SEO: We Help Discovery Here

There is plenty of historical data on the behavior of desktop shoppers, but Google explicitly stated this year that mobile has changed how consumers behave online. Google’s Director of Marketing, Matt Larson, explained, “Take the oft-quoted stat that most people check their phones 150 times a day. Pair it with another that says users spend 177 minutes on their phones per day, and you get a pretty fascinating reality: mobile sessions that average a mere one minute and 10 seconds long, dozens and dozens of times per day.” He continued, “At Google, we call these micro-moments. They’re the moments when you turn to a device—often your smartphone—to take action on whatever you need or want right now. They’re the I-want-to-know, I-want-to-go, I-want-to-buy, and I-want-to-do moments… We don’t just rely on long sit-down sessions at our keyboards to make purchases anymore. We reach for our devices and make informed decisions faster than ever before.” With over 50% of dealership web traffic coming from mobile devices according to leading automotive website providers, this suggested change in behavior may warrant a change in strategy.

Thanks to search updates announced by Google and Apple this year , if you aren’t already investing in mobile apps, your ranking position in SEO may be in jeopardy. Apps are now a ranking factor in mobile search results and can be indexed just like websites. These updates to Apple and Google search are already affecting ranking position. Google’s new CEO, Sundar Pichai, stated “40% of searches now return app indexing results in the top five results.” According to Emily Grossman, “The app rankings advantage is pushed to the next level when you understand that Google is intentionally giving preference to app results for certain queries.” She continues, “In some cases, being an indexed app may be the only way to rank at the top in mobile Google search.” Google has stated that capitalizing on this new ranking system requires integrating a number of items, including HTTP deep links, app-to-site association, app indexing SDK, autocompletions, and more. You can find more information on these items here and here.

Emily Grossman posited that Apple and Google seem to have different ideas for what the internet should look like moving forward. In her article, App Indexing & the New Frontier of SEO, she stated, “In Apple’s ideal scenario, the web is only used as an invisible layer that links apps together and allows apps to become their own uniquely-controlled display-layers for private and public content… Conversely, Google stands to gain the most from a web-based world where data can be most easily collected, organized, and distributed so Google can become the presentation layer of the Internet.” Regardless of what the internet looks like in the years to come, these changes to Google and Apple Search adds another piece to consider when making an SEO strategy, regardless of industry.