The world has gone mobile, and how.
In the United States alone, 81% of adult Americans own a smartphone, according to a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2019. The same study says that about half of U.S. adults also own tablets.
With so many people using mobile devices to access the Internet, it’s only right to optimize your website for mobile SEO and up your mobile marketing game at the same time.
Optimizing your site for mobile SEO means doing everything you can to make it look amazing and function properly on smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices.
Once optimized for mobile SEO, your site will provide nothing but the most positive mobile user experience regardless of the device being used to explore it.
If you haven’t optimized your site for mobile just yet, here are a few tips to help you get started.
Make Your Site Responsive
Being mobile-friendly is a must for any website, regardless of the industry or location. With more than half of global web traffic coming from mobile devices, mobile-friendliness is no longer an option if you want access to the ever-growing mobile market. And oh, Google likes serving up mobile-friendly sites to its users, too.
So far, the best way for your website to become as mobile-friendly as it can get is by integrating responsive web design or RWD.
Whatever the size or type of a user’s device, responsive web design will ensure that your web pages will render well. There will be no more need for mobile users accessing your website to do plenty of pinching, zooming, scrolling sideways just to see your content. RWD will make your site adjust to the size of the device being used, providing an optimal browsing experience.
Add Web Design Elements That Improve The User Experience
There are several web design elements you can add to improve further the user experience that responsive design already brings to the table.
There’s creating a “thumb-friendly” design, which works under the assumption that mobile users use their thumbs to scroll through your site and click on its elements.
You will also want to ensure that the fonts you use are readable on any mobile device, including the smallest ones. Avoid using fonts that are too small or too intricate that they’re barely legible.
Adding a clean, organized, and easy-to-use navigation bar will also do wonders for the user experience.
And if you’re serious about users taking the next step toward conversion, make sure all your call-to-action (CTA) buttons are readily visible and big enough to tap.
Boost Your Page Loading Speed
Internet users these days are an impatient lot, as they expect the web pages they access to load in three seconds or less.
When the information they’re looking for doesn’t load fast enough for them, you cannot expect them to stay on your page. They will have no qualms about abandoning your page in favor of a faster-loading website. That goes for both desktop and mobile users.
It’s imperative that you make an effort to increase your page loading speed. You can switch to faster web hosting. You can also optimize images, minimize or eliminate the use of custom fonts, minify code, and reduce redirects to make your pages load faster.
To get much-needed information about your site’s load time, use Google PageSpeed Insights.
Optimize Your Content
Whatever content you put up for your website, you need to make sure that your mobile users will find it easy to skim through, as that’s how they typically consume content, being always on the go.
Some ways to optimize your content for mobile users include:
- Keeping paragraphs at 2-3 sentences
- Short and simple headings and titles
- Using subheadings
- Using bullet points
- Optimizing videos to ensure compatibility with smart devices
- Using high-quality, but not too many images
- Making buttons easy to use
- Clickable email address and phone numbers
Don’t Forget About Local SEO
According to Google, the use of the phrase “near me” in mobile searches that contain a variant of phrases like “to buy” or “can I buy” has increased by more than 500% in the last few years.
That means the number of people searching for local businesses continues to grow, and that’s why you also should optimize for locals so you can reach them.
There are several ways to improve your local SEO, such as:
- Creating a Google My Business account
- Optimizing for voice search
- Creating content with local color
- Targeting local keywords
By optimizing for local, your chances of appearing in more local search results by mobile users will increase.
Go Easy On The Pop-ups
A pop-up has its uses, especially when you’re encouraging more engagement from your visitors. Pop-ups are a great way of enticing people to sign up to get emails or download free content.
However, you run the risk of annoying users—mobile or otherwise—when you use too much of them.
Few things are more irritating to users than opening a website on their mobile device only to have a pop-up box that occupies the entire screen greet them.
If it’s their first time accessing your website, they will likely wonder out loud why they would download the free content you’re offering through the pop-up when they haven’t read anything you’ve written just yet.
They visited your site for a specific type of information, but now, your pop-up box is stopping them from seeing it.
Sometimes, these pop-ups don’t even have a button that users can tap to get rid of them!
You know what will happen next if you keep using too much of these intrusive, inappropriately-timed pop-ups. People will abandon your site and contribute to your rising bounce rates.
If you have to use a pop-up for your mobile site, use them sparingly at least, and give people time to explore your site before springing one on them.
The right time to optimize for mobile is now, with mobile use expected to grow exponentially in the next few years. Hopefully, the tips listed above can help.
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