WordPress SEO in 5 Minutes – What is Mobile SEO?
Smartphones are now an irreplaceable part of life. The majority of people carry their mobile phones with them 24/7. Since the number of people using their smartphones for online searching has increased exponentially, mobile optimisation has also become critical. Let’s understand more about what mobile SEO is, its importance and the best practices for mobile optimisation from this article brought by our SEO team in Perth.
What is mobile SEO?
Mobile SEO refers to the optimisation of your mobile websites to provide a flawless experience to your audience who visit your site using their smartphones or tablets. It takes care of page speed, site design, site structure and much more to ensure the user’s comfort and meet their expectation. With mobile phones dominating online searches and search engines favouring mobile-friendly sites, a faultless mobile site is a must.
Why should your mobile site optimised?
Purchase Intent
Mobile phone users have now eclipsed desktop users. According to studies, mobile users possess a higher purchase intent than desktop users. When they search for a product, they are more focused and ready to make a purchase. They are researching the product on the handiest device available, which is more often than not, a smartphone or tab. If your website is not a mobile-friendly one, you are just giving an excuse for your customer to look for another company.
Brand ranking
Mobile SEO helps you to reach your customers at the right place and time, providing them with excellent customer experience. This way, you can increase the chance of consumers recommending your brand and building brand value.
Mobile-first index
Google has started ranking based on mobile-first index, and by March 2021, all sites will be indexed mobile-first. This means the ranking of the site is based on the quality and performance of the mobile version instead of the desktop version. The smartphone version crawlers will crawl your mobile website and determine the ranking. Even if your website is not focusing on mobile platform, your mobile sites will play an essential role in the ranking in the desktop version.
Page experience
Page experience is the ranking factor brought by Google to evaluate a user’s experience. It determines a site’s ranking based on how user-friendly and flawless your site is when a user visits your website. So, if your mobile site is not user-friendly, you are going to lose in the search results. Page experience is expected to roll out in 2021, so now is the right time to get your site optimised.
Best Practices for mobile optimisation
The things you need to keep in mind while optimising your site for mobile devices are as follows.
Speed
Page speed is crucial for mobile users because of hardware and connectivity issues. You need to minify code, reduce redirect, optimise images, and also increase caching.
Use HTML5
When you want to create special effects, use HTML5 instead of Flash plugin. Most often flash plugin won’t be available on your user’s phone.
Site design for mobile
Make sure the click-on buttons are designed based on an ideal size of fingers as it can lead to accidental clicks if they are too big, too small. The site design should make the site comfortable to view and easy to use for a mobile user.
Separate mobile URL
You can also create a parallel site custom made for mobile users. Most of these sites use “m” subdomain for URL so they can avoid confusion. You also need to make sure all your site redirects are in place. Avoid duplicate content problems by setting up canonical URL.
Structured data
Use Schema.org structured data on your site. The search results with rich snippets are likely to standout since smartphones have limited screen spaces than desktops.
Local Search
Your mobile site should be optimised for local searches; more so if you have a business with local targets. Local searches on mobiles are mostly with done with buying intent.
Mobile SEO is crucial since it will affect your ranking. With mobile-first Google algorithms coming in 2021, now is the time to act. As an established SEO and branding agency, we can help you with this process. Contact us today or email at sales@computingaustralia.group and talk to our experts.
Jargon Buster
Canonical URL – an HTML element used to label a URL as the master copy, in cases of duplicate URLs.
Redirects – a status code to direct a search engine from one URL to another.
Browser caching – a temporary storage that holds the most recently browsed web pages. This avoids the necessity to download a page again, when you visit it again in a short span of time.
Minifying code – process of removing unnecessary characters from source code without affecting its operation.
by The Computing Australia Group