Mobile Search Keyword Research

As more and more people opt for Internet-ready smartphones and cellphones, mobile search is on the rise. Just between the years 2009 and 2010 the number of searches on Google through mobile devices has increased five times. Because of this awesome growth in the use of mobiles for accessing websites, mobile advertising became very attractive for a lot of businesses. Local businesses, in particular, are considered a best fit for advertising on mobile devices. If you are an owner of a business that allows customers to make a contact with you through a mobile phone, using mobile ads to target these customers could prove crucial.

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Keyword Research for Mobile Search

Searches on mobile devices are different than those on desktop devices

Know that a mobile user usually has a different behavior and motivation than one using a laptop or desktop computer. Users of mobile devices are usually not at home and use a small screen display that is not easy to read. They are also motivated by different needs for their searches.

You should definitely consider these differences when planning your advertising if you are a mobile advertiser. Mobile campaigns should be established separately. The keywords and advertisements you use in your mobile campaign must be optimized for the mobile user. They should not be a duplicate of the keywords and advertisements you use for searches on desktop devices. It is also important to test your pages on mobile devices to ensure they correctly display your content on screens of small width.

Keyword research for mobile devices

Just the same as it is with other online marketing forms, the first step towards developing a mobile marketing plan is keyword research. Your keyword research should be specifically tailored for mobile users to ensure optimal success. Mobile users tend to use very different search terms.

The keyword tool of Google

We are fortunate that Google has already made it simple to gain more insight into searches via mobile devices through their addition of the Google Keyword Tool. The volumetric data it provides is useful for what keywords mobile searchers use.

Defining goals and success metrics

Keyword research can only be conducted successfully if you have clear goals. It is not worth your time and effort to discover the keywords if you don’t know your goals.

It is important to figure out how you would use the keyword research. If you already have a responsive or an adaptive website, then knowing keywords for mobile devices will not be of much help to you.

In contrast, if your search relates to a website specifically designed for mobile devices, you can use content and keywords on your mobile pages. In both cases, knowing your audience and the keywords it uses can greatly aid you in meeting the goals of your campaign.

Responsive Web Design for Your Website

Keyword discovery

Once you determine your goals, you need to discover the way in which mobile users reach your website and how searchers on mobile devices discover the websites of your competitors. You can use the tools listed below to bring together a list of keywords.

Google Webmaster Tools – these can be used to determine the way in which people find your website through mobile devices. This information will not be of help to you if your site is not optimized for the most popular keywords. However, you can see how well you rank for the keywords mobile searchers use.

Don’t forget to filter your queries by mobile. This will ensure you only see the keywords used for accessing your site via mobile devices. These keywords will most likely come from tablets, smartphones and feature phones, although the report doesn’t specifically list them.

This particular report is very useful because it gives you the option to see impressions, rankings and clicks for mobile devices.

Google Analytics – it allows you to examine mobile keywords by navigating to Audience > Mobile > Overview, accessible through the right hand navigation. You can filter your query to exclude “not provided” and “not set” and only include mobile keywords.

Google Keyword Tool – it is the only keyword tool that is mobile-only that I know, which present you with specific keywords for mobile devices that your websites is not presently optimized for if you enter a keyword, a category or a URL.

The Advanced Options and Filters of the Google Keyword Tool allow you to receive keywords from smartphones, tablets and feature phones. Additionally, you can select only one type of device at a time.

Just like it is with the traditional keyword research, you should determine in what way your users discover your website. However, you should not limit yourself to desktop searches only. Be aware of the fact that mobile sometimes implies to different types of search behavior. You should find out what that means for the types of products and services you are be promoting.

Keyword qualification

You must have already accumulated a lot of mobile keywords by this time, but how do you find out which of those are the best? Volume allows you to determine both competitiveness and traffic, but on its own it is quite not enough. There are a number of exercises people use to help themselves make better decisions for their businesses with mobile keywords. For example, you can count queries by platform. The mobile search queries report of the Google Webmaster tools is a good choice because it grants you the option to make a comparison between your mobile and desktop queries for users accessing your website through different devices.

This can be accomplished by downloading your web and mobile CSVs by using the search query report filter and downloading the resulting tables. You can then use Excel to place label on only those queries that result from desktop searches, the queries resulting only from mobile searches, and those appearing from both.

You will receive a much better understanding of the type of website you need to develop by examining search behavior variance in a pivot table chart as simple as the one below: