Do you really need to worry about mobile search?

Over the last five years people using search to find stuff on their mobile device has gown five times its size and this year if we look at Mobile Search spending "Mobile search spend in the U.S. increased 333% in the second quarter of 2012 compared to the same period last year, according to IgnitionOne. It now accounts for 14% of total search advertising budgets, up from 12% in Q1 2012." by Helen Leggatt in a recent report on Mobile Marketing.  In this range Tablets make up 60% of that spend with Smartphones accounting for the remaining 40%.

Growth will continue in line with growing Smartphone and tablet sales, with no sign of this trend slowing down.

 So, if you have not thought about it already, NOW is definitely the time to build up your Mobile Recruitment SEO strategy for your Employer brand and job advert related content. So you have a unique 'mobile first' SEO strategy for people who do actually search for content using their Smartphone or tablet device.

To help you a little, let me give you a few pointers to get you going.

First and most importantly you need your mobile pages to actually be technically structured, specifically for mobile and tablet browsers, it sounds a bit obvious but believe me just check out many of the business sectors career sites and see how many do not even have this to offer a mobile searcher.  Google will weight its mobile SEO algorithm negatively if you do not have mobile enabled pages.

Do your keywords research again! What a job seeker uses in a normal browser to find their ideal job is not exactly the same as the words they use in a mobile browser.  Google adwords tool allows you to be device specific when looking for suggestions, but think common sense for a minute, what is the change for them to use a different range of keywords.  For me this seems obvious, the time they have to run the search task, where they are doing the search task and what else they might be doing at the same time as the search task.  All this will make them much more economical with their search phrasing. Well it’s what I think, but do your own research!

Remember not everyone uses their Smartphone in the same way or knows how to use all the tools on a phone.  So think predictive text and check what job or career related keywords this tool spits out and add this to your research.

When creating HTML for mobile browsers, some of the rules for good navigation and user experience change.  You really do need to avoid anything in the template design that hinders Keyword visibility.  Think single finger navigation by the user to get them to job pages you want them to apply to or refer or share.  Make sure you keep this navigation easy to understand and the pages clean and simple with the text uncomplicated and quick to read for the user.  Also ensure you have visitor conversion options on all the pages Google has indexed in its mobile index.

General Rule: Most rules for normal SEO still apply to mobile SEO, a few key things need to be accounted for and some mentioned above, and this will keep your mobile recruitment efforts on top of Smartphone search results.

Author: Martin Shaw

For more information, please contact martin by email or call him on 07791 673 715.  Or why not connect to him on LinkedIn

About RecruitSmart Technology

Founded by Martin in 2012, RecruitSmart is a company focused on applying any combination of technology, on and off line marketing and communications and all their years of recruitment industry expertise to support a company's talent attraction, acquisition and management strategies.