In an interview with Search Engine Land, a Bing executive said that businesses must optimize their website and SEO strategies for mobile users.

In a recent interview with Search Engine Land, Bing mobile and local director of product management Andy Chu said that businesses should optimize their websites for mobile users to extend their reach to a broader array of audiences.

According to Chu, Bing’s focus on local search has naturally made mobile a priority at the company. Searches from smartphones and tablets have a user’s location factored into the results to provide information related to their general areas. For retailers, restaurants and other B2C businesses, local SEO and mobile site optimization are especially important. Google mobile search behaves similarly.

Bing’s use of social signals in search rankings relates to mobile as well, as Facebook applications are among the most popular mobile applications. Marketers must consider their social content sharing, accordingly.

“At Bing, we are focusing on how to help people to make faster, more informed local decisions in order to help them complete tasks, save money and make search more social with their Facebook friends,” Chu said in the interview.

Despite Bing’s aggressive steps to make mobile search results as relevant as possible, Chu said that its search results are held back by device capability to an extent. More modern, highly capable smartphones will be able to leverage Bing’s full mobile capability. According to Chu, mobile applications, bookmarks and previous searches will all help compile search results.

Tailoring mobile search to the user is a strong follow-up to Bing’s aggressive work in molding desktop search. Brafton reported last month that Bing has launched Adaptive Search to factor previous queries and web history into its results.

Joe Meloni is Brafton's former Executive News and Content Writer. He studied journalism at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and has written for a number of print and web-based publications.