SEO articles are a sound and relatively inexpensive marketing tool. It is a great way to tap into local traffic with low levels of competition. Business owners can hire a search engine optimization company to optimize their website for pertinent search keywords in the area, and benefit from high search rankings for those terms. However, while this is a sound strategy to capture the traditional internet surfer, business owners may be losing precious traffic if they don't look to capture the mobile internet surfer as well. More and more savvy webmasters are beginning to realize the importance of mobile web design, and how it can complement their traditional SEO articles and other marketing efforts.

According to the Cisco Visual Networking Index, in 2010, mobile traffic nearly tripled over the previous year for the third year in a row, and global mobile traffic will increase 26-fold by 2015 compared to 2010. Google stated that the growth rate of searches conducted on mobile devices is higher than that of desktops and laptops. It stands to reason that any search engine optimization strategy needs to be done with mobile traffic in mind. Whether through changes to the design of the existing website or via the creation of a mobile-friendly version, any SEO articles and/or content will be better served by incorporating a presence in the mobile internet.

While traditionally designed websites may appear on mobile searches, the site doesn't appear in its entirety on the small screen of smartphones. The user has to perform quite a bit of horizontal and vertical scrolling to cover the entire website. And given the fickle nature of today's internet surfer, he or she is more likely to hit the back button and move on to a web property that is designed for a mobile device, thereby rendering any SEO efforts moot with respect to a large segment of internet surfers.

Sure, iPhones and Androids come with zooming capabilities, but zoom too far out and you can barely read the content or click on any link, zoom too far in and you're back to having to play with the scroll bars, not to mention the fact that some smartphones have a problem, in a sense that it causes them to run slower, with things like flash, Javascript and other elements of design that are common to traditional sites.

In addition, mobile phone technology makes mobile internet very conducive to local search. Assisted GPS, for instance, can return local search results with businesses that are within close proximity of the user. Google mobile searches show results with easy buttons, such as a hyperlinked phone number that allows the user to directly phone a business by simply hitting the hyperlink.

Local search engine optimization and SEO articles are a very efficient and cost-effective marketing strategy, but not as efficient as it can be when combined with mobile web design. The advent of mobile devices and the growing trend of mobile internet surfing make it virtually imperative for businesses to have a presence in the mobile as well as the traditional internet. Not having that presence can substantially curtail any optimization efforts.