Mobile Rank Tracking: Why do You Need It and Where to Start

Optimizing your website for mobile is more important than ever before. You can ignore rank tracking mobile and stick to old tactics that seemed to provide results to your business years ago. Alternatively, you can start investing more time in proven SEO techniques like mobile rank tracking and thrive online much faster. Having a mobile-friendly website is one of the crucial factors that will put your head above the competition by increasing your visibility in Google search.

In this article, you’ll learn:

1. What is mobile SEO

2. The difference between mobile and desktop search results

3. How to use Google Analytics to find out what devices your customers use

4. Why rank tracking mobile is crucial

5. How to track mobile rankings: set up a mobile rank checker in 5 easy steps

6. Why mobile optimization is a must for local businesses

What is Mobile Search Engine Optimization?

Mobile SEO, also referred to as mobile optimization or mobile search engine optimization is a vital process of redesigning your website for mobile devices in order to increase conversions by providing a better user experience. 

The Difference Between Mobile and Desktop Search Results

I’ve covered the difference between mobile and desktop search results in my previous blog post so you could get the whole picture about what to expect. But if to put it short, there are three main things that matter:

1. Location

Because geo-positioning of mobile devices is super easy to track, Google takes this data into account to provide users with the most relevant information. That’s why search results will differ depending on where you’re searching from.

2. The Operating System of Mobile Device 

I’ve conducted research using MobileMoxie SERPerator and found out that all Google Ads were different on Android compared to IOS. The operating system also refers to app packs that are not displayed on the desktop at all. It defines which options will be displayed in order to provide only results that are compatible with the device used to conduct the search. 

3. The Screen Size of the Device

Did you know that Google provides different layouts depending on the screen size of the device you’re using? By pushing organic results below map packs, local businesses have a significant opportunity to overrank high-authority domains by taking good care of Google My Business accounts. Also, you can track how your keywords perform in a certain location. Read our full guide about how to optimize local rank tracking in the easiest possible way.

Currently (and it doubly will change), in addition to optimizing search engines on desktop, you have to focus on mobile-first. Continue reading to find out why.

Mobile Device Usage in Google Analytics

Google Analytics can easily tell you what devices your customers are using. To do it, sign in to your GA account, click on “AUDIENCE” -> “MOBILE” -> “OVERVIEW”.Right below the graph, you will see the table with metrics. 

Note: Don’t forget to edit dates to get the most relevant information. The filter is situated on the right side of the page above the graph section.

This information can be very useful when used properly because:

1. It tells you what devices your current audience is using. If the number of mobile devices is extremely low, it can mean two things: mobiles are not that important for your business type or you’re missing opportunities because of poor mobile optimization and user experience.
2. It provides you with an important metric. You can track mobile device usage to see how your mobile optimization improvements affect the percentage of visitors that are using desktop versus mobile devices. 

Why Do You Need Mobile Rank Tracking?

Not so long ago, in order to have a well-optimized website for mobile devices, it was enough to implement responsive web design (RDW) and get it off your chest. Responsive design makes sure that all your content would adjust to any screen size or in other words it squeezes every part of your page so that it could fit in as many variations of mobile devices as it was planned to. You can find out the most common mobile and tablet screen resolutions here. 

Everything changed after July 1, 2019, when Google mobile-first indexing appeared. Right now Google first crawls the mobile version of your site which makes mobile-friendliness one of the main ranking factors that you should keep an eye on. That’s why mobile SEO is so crucial right now: it won’t only be your competitive advantage, but will also increase your website’s positions on Google. 

Because Google search results differ for mobile, it’s not enough to keep tracking how your website ranks for your target keywords only on desktop. The sooner you implement mobile rank tracking into your SEO routine, the faster you’ll make your website benefit from the Google mobile-first indexing. 

There are a number of SEO tools out there that offer mobile rank tracking, but what I personally love about Wincher is that mobile rank checker is fully integrated into its rank tracker. It means that you don’t need one tool to track keyword performance on a desktop, a separate tool to track mobile rankings, and a whole other one to research keywords.  Just set it up once and you’re good to go. 

How to Set Up Mobile Rank Tracking?

Optimize your website for mobile search if you want to target people on all devices. Implementing a mobile rank tracker will improve your rankings across devices and will help you grow your business’s presence online. 

Note: The steps in this tutorial assume you already have an account on Wincher. If not, spend just a few minutes in order to fix it and come back here. You don’t have to pay, just grab a 14 days free trial and test the tool before making any decisions.

Step 1: Add a Website

If you’re new to Wincher this will be the first page that will appear in front of you. This is because in SEO everything starts with a website. Here, just click on “ADD WEBSITE” and let’s keep going.

Step 2: Enter a Domain

In order to give our tool something to be working on, you have to provide it with the exact domain you want to track mobile rankings for.

Step 3: Choose Mobile Rank Tracking

When adding a website you will always have a choice of selecting desktop or mobile rank tracking. If you want to monitor the performance of your keywords on mobile devices, click on the second icon called “mobile”. 

Keep in mind that we recommend you add two options for each domain setup: one for desktop and one to track mobile rankings. This way you will increase your tracking options and will be able to see the difference between desktop and mobile positions. 

Step 4: Specify the Country

This step will allow you to choose the country for this specific project. You can add as many websites as you need. To track all of your target countries separately, just repeat a website set up for each.

Optional Step 5: Select Exact Location

If the website you want to start tracking provides local services or sells products in a specific location, this step is for you. In the previous step, we’ve selected the country and now we can set up even further and specify a specific location. This way our rank tracking tool will provide you with the freshest data so you could see exactly where your pages are ranking on each location. 

Because having the most accurate data is crucial for your SEO success, Wincher updates your keywords’ positions automatically every 24 hours. But what if you can’t wait until the next day for fresh data? Then you can update your positions manually on-demand.

When you filled all the required fields, just hit “ADD WEBSITE”. 

That’s basically it. I wasn’t lying that Wincher is the simplest rank tracker. If you click on the “MY WEBSITES” tab at the right upper corner (next to the heart symbol), you’ll be able to navigate to the overview of all the websites on your Wincher’s account. 

From here we can see that we’ve added a website www.wincher.com to track mobile search results in Sweden. 

Yet it’s still impossible to track performance for the website we’ve added to our account. This is because we didn’t add keywords. 

To add keywords to your website you can use a seed word, import keywords directly from the Google Search Console, a CSV file, and even from another website on your Wincher account. We have a separate guide where you can read about how to add keywords the simplest way using our SEO tool. 

Wincher has an incredible keyword suggestion tool that is fully integrated with the rank tracker. Read our guide that will lead you step-by-step and show you how easy it is to find the most relevant keywords for your website. 

Final thoughts

Search engine optimization is a complex process that will constantly trigger you to learn new approaches if your goal is to earn high rankings on Google (or any other search engine). High positions in SERPs are not something that you earn once and enjoy forever. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), you will never get bored with SEO. 

Currently, more than 55% of all the global traffic comes from mobile devices and this number will be growing each year. Add to this information Google mobile-first indexing and you’ll realize how inevitable it is to make sure your website is fully optimized for mobile search and provides the best possible user experience.

Mobile rank tracking will not only save you tons of time and resources but will also help you increase mobile positions in SERPs. Use Wincher rank tracker to get everything you need within one SEO tool: desktop, mobile, local rank tracking, and so much more. Read here all the features included. 

Grab a free trial to test Wincher for 14 days with no credit card required and see if it’s relevant to your business. The step-by-step guide in this article will help you set up mobile rank tracking and track mobile rankings easily. Try it yourself and track both desktop and mobile rankings to figure out the difference you didn’t notice before.