Mobile phones are the future, they are here to stay for several beneficial reasons; from connecting people to branding a product, mobile phones are handy, make everything easily accessible and garner potential viewers to your content. Therefore, due to all these reasons, it is no surprise that when it comes to gathering and inviting traffic to your website, mobile phones play a major role. Anyone owning a website is well aware of that fact. That's why people are switching to mobile SEO in hopes of bringing in potential traffic, why? Because more viewers mean more sales!

​

 To reflect the new changes and Google's move to mobile-first indexing, your website has a chance of being buried beneath millions of other websites! Unless of course, you switch to SEO practices. 

 

 To assist you to climb your way up, we have arranged a little guide regarding mobile SEO.

​

Are You Ready to Be Mobile-Friendly?

 

​

 

First things first or what is mobile SEO?

​

 Let's start with the basics. Mobile SEO stands for Mobile Optimization; true to its name it is the process of optimizing your content to secure a better position in the search engine’s results. When your website ranks better, it will bring in more traffic to your website; see it this way: when you Google something, you usually tend to stay on the first page while clicking on the first few websites. Applying the reader’s perspective, as a website owner when you optimize your blog, you will most likely rank higher and secure more traffic.

 

 As people tend to use their phones more than anything else, it is important to customize your website in such a way that you don’t turn the mobile users away! To make such users stay on your website, mobile optimization aids in designing the website to be more mobile user-friendly, reduces the load time and page speed, etc.

 

 But what makes Mobile SEO so important?

​

With the meaning explained, it’s time to focus on what makes mobile SEO so important.

​

Rise of Mobile Users

​

In recent years, the rise in smartphones guarantees that almost everyone around the world owns a mobile phone. While PCs and Laptops are here to stay as well, yet mobile phones take the cake. Easily portable, handy, and quick to pull up results, smartphones consist of all the advantages that make them preferable over any other device.

​

 More Mobile Users = More Searches

​

Since the rise in mobile users, mobile searches have increased as well; even surpassing desktop searches! Therefore, users are likely to stay on websites that are mobile-friendly, and as a website owner, you must keep a note of it. Use mobile optimization to your benefit.

 

 Google Search Ranking

​

Ever since Google switched to a mobile-first index, websites with better and more mobile-friendly content have gone up on the search ranking. Firstly, Google’s mobile-first index focuses on websites with mobile content that will be used to determine search engine ranking. Secondly, if you switch to a mobile SEO, you will increase your chances of a well-ranking content website!

 

Drives Sales

​

When you customize your website according to mobile SEO, you will be increasing your chances of inviting more traffic to your content. More traffic means more sales! Plus, even before buying any product or visiting a place, people tend to use mobile phones to look up reviews and decide. By using the most used search terms, your website can become easily accessible and distinguished.

Secondly, after reviewing a product, viewers prefer to stick to phones in order to buy the product. Therefore, from buying to selling, mobile phones are the most preferable medium. Use this tip to your benefit and design your website by adopting mobile SEO practices.

​

Voice Search

​

Along with the rise in mobile phones, voice search is becoming huge as well. The voice search feature in-home assistant devices such as Amazon’s Echo and Alexa as well as in smartphones enables users to look up any kind of query and optimized content from all across the internet. If you use mobile SEO to optimize voice search, you will increase your chances of getting ahead of the game and beating your competitors!

 

Now that the basics are covered, it’s time to answer a few more specific questions.

 

If you have mobile-optimized your content, how would you know if you are even attracting viewers or not?

While it may seem impossible to keep track of the visitors on your website, certain tools like Google Analytics can make it easier for you to determine the number of visitors on your content site. It also helps you in determining what device your users are using to access your website as well as the period of visit. When looking at the results, it will become clear to you that mobile users are far more in number than any other device user. Therefore, it is only sensible to switch to mobile SEO.

​

Before getting started with mobile SEO, check your website to see how mobile-friendly it is.

Who knows you might be unknowingly using the right words and techniques for bringing traffic to your website. But in case of knowing where exactly you stand and how much work you need to put into your website to make it more user-friendly, you can use handy tools like Google’s mobile-friendly test, here is the link to make things a little easier for you. It is super easy to use and will highlight whether or not your site is indexed/crawl your website. To check if your website is mobile-friendly, in the search box, simply type your website’s URL and then run the test, the report will tell you everything you need to know.

 

 Next, if you want to crawl, search engines finding and indexing your content, your website, you can use Google Search Console. It will provide you with a table and a graph highlighting any kind of errors.

 

 Another tool you can use to get crawling information is by using SEMrush. With the SEMrush Site Audit Tool, you can identify crawling errors and generate a report that will identify errors and issues as well as provide details on how to fix these problems. It’s easy and you can set it up to identify and create a more mobile-friendly website!

 

 Next, we will look at different Mobile SEO practices to adopt for a more mobile user-friendly experience.

 

1. Loading speed

​

People tend to stay on websites that don’t take much of their time; as they want information as soon as possible, it is the best option to maximize your website’s loading speed. Having a slow loading speed isn’t beneficial at all for your website because mobile users are not willing to wait for it. It affects user experience to a great degree, ranking on Google’s search index and deciding whether or not the user is willing to revisit your website. So much pressure!

 

However, don’t fret. There are certain ways in which you can increase loading speed and guarantee revisits and a good user experience. Firstly, start by optimizing the images on your website then optimize the page code by minimizing it. Next, use compression and browser caching. Lastly, reduce the number of redirects, if you don’t it will just slow your page down. All this will take the ample load off and your website may even perform better even when the user has a connectivity issue.

 

 

  2. Responsive web design

​

A good, responsive web design has one of the best advantages ever: it will adapt to any screen size, be it a tablet, a desktop, or a smartphone. While you can let it do its work, manually designing it will aid you in achieving a better result.

 

To achieve a responsive website design, start by coding a viewport. Then customize the images by making them the size of the screen along with the max-width property. then, customize the text by setting viewpoint width units. It is better not to use Flash, instead create special effects by using HTML5. Moreover, while it might be okay to use pop-ups on a desktop, they can get annoying for a mobile user which can lead to an increased bounce rate. Therefore, avoid using pop-ups or use smaller pop-ups so that they won’t get in the way.

​

  3. Use m.subdomain

​

The m. in front of the website’s URL address appears when you are using the website on your mobile phone, it’s separate from the primary domain.  Long story short, when you create a separate m.subdomain, you are splitting the traffic between your desktop and mobile website. This creates too many SEO-related problems when you do this, even if you set up a redirect between the two, you are splitting the authority between the two. Therefore, it is best not to create a separate domain. Simply focus on your primary domain mobile-friendly for mobile SEO content that provides a good user experience.

​

  4. Keep an eye on technical issues

​

Don’t ignore technical issues, they may not put you out of business but if they pile up then they can cause major issues. While websites can function and fix their issues, some require extra attention from you. These issues are usually minor and can be broken links, redirects, images, issues regarding indexation, or problems with the server (keeps shutting down) It is best to address these issues right away.

​

  5. Use SEO optimization

​

Without sacrificing the quality of your work, be concise. Mobile users tend to find less time-consuming ways of getting the information. Therefore, to attract the reader to your website, be concise but use long-term keywords in the title and the meta description, SEO keywords will help you rank higher in the search engine. Moreover, if you have locally related elements, then use local SEO.

 

 Keeping all of these tips in mind, you will be able to stay mobile optimization smart for 2024. Just keep this DIY guide handy so in case you want, you can not only use these tips yourself but help other website designers as well.   

​

​

                                 Jose Fuente

                                 Marketing Accossiate