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It no secret that for a while Google and many other search engines have relied on “mobile first indexing”, meaning that a website’s mobile version is more important than ever. This makes sense considering that in June 2019 mobile accounted for 50.71% of searches.
How you can optimize your website for mobile
Improve website load speed
Does your website load quickly? Well it should be, load speed is a search metric used to rank a website on the SERP; and also vital to maintaining a good user experience and reducing a website’s bounce rate.
If you fall short in this regard do not worry as there are many actionable steps you can take to reduce web load speed, for example:
Optimize images
Optimizing images for mobile users and with the intent of reducing load speed; requires consideration of file format. Generally, JPEG and PNG files are considered the most appropriate for graphics; for as long as these images have also been compressed to be suitable on the web and not overload the website with HTTP requests.
Minimize code
Optimizing code, by removing unnecessary code such as punctuation, formatting and unused code can significantly improve page load speed.
Reduce 301 redirects
A 301 redirect, tells Google that you moved the location (url) of a page and have no intention of moving it again. This allows for the traffic from one url to be sent directly to the new url and can be useful within SEO if used correctly e.g, moving HTTP sites to HTTPS. However, in many cases a 301 redirect can create a chain where there are many redirects between the initial url and destination allowing for the overload of the server and reducing load speed.
There are several other methods of reducing page load speed; however, the once listed above is a starting point and will allow you to see results quickly.
Improve on page navigation
The navigation on a page is vital to retain mobile users; considering that they have smaller screens it likely that it will be harder to navigate and if users are unable to find exactly what they are looking for they’ll leave the page/website; this leads to a decrease in positive user experience and increase in bounce rate, both being metrics that impact positioning on the SERP.
Do NOT use popups
Intrusive popups are considered particularly annoying by both mobile and desktop users; however, considering that mobile users have smaller screens popups are more detrimental to the user experience of mobile users and may increase bounce rate.
Optimize titles and description
Also the smaller screen size on mobile impacts the SERP as there is less space to display titles and description; therefore it important to write them concisely because failing to do so will have a significant impact on the click through rate of mobile users.
Use Schema.org structured data
Many SEO professionals fail to recognize the importance of Schema data; by answering users queries concisely and clearly your website will be able to feature in the snippets allowing for a high click through rate if the snippets are of high quality and/or change the meta description of page to present users with information relevant to their search query before clicking on your website.
If content on your site is of high quality you may be able to significantly increase your click through rate by implementing Schema markup code.
Optimize for local searches
The SERP of a given keyword can vary from person to person and is dependent on many factors, one of these being users current location. In many cases Google prioritizes local results which gives small/medium enterprises the opportunity to rank above larger organizations that may be more established in the industry.
For example, let say I am in Manchester and want my haircut if I search for ‘barbers’ and/or ‘hairdressers’ I’ll be presented with searches local to my area (Manchester) because Google recognizes that I am unlikely to travel to London for a haircut regardless of how desperate I am in need of one, a website for a hairdresser based in London is unlikely to rank even if they may or may not have more traffic and a better link profile.
Considering the importance of local searches and that searches made by mobile users are typically done ‘on the go’ business need to optimize their websites with local searches in mind; this may be through joining online business directories and/or using localized keywords etc.
AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages)
Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) is an Open Source Framework launched by Google that strips down existing web pages and produces copies allowing pages to load almost instantly. However, consideration needs to be made on whether the faster loading speed is worth sacrificing elements that may be essential for good user experience.
A good read expanding on this topic is available here
Tag posts based on mobile searches
Mobile users behaviour are also having an impact on their choice of keywords and there are clear trends suggesting that keywords can vary significantly between mobile and desktop users.
For example there is now a need to account for both grammatical and spelling errors in the searches of mobile users; considering that many searches are being done ‘on the go’ and the smaller screens on phones, mistakes become common and inevitable among some users.
By including these keywords in the ‘tags’ of a post it allows your website to rank higher on the SERP easier, as the spelling/grammatical errors make the keywords less competitive.
To conclude a lot of the changes necessary for optimizing a website to mobile users rely on improving user experience and considering the keyword differences between desktop and mobile users.