It’s not surprising to know that out of a total population of 332 million people in the United States, 307 million, or almost 93%, own and use mobile smartphones every single day. And while the target consumer for smartphone sellers is 18 to 54, there are still several million users younger than 18 and older than 54 who use a smartphone for both business and personal searches on a daily basis. According to the highly regarded Pew Research company, approximately 61% of all organic search engine visits in the U.S. originate from mobile devices.
A mobile optimized site reformats itself for mobile devices. It not only makes sure to properly display your website on smaller screens, but it also makes the site much easier to navigate. It reformats content, displays larger navigation buttons, and optimizes images according to mobile device screen size.
Your Company’s Success
What does that mean to you and the success of your company’s website? Well, it means that mobile optimization should be one of the first steps addressed when implementing SEO. Mobile optimization ensures that mobile users—all 307 million of them—have the best chance of an encounter on their mobile device that takes into consideration site design, site structure, and page speed so that they get a quality mobile user experience.
In fact, most search engines today program their algorithms to detect when a user is searching on a mobile device. The right mobile configuration of your website always outranks non-mobile friendly sites in mobile search results, thus impacting your overall website SEO rankings.
Making Your Website Mobile Friendly for SEO
Mobile optimization should be an extremely important part of your overall strategic marketing plan. By upgrading your website so that it delivers an engaging experience for mobile device users, you offer your potential customer or client a positive experience across all channels, including laptop, desktop, tablets, and mobile devices.
Here are just a few points that you should focus on to improve your mobile SEO:
- Make sure your website automatically resizes to fit the mobile device screen
- Use larger fonts that are easier to read on a smaller screen
- Improve your site speed…faster loading times improve your rankings
- Make sure your site is easy to navigate
- Be sure that HTML, JavaScript and CSS code are easily accessible
- Keep the user on the homepage as long as possible with only a few redirects
- Avoid pop-ups
- Ensure the most important content is not hidden from view when the page first loads
- Make sure any photos load quickly so mobile users don’t have to wait
- Keep your content fresh and updated several times per year
Since Google is one of the top search engines in use today, let’s take a look at one of the changes to the algorithms that company has made to rank mobile searches. Their “mobile-first” index, for example, is now drawing results from mobile-optimized sites first, rather than websites geared toward laptop or desktop computers. Other search engine companies are following Google’s lead and are now ranking mobile sites first. If your site is not mobile optimized, you risk becoming under-ranked.
What is the Difference Between SEO and Mobile Optimization?
Desktop or laptop SEO focuses on the public in general, with no precise geographic pinpointing. Mobile SEO focuses on local search because most mobile users are looking for results within the area where they live and work. Search engines ascertain what location the mobile user is searching from at the same time the user is searching. So, the search engine can provide results based on that specific geographic location. If you are not mobile optimized, your ranking goes down and so does your traffic.
When you optimize your mobile devices, your website not only looks visually appealing, it also maximizes screen time on your homepage, increases your brand saturation, and it develops into faster views to sales conversions.
More Helpful Hints
If you are looking for more customers for your business or service, here’s an idea that makes it as easy as possible for them to contact you while they are on their mobile device. Add a click to call option. With just one click, your potential customer can contact your business at the same time they are perusing your website. It’s a great hassle-free step that gets you connected quickly to interested users.
How about a map? With one more simple click, you can integrate a map and directions to your business location by tapping into their GPS application. This allows the mobile user to see just where your business is located so they can get there with ease.
Bottom Line?
The importance of mobile optimization cannot be over-emphasized when it comes to your website’s SEO. By allowing your website to automatically reformat itself for different mobile devices, you are guaranteed to offer users a better, faster, easier to navigate web experience. And that ensures you and your company that a larger mobile audience is available for you to sell to. Mobile Optimization for your website’s SEO is crucial.
