Throughout North America (and the rest of the world for that matter) more than 50% of all connections to the Internet occur via mobile devices. That number, by the way, is increasing every year. And why do you suppose that is? Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that nearly everyone on the planet possesses a mobile communication device of one kind or the other.
These brilliant inventions have taken hostage those who possess them via clever tiny operating systems. The fine folks at Google have recognized this fact. This is the reason why they give greater weight in organic search results to web sites that wisely scale to mobile devices.
If we rewind the clock a few years we can see that since 2015 Google has had its eye on the mobile prize. That was the year when Google algorithms officially began segregating mobile searches from desktop searches. Since then, Google has continued to up the ante. The moral of the story is simple: go mobile or get left behind.
While this may sound like doom and gloom to web site developers working from desk top interfaces, there is a simple check list that you can follow to maintain the mobile friendliness of your website and keep your company high in the search rankings. Follow these simple steps below and observe how traffic will migrate towards your site.
SEO to Leverage Your Site to Mobile
1) If nothing else, create a separate mobile version of your site.
Numbers speak volumes. The time is not far off when mobile optimization has priority over desktop. Until then, just remember that proportionality is key. A mobile devise dictates smaller page real estate. To achieve mobile responsive design, it is necessary to optimize the layout relative to each individual device. Remember to scale images and navigation menus to suit smaller screens. Likewise, content must also be scaled to fit (reduction of text paragraphs and larger call to action buttons).
2) Page loading speed: Fast and Furious!
As a rule of thumb, the faster your page loads, the higher it’s going to rank. It’s just a simple fact. Slow page loading leads to what is known as a higher “bounce rate” because people are so easily bored. Make them wait, and they will be gone, off to your nearest competitor. A primary culprit for slow page loads is large image files. The good news is the solution is a relatively simple one to work out. Online one can find numerous tools that check mobile speed limits.
You can greatly improve your page loading speeds by sticking to relevant content. Get rid of all the unnecessary clutter. Focus on just the important material. Try compressing large files like images, and minimize (to the extent possible) Java Script files and unnecessary plug-ins. In order to match speed with site content and popularity, it may be necessary to contemplate an upgrade of web hosting as well.
3) Mobile-friendly content is concise and to the point.
Mobile-friendly means displaying sharply focused relative and authoritative content. It must grab and hold the attention of the viewer. To do this it must be neatly concise and to directly to the point. This type of content is what holds the viewers attention and brings them back again and again, increasing your sites popularity and authority. Your goal is to generate a positive feedback loop that results in higher search engine rankings.
Creating mobile-friendly content with audience appeal benefits your desktop layout as well. Remember, when confronted with large amounts of information, people tend to skim or bounce. Keep their attention with attention grabbing and evocative titles. You can do the same by creating short catchy meta descriptions. It is quite surprising to see the number of casual browsers you can snare through simple relevant key words and easy to read fonts.
4) Prioritize local search content.
Often, online searches are indicative of people looking for goods and services within their immediate geographic area, neighborhood, town, state, or province. In the time of the Covid 19 pandemic people are desperately searching for things like toilet paper, face masks, flour, and yeast “near me”. Or they may be asking “where can I buy” those items. It pays huge dividends to optimize your web site to take advantage of local business schemas. Start cashing in on those local searches!
The easiest way for you to optimize your site to pull in those local searches is to make sure you have not forgotten to include your business name, address, and phone number. You should also include your business category, hours of operation, products or services. A photo of your business offering is a good idea. Don’t forget to scale for mobile platforms.
5) Do not overlook the value of social media.
It staggers to mind when you realize how many people use the internet expressly for the purpose of connecting to social media like Facebook and Instagram, to name a few. Whether you like them or not, social media platforms support huge audiences.
Those are people who can easily be converted to potential customers provided you take the care to tailor your content to social media as you optimize your mobile friendly site. Ignore social media at your own peril.
One of the wonderful things about social media is that little thing called the share button.
If you are putting out relevant authoritative content that receives high numbers of shares, search engines will perceive your site as having greater authority. The result of increased recognition of authority is higher ranking in organic searches (the primary goal of SEO). You can greatly increase your chances of getting your content shared by consistently posting engaging content having eye catching images and headlines with clear calls to action.
6) Last step: Verify, verify, verify.
So you have followed the steps above and are certain your site is as mobile friendly as can be. The last thing you need to do it to verify the state of things. Type your web site URL into the Google verification tool https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly. Click “Test URL” and wait for the report from Google.
See our On-Page Post on Mobile Testing as well.
This report will tell you whether your site is indeed mobile friendly. If it is determined that your site in not mobile friendly, Google will issue a report indicating where work needs to be done.
It may happen that the verification tool reports back that your site is indeed mobile friendly, but you find that that page ranking and page visits fall short of your initial expectations. Problems like this can be diagnosed by using the Google Search Console to check for crawl errors. Google indexes your site by crawling your site’s pages. If, for whatever reason, the search engine is unable to crawl your pages, it can not create the index.
Without the index your content fails to appear on search result pages. Thankfully, the Google Search Console will kick out a report indicating where crawl errors occur. It is important to make sure that all content (videos, images, and text) is crawlable and indexable. This is true across all devices, so verify, verify, verify.
