• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, October 5, 2015

With more consumers reaching for their mobile devices this holiday season to search for goods and make purchases, marketers need to optimize pages for quick response times. Pages that rank higher in mobile phone searches tend to differ from those on desktop searches. The speed in which the pages load takes into account word count, page size, design elements like buttons, links and more. Across both phone and desktop search results one of the most important ranking factors remains good quality, relevant content, according to the study.

The Searchmetrics study analyzes the ranking factors that are most important for mobile, how ranking factors differ in mobile and desktop search, and what average values do the top 10 landing pages have in relation to these ranking factors. Answers to these questions should help marketers better optimize Web site pages and campaigns.

The results come from the Searchmetrics Mobile Ranking Factors US 2015 study, an analysis of the top 30 mobile phone search results for 10,000 relevant keywords on Google.com. The analysis is based on one general keyword set comprising 10,000 keywords. For each keyword, the first 30 mobile search results were analyzed, and are identical to the set used for the desktop ranking factors. The data was pulled after Google updated its mobile algorithm.

File Size Matters

Large file sizes slow load times. Because of their smaller size, mobile pages load more quickly. Technical aspects of the smartphone and files accessed on the mobile device have a major influence on mobile rankings due to limited bandwidth and smaller display areas. All those analyzed by Searchmetrics had smaller average file sizes than the top 30 desktop results.

The study reveals that the average font size in a visible area without scrolling is significantly larger than on high ranking desktop results. Yet when scrolling down, the fonts on mobile phone pages are smaller than on desktop pages. The above-the-fold text is bigger because it often includes clickable navigation links that let visitors click through to different parts of the site.     

High-ranking mobile pages generally have fewer interactive elements such as menus and buttons as well as images. 72% of mobile pages in the top 30 search results contain at least one unordered list like bullet points to help structure information, about one-quarter more than on desktop search results.

Ditch Flash For HTML5

Flash use will continue to decline for various reasons such as security. Many devices and technology no longer support it, such as Google Chrome. HTML5 will replace it. The use of Flash elements in mobile rankings is not only lower than in the 2015 desktop search results, but has also decreased in relation to mobile search results from last year, and dropped further after the mobile-friendly update, per the report. Only 5% of the top 10 mobile search results integrated Flash in their landing pages.

It's important to focus on becoming a recognizable brand. The report notes that the share of keyword in domain names continues to drop lower in the mobile search engine results pages (SERPs) than in the desktop rankings. Searchmetrics admits not being able to observe any positive effect from having the keyword in the domain name for quite some time.

Shorter URLs And Less Copy

Use short URL strings and avoid redirecting users when possible. Compared with the 2015 desktop data, the mobile SERPs on average had a longer URL name. One possible reason is that often mobile specific URLs--m.example.com / mobile.example.com--are longer but still rank higher in the mobile results.

Higher-ranking content on mobile is shorter on average of 867 words, compared with 1,285 on desktop. It also includes significantly fewer internal links to related content on the same site.

Less ads, fewer internal links, and less images that would slow load times also helps to better optimize mobile sites. Mobile optimized URLs have much fewer ads, images and internal links than the desktop results. Searchmetrics attributes this to ads increase file size and load time, which require marketers to keep at a minimum on mobile devices.