that I can use as a starting point? Any help will be greatly appreciated

 

[James Watt]

Do they? Design for mobile as an afterthought I mean? Mobile first design has been a growing voice for a few years now, at this point if I see any developer that doesn't at least integrate some elements of mobile first design principles in their buildout, I just assume they're behind the times and don't care about keeping up with their craft. I suppose not all sites need to be responsive, but those are kind of the exception rather than the rule. It's been a long time since a mobile site redirect has been a good idea, I'd even say the idea of a mobile vs desktop site has started to blur to the point of being not worth talking about it that way.

There's a lot of elements designers can use to mangle a site from desktop to mobile and back again (stretching, shifting, css breakpoints based on screen resolution) and you can even make elements appear and disappear if you feel like it, though most sites I've seen (especially in the local space) tend to have pretty much the same content on mobile and desktop. I've seen some data crunching that points to more content on the ranking page as being a ranking factor, and that sort of matches my own experience, but for local industry stuff, for photographers at least I saw an average of a lot closer to 500 words, with plenty of outliers on either side. Of all the search factors that can help, I'm not convinced that having a book of text on the page is an important one. Make a site that users will want to go to, that's more important than hitting some imaginary word count. Nothing wrong with having a good chunk of text on a mobile site though. If it's what best answers a searcher's query, that's what Google's going to want to show. Look up any recipe on your phone, everything you'll see that Google gives you is going to be long.

My two cents, is that you're overthinking it. You'll need to have some content of course, but normal ranking factors are still going to be what gets you the traffic.

Or put another way... SERPs are different between mobile and desktop, but I haven't noticed a big enough difference to make me question whether or not what works on desktop will still help on mobile. Your site will still work on desktop though, yeah? It might be hard to build backlinks if your site looks wrong for some of the people who visit it. Honestly, I think that gets at the heart of the mobile/desktop debate... you need good content that views correctly for any device that checks it out.

If you're really curious though... take those keywords and do some competitive intelligence. What are the people already there in different high competition cities doing?

 

[willieaames]

Every year people spend more and more time on their mobile devices and tablets but still desktop searches are higher than mobile.

 

[James Watt]

Kind of depends on the industry. But regardless, even if it's only 20% of the leads you're throwing out because you're not optimized for that percentage of your audience, why would you?

Even if Analytics showed over 90% of the traffic wasn't from mobile, I'd still be inclined to recommend someone get their site mobile ready, just because Google themselves has come out and said they're not going to show your site to mobile browsers if you're not set up well enough for them.

 

[JoshuaMackens]

Most searches for our local businesses from a mobile device are somewhere in the 25% range. James is right, you want to optimize for mobile. I mean, that's 25% of your revenue right there.

But yes, desktop searches are still the overwhelming majority of searches for our local businesses. Think about it, do you want to do purchase research through a mobile device or through a desktop? There's no way I would use a mobile device. It's not efficient enough. And choosing a local business is a purchasing decision.

But you can't ignore mobile. 25% is a staggering number if you're not mobile optimized.

Are you really designing a local services site for mobile only? I only briefly read your post so if I missed what you're really doing, I apologize. But if you are, giving what I just wrote above, I think that's probably a mistake as conversely, you will be missing out on possible 75% of your traffic.

 

[mborgelt]

It seems like you would like to know what content to write based on your keywords. AnswerThePublic.com: that free visual keyword research & content ideas tool is a great place to start for "spitball ideas." I find I can get going on a great streak using this if I'm hosed on ideas. HubSpot's Blog Topic Generator is great for combining keywords and getting ideas. Also, search for 5-10 forums that are relevant to your market and start answering their questions. I hope this answer is on target for you. Let us know if not and we can get you going in the right direction.