As the search engine market continues to evolve with every passing year, more and more brands and content creators are in pursuit of new ways to reach their target audiences. Perhaps the biggest and most consistent shift in the world of search and internet traffic is the effect that mobile devices continue to have on browsing habits. It was just a few years ago that mobile internet traffic accounted for roughly ten percent of the market: today, it constitutes roughly thirty percent. As this key subset of internet traffic continues to grow, it is only a matter of time before all SEO considerations are made primarily with mobile traffic in mind. If your website has an established base of content and its SEO tactics are functioning well with traditional audiences, then it may be time to consider a foray into optimizing your content for mobile audiences. Below, we will discuss the easiest ways that you can accomplish this.

Expand Keyword Usage

While you may be pinging search engines with dozens of keywords already, they may not be the best phrases and queries to use for a mobile audience. After all, many people search for simpler results when on a mobile device, so it only makes sense to target some of these shorter phrases in order to boost exposure on tablets and smartphones. While it can be very difficult to break into prominent results if you have just started your website, an established niche website with strong performance in a variety of similar keywords can see great success when shorter phrases that pertain to the same subject are used. If you currently target a SERP such as “buy Christmas gifts early 2013”, then a shorter phrase like “Christmas shopping 2013” may be an ideal phrase to target.

Track Page Metrics

This is something that you most likely already do, but keeping track of your site’s traffic and web-page level analytics can give you greater insight as to whether or not your mobile SEO optimization efforts are having the desired effect. Depending on the suite of software that you currently use, you may or should be able to view what percentage of traffic has found your website via search and what percentage of those viewers originate from mobile devices. Many people use mobile devices to initially find your website and then check it out from home at a later time – for this reason, your mobile optimization efforts may garner even more traffic than you had initially estimated.

Target Social Media

As social media continues to play a key role in what is pinging search engines from your site and brand, you will want to target social media and utilize a consistent approach for content on the major platforms like Facebook and Google Plus. Most mobile search results are much friendlier to social media presence than traditional desktop browsing, so an increased presence via mobile can be obtained at a quicker pace when your social media presence is strong and consistently pumps out relevant content.