According to a new report from BrightEdge, 57% of search traffic now comes from smartphones and tablets.
BrightEdge also discovered that ranking positions for a vast majority of keywords differ depending on whether the search was conducted on mobile or desktop.
Research indicates that 79% of all keywords rank differently on desktop compared to mobile, with 47% of those being keywords in positions 1-20.
Site owners may also be missing opportunities concerning the visibility of their most important pages.
A webpage of a particular website most likely to show up first in search results will be different 35% of the time, BrightEdge found.
"If brands do not track and optimize for both device channels, they are likely to misunderstand the opportunities and threats affecting them."
It is recommended that marketers assess the proportion of their traffic coming from mobile and desktop and adjust their strategy accordingly.
In addition to having a fast, mobile-optimized site, this also includes understanding the user intent signals of desktop visitors and mobile visitors.
"Where you find divergent organic rank or content or clickthrough rate, optimize the stronger device proportionally to its traffic contribution share. In other words, understand which device is more important and optimize it first, and best, and the other second."
For further details and insights, download the full report.
