Mobile Optimization SEO Guide for Building a Great Website
December 20, 2023
Prashant Shukla
What has changed from the original post:
- The entire blog is written again
- New subheadings added: Mobile SEO Guide:
- Importance of Mobile SEO, Mobile SEO vs Desktop SEO:
- How they differ in SERPs, best practices, how to check if you have a Mobile-Friendly website
Summary: This mobile SEO guide gives information about what is mobile SEO, its importance and the best practices to follow for a mobile optimized website. It is essential to optimize websites for mobile devices to improve their visibility, increase traffic and deliver better user experience.
Mobile searches refer to the queries made on search engines using mobile devices, such as tablets and smartphones. In comparison to searching from a laptop or desktop, users prefer handheld devices because of their quick and easy accessibility.
People are using mobile devices to make online searches more than ever. It contributes to around 56.2% of all website traffic. These searches are typically done with simpler data results in mind.
As mobile usage becomes more prominent, more companies are working on making their websites mobile-friendly and improving their user experience. Let’s delve deeper into mobile optimization SEO with this mobile seo guide to build a great website.
What Is Mobile SEO?
Mobile SEO refers to the process of optimizing a website so that it looks great, provides a positive user experience and ranks higher on search engines on every mobile device. It helps make the website mobile-friendly by customizing it to fit any screen size.
It involves using many of the same best practices as desktop SEO and plays a huge role in the overall SEO. With people using mobile devices to make more searches than ever, it becomes crucial to prioritize mobile SEO.
Mobile optimization SEO includes optimizing the site design, content and other relevant things with mobile usage in mind. The target keywords may also differ when optimizing a website for mobile devices.
Additional Read: What is SEO
Importance of Mobile SEO
With more people preferring mobile devices over desktops or laptops, it becomes essential to focus on mobile SEO along with website optimization.
Mobile SEO provides the best experience for your website visitors by making your website easily accessible and providing valuable content to users. So if you want to increase your customer base, and get a higher ranking and returns, mobile SEO is what you need to focus on.
Now, Google makes use of mobile-first indexing for every site on the web, however, there are a few exceptions. It means the mobile version of your site is the only one that counts toward rankings.
Here are some of the reasons why mobile SEO is important:
- Mobile searches are rising with increasing mobile usage.
- Positive mobile experiences make visitors return more often.
- Mobile SEO affects conversion rates.
- Sales go up with more mobile searches.
- Google algorithm prefers mobile-first indexing.
Mobile SEO vs Desktop SEO: How They Differ in SERPs
A website ranks differently on a desktop and mobile. The Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) rankings are considered separately on both types of devices. Some of the key differences are as follows:
- Firstly, Google and other search engines display results based on the user behavior on a particular device. These results vary for each device. For instance, mobile search results include images and videos. Results are set up in the form of cards so that they take up more vertical space in mobile devices. Larger mobile results mean fewer results show up on the screen and more scrolls are needed This justifies the need for mobile SEO services so that potential users find your website within the first few pages.
- Secondly, desktop results are generally a few lines of text, allowing more results to be displayed at once. That is why desktop users will likely scroll only two or three times. However, people tend to grab the nearest device and make a quick search. This device is usually a smartphone. So if your content doesn’t show up within the first few results, you are likely to miss out on potential visitors and revenue.
- Another aspect to consider in mobile SEO is the click-through rate (CTR). The CTR on mobile devices is less than desktops. The reason behind this is less results are displayed at once. The users on mobile devices tend to click on the first link instead of vetting through the list.
Mobile SEO Guide: Best Practices
Once you decide to implement a mobile SEO strategy for your website, you need to consider some important points to ensure your site’s content ranks high in search engine results for mobile devices.
Here are some of the best practices to improve your mobile SEO strategy and improve your website’s visibility.
Page speed
Page speed is more important to mobile device users than desktop users. It goes beyond just optimizing images for mobile. It involves minifying the code, leveraging browser caching and reducing redirections.
Customize Site design for mobile
Mobile devices are revolutionizing the way websites are designed. In the world of endless scrolling, customizing your website design can help make it mobile-friendly. Some important changes include:
1. Don’t use Flash
A flash plugin may not be available on every mobile device. It can hamper user experience and increase the bounce rate of your website. Consider using HTML5 to create special effects.
2. Avoid using pop-ups
Imagine opening a website to get some information and all you get is multiple pop-ups. This can be irritating, right?
Unnecessary pop-ups can lead to users leaving your website right after they open it.
3. Design for the fat finger
Having big buttons that flash on touchscreen devices can lead to accidental clicks. The same happens when the buttons are too small. So, focus on designing the website pages keeping a fat finger trying to scroll the page in mind.
Did you know! Techmagnate offers custom website designing services.
Don’t block CSS, JavaScript, or images
Old mobile devices used to block one or all three – CSS, JavaScript, or images – as the devices were incompatible with supporting these elements. But this no longer happens. The current smartphone GoogleBot supports and categorizes the content for users. So there is no need to hide or block CSS, JavaScript or images. These elements also play a critical role in helping Google understand the responsiveness of your website.
Optimize titles and meta descriptions
You must remember that mobile devices have less screen space to work with. It requires being as concise as possible while maintaining the quality of information. So, work on creating effective titles, meta descriptions and customizing URLs.
Additional Read: Learn How to Optimize titles and meta description for your web page
Optimize for local search
Remember to optimize your mobile content for local searches to reach the target audience and drive more local traffic. It includes standardizing your name, address, and phone number and including your city and state name in your site’s metadata.
Additional Read:: Local SEO Checklist for Success
Responsive web design
CSS3 media queries serve the same content to mobile and desktop users. It uses a fluid grid and a flexible design to automatically adapt to the size of a user’s screen.
Responsive website designs use media queries to target the layout based on screen width, orientation, and resolution.
Separate mobile URL
You can create a parallel, second site for mobile users. It allows you to create custom content for mobile visitors. The parallel URL can use an “m” subdomain to avoid confusion or mixing up with the desktop URL.
However, you must keep in mind that a parallel site can be as imperfect as dynamic serving sites. The visitors may end up on a different page. Therefore, it is necessary to ensure that the URL they click on lands them on the right version.
Another thing to consider here is the redirections. Ensure that all the redirects are in place to avoid any effects on the page speed.
How to Check if you have a Mobile-Friendly Website
Before you make any minor or major changes to improve mobile SEO, you must ensure that your website is mobile-friendly.
To do this, you don’t need to load every page on your mobile. Simply using Google’s mobile page testing tool can work. You can search for a mobile-friendly test on Google and conduct the test with your website URL.
Another convenient method of testing your website’s mobile-friendliness is using Google Search Console. You can get a Mobile Usability Report with separate URLs put into categories according to issues.
Once you have finished your mobile-friendly analysis, you will have a clear idea about your website’s requirements. Then, you can modify your website accordingly with an effective mobile SEO strategy.
Take charge of your website’s mobile SEO success with Techmagnate’s guide. Connect with us to get started!