How to Ensure Your Site Is Optimized for Mobile Search
An SEOs meaning for optimization is to alter the contents of your site, social, advertisements, etc. to improve SERP rankings for your site. Mobile optimization is the process of adjusting your website content to ensure that visitors that access the site from mobile devices have an experience customized to their device.
Optimized content flows easily between desktop and mobile devices to provide the user with an outstanding experience. Mobile devices have small screens and users are often on-the-go. They might be on a train or bus commuting, in a coffee shop or in a store. Optimized content understands the mobile user.
It easily adjusts to fit on smaller screens. It also adjusts the font so it is large enough to read on a small device. Only videos that are compatible with mobile devices should appear on mobile sites. Email messages should load quickly and not have too many images that make it difficult for the user to scan the message.
Why is mobile optimization important?
Customers today spend increasing amounts of time exploring all types of content on mobile. According to Google, more searches are now performed on mobile than on desktop. In BrightEdge Research’s mobile study, we found that 57% of all online traffic occurred on smartphones and tablets. Email Monday found that between 15 and 70 percent of emails are opened on mobile devices, depending on target audience. Mobile search has overtaken desktop for most industries.
How do I optimize for mobile?
Nearly any type of content you develop may be viewed on mobile. Creating a strong user experience requires you to make sure all content is ready for this possibility.
- Optimize videos on your pages to make them compatible with smart devices.
- Make content scrollable, rather than forcing people to click through multiple pages, which can be challenging on mobile.
- Your images should be high-quality and closely cropped to maximize detail, even when shrunk to fit a smaller screen.
- Any buttons on the screen should be easy for mobile customers to use.
- Use a responsive template for everything, including emails.
- Do not use long paragraphs. Remember that people are often on-the-go when using mobile, long paragraphs will often lose them.
- Keep the motivations of your mobile customers in mind. If most people come to your site looking for certain types of content, such as directions, make that content particularly easy to find on mobile.
- Use Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP). These are light-weight web pages that create fast mobile experiences.
Mobile devices now dominate a significant portion of the online space. To be effective marketers, you need to make sure that your content is ready for these users and easy to engage with regardless of the device. You also need to be sure you're keeping up with the changes Google makes to stay on top of your SEO game. Check out how the mobile SERP layout has recently changed mobile optimization and how you can leverage new branding opportunities.