Tips to do Mobile Keyword Research in 2013?

It’s no longer a query of whether your business needs mobile SEO. But now it’s an important question of how well you do it? If you have dabbled into Search Engine Optimization before, you must believe Smart Keywords research is the cornerstone of every great Search Engine Optimization campaign and when it comes to mobile Device, there’s no difference.

Before you jump for Keyword Research, you have to know how you are going to quantify success and failure. Why spend your valuable hours if you don’t have “Defined Goals”. Keep in mind that while adaptive websites may look good, we are talking about having a specific mobile site.

You could seek a percentage of total mobile volume or sort by mobile volume in order to find popular keywords (which you can sort by platform if need be). However, before you do, you need to define what you want your viewers to do when they reach your site, do you want to convert offline, want them to download something, just have them provide views, or actually buy a product?

Find your keywords
You know what you want to do – now how are you going to get there? The following list of tools will help you narrow down your options when it comes to a keyword search:

 • Google Webmaster Tools – You can use this to find out how people are currently coming to your site when using a mobile device. Face it, if you are not actively running a mobile-optimized site already, this will not help much, but at least it provides some basic information you can use.

 • Google Analytics – Look at the right hand navigation and use Audience > Mobile > Overview to see mobile keywords. You now see the keywords that tablet and mobile users often use.

Google Keyword Tool – Perhaps the sole mobile-only keyword tool that will give you keywords that are mobile-specific, even if your site is not optimized for mobile yet. Go under Advanced Options and Filters, and then select all mobile devices. The goal here is to think about outside the box and not restrict your search to desktop context.

Keyword qualification Now that you have done that, you probably have a ton of mobile keywords, how do you go about deciding the best ones for you? You can use volume to estimate competitiveness and traffic, but it will not be enough by itself. Consider these factors as well:

Queries count by platform – You can use the mobile search queries report by Google Webmaster Tools to compare mobile queries with desktop queries and see the differences in search behavior. The more information that you have, the better your results are going to be.

 • Mobile/non mobile tag cloud – Want a quick (and fun) overview of the differences between mobile and desktop search? Upload any keyword list that you get from Google and use it with a tag cloud generator such as Tag Crowd. Now you can instantly see potential differences.

Mobile % of Total Traffic Report – Using the Google Keyword Tool will tell you the estimated percentage of mobile searches within the total volume of searches

As you can see, keyword research for mobile does not have to be an intimidating task. It is certainly going to require time and effort, but ultimately the results are going to be worth it
Read more »