Do you know that over 60% of today's internet traffic come from mobile devices? Search engines such as Google are now prioritizing mobile-friendly websites when the searches are coming from mobile devices too. Not having a mobile-optimized website will only hurt your site's traffic and SEO performance.
Guide To Mobile Optimization
You can see a live example on your own. Just Google any keyword and go through the top 10 websites on the first page. The website with the most responsive layout would rank at the top rather than the others. Of course, other SEO factors still matters but you can't ignore this one at any cost. You can
test your website responsiveness using several online tools. To get your site mobile-ready, here are a few things you can do.
Responsive vs. Mobile Version
There are two routes you can take to make your site mobile-friendly. The first one is to use a responsive design. A responsive site is a website that displays content according to the size of the screen used by its users. When viewed from mobile devices, for example, a responsive site will appear lighter, slimmer and more optimized for a touchscreen interface.
A mobile version, on the other hand, is a standalone version of the site designed specifically for mobile. The main difference between these two is the approach each takes to display mobile-friendly content. With a responsive design, you only need one user interface for all screen sizes. With dedicated mobile versions, however, you will have to design an independent interface for each targeted device.
Both approaches have their own advantages and disadvantages. The key is choosing the right one according to a number of factors, including:
- The type of users you are targeting
- The mobile devices they use to view your site
- The content you want to deliver to them
- The kind of experience you want to associate with your brand
Optimize Web Elements for Mobile Delivery
Some of the most common problems with delivering content to mobile devices are the use of unsuitable or non-optimized mobile elements. Some tips to fix mobile friendly mistakes are mentioned here:
- Eliminate render-blocking JavaScript
- Minify HTML, JavaScript and CSS for faster loading time on mobile devices
- Eliminate (or hide) elements that don't work well on mobile devices, such as Flash animations and large images
- Optimize images for mobile devices by reducing their size and compressing them
- Fix faulty redirects, especially those that redirect mobile users to the correct mobile-friendly view of the site
Now that you have a mobile-friendly site, it is time to make sure that search engine crawlers can also see the mobile-friendliness. According to the experts at SEO royals, some of the things you can do include:
- Test your site using Google's Webmasters Tools. There is a special test for mobile-friendliness here. Once your site passes the test, it will start appearing and ranking better on mobile search results.
- Monitor page loading time regularly. Search engines now take user experience as a big influencing factor when ranking websites, so a smooth and pleasant UX is important.
- Optimize keywords for mobile users. Understand how your users search for information on mobile devices and make adjustments to the keywords you target accordingly. Long-tail, relevant keywords are also worth looking into.
- Use the correct viewport and make sure you leave enough whites pace between elements, especially links and buttons. These also affect your user experience rating and will highly influence your site's SEO performance.
So this was all about. Let me know your views through the comments. Feel free to ask anything regarding the guide.
