Categories: SEO

How to Optimize Your Website for Mobile SEO

You should optimize your website for mobile SEO. There’s no doubt about it.

According to a recent study by SimilarWeb, the percentage of mobile traffic is up to 63%, compared to 37% of desktop computers.

That same study shows that mobile users tend to spend more time on websites than they ever did, and average click-through rates from mobile devices are going up.

Evolution of device used to navigate the internet, from Stone Temple

Web usage is rapidly shifting from desktop from mobile. It is a trend that will continue in the following years.

Is your website prepared to receive mobile web traffic? And are you attracting all these mobile device users?

These are the topics we’ll talk about in this article:

Why optimize your website for mobile SEO
How to optimize your website for mobile SEO
Responsive design
Page load time
User-friendly design
Traditional SEO for mobile devices

Why You Should Optimize Your Website for Mobile SEO

You probably know that you should optimize your website for SEO. That’s how you get more traffic and convert leads into customers, isn’t it?

But did you know that you should also optimize your website for mobile SEO?

The difference between mobile and desktop

There are some important differences between regular SEO and mobile SEO. It’s important you understand these differences to achieve the results you’re after.

According to Google, mobile SEO is mainly about optimizing a website for smartphones and other portable devices. Not modifying what is displayed, but rather how it is displayed.

This implies that other SEO techniques, such as keywords and backlinking, might not be as relevant in mobile devices as they are in desktop and laptop computers.

What is optimizing a website for a mobile device? As we’ll see, there are two important factors: design and speed.

Why are these factors more important when it comes to mobile devices than they are on desktop computers?

Action: Visit your website from your smartphone. Do you notice any problems with it? Does it load fast enough?

Why responsive design and load speed affect mobile devices more

When accessing a website through a desktop computer, it is assumed that you have an excellent internet connection — wifi or ethernet — and a widescreen. Therefore, almost every single website will load fast and will be displayed as the designer intended.

What happens on a mobile device?

Usually, smartphones have much lower RAM and processing capabilities than desktops and laptops. They are slower machines.

Plus, internet connection is typically slower for smartphones, either because they are connected via 3G or LTE, or because the wifi antenna isn’t as powerful as it is on a laptop.

Mobile devices are also smaller than desktop computers. The screens might vary in size between 4 and 8 inches, nowhere near the size of a desktop computer.

Have you ever tried to access a website on your phone and realized that it was impossible to navigate? The problem was most likely one of the two: either the website took too long to load, or its design didn’t adapt to the screen size.

Average load time for non-bounced and bounced sessions, from Google

Responsive design and load speeds are the two main topics you should focus on when looking to optimize your website for mobile SEO.

How to Optimize Your Website for Mobile SEO

Since smartphones are so popular, it is mandatory to optimize your website for mobile SEO. To do so, you should look to improve your responsive design and reduce your load times.

Let’s have a look at the best practices to achieve these goals.

Responsive Design

Responsive design is the method that a website uses to reorganize its content depending on the screen size.

Certain objects of your website should be reduced, such as titles, text and pictures. Others should be eliminated: menus, videos, maps.

How do you choose what to do with each web page? Well, if you’re not a web designer or webmaster, this shouldn’t really be your task.

If you have a web designer on your team, then make sure to request a responsive website.

If you’re using templates for your website — this is usually the case for WordPress websites — then you’re most likely safe.

However, you can check the responsiveness of your website with different tools, such as Responsive Design Checker.

Action: Try Froont, a responsive design tool with a visual editor for websites.

Page Load Speed

As we explained, reducing your page load speed is an essential step to optimize your website for mobile SEO.

But how do you do it? Using a responsive design should improve your page load times, since fewer objects will need to load in each web page. But it might not be enough.

Our recommendation is that you try to avoid filling your website with unnecessary content. Give the visitors the information they are looking for, and leave the rest for another moment.

How about some emails? If you keep a simple layout for your website and convince visitors to sign up for a newsletter, you can deliver your content in a different way: email marketing.

Action: Use GetResponse to manage your email marketing

User-friendly design

Once you have implemented a responsive design and you have reduced your page load times, you can think of new ways to optimize your website for mobile SEO.

User-friendly design is a great way to go. Help your users navigate through your website in a simple fashion. Incentivize them to engage with clear call-to-action buttons and notifications.

Action: Use Proof to display real-time engagement and activity on your website

Best Practices to Optimize Your Website for Mobile SEO

We have explained why you should optimize your website for mobile SEO, and we’ve given you 3 simple examples of how to do it.

But what about traditional SEO techniques and methods? Are keywords no longer important in mobile SEO?

Not at all. As we mentioned, because responsive design and page load times are more important in mobile devices than they are in desktop computers, mobile SEO focuses on these topics.

However, titles, descriptions and content that includes popular keywords are still extremely important for mobile SEO.

In fact, because typing on a smartphone is different from typing on a keyboard, the search terms vary from one device to the other. You should update your list of keywords to find out which ones are more popular for users searching from mobile devices.

Action: Use SEMrush to find popular keywords for mobile devices

Now it’s up to you to optimize your website for mobile SEO. And remember, if you ever feel overwhelmed about implementing an SEO plan for the mobile version of your website, contact us for an absolutely free, no obligation strategy session, today!

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Kaizen Sigma, LLC

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