How to Make your Mobile Website SEO Friendly

So, How do you make your Mobile Website SEO Friendly?
Here’s the Top 5 Tips to Make your Mobile Website SEO Friendly

 

Lets do this!
You’ve figured it out. You have that perfect idea for a service website or blog and want to hire an agency or start the development in house. You are all set to take your idea to market and you have clear understanding of what you customers need. Here’s a list of top 5 things you need to do it right the first time.

1. Lightning Fast Page Speed

Google loves speed, Customers Love speed. No one likes waiting especially for a webpage to load that they are interested in. In the internet of things, every second counts.
When was the last time you stayed on a webpage that took more than 4 seconds to load.
The quicker the mobile experience, the more engagement you’ll receive. To begin with, analyze every image and every piece of JavaScript and CSS, and compress when needed. Compress larger images when possible; every byte counts on mobile when it comes to speed.
Also, utilize your cache for things that load constantly, such as a logo. When you cache a logo, you’ll save precious download time, which increases the overall speed of your app.
A good rule of thumb is to set all static resources’ cache lifetime once a week. As for other third-party resources like widgets and ads, cache lifetime should be set for one day.
Remember also that lightning-fast page speeds on mobile help with conversion and customer satisfaction. The average mobile website load times for bounced sessions were about 2.5 seconds slower than non-bounced sessions, according to Think with Google.

 

2. Don’t Use Pop-Ups (At all)

Google now penalizes businesses with mobile pop-ups, which was part of the January 2017, algorithm update.
Due to the small size of mobile screens, search engines see these penalties as imperative to provide better UX for users. This should prompt you to limit the use of any pop-ups.
Some pop-ups, like age verification boxes and smaller banners that don’t obscure a large part of the screen, are fine to run. But if a pop-up covers main content or is a standalone one that needs to be dismissed before content is displayed, this will have a drastic effect not only on UX but also on SEO.
Think of how many times you exited a website when this happened. Don’t repeat this same mistake. Design your site to include CTA’s and design your website to include information you’d like to capture through these pop-ups.

 

3. Design for Big Fingers (Yep, Its a thing!)

Your mobile-first design should have touch screen navigation that is easily scrolled with fingers that are either too big or too small.
Think about the size of a thumb and index finger, and make sure your mobile design caters to all for a smoother UX.The smoother the UX, the more engagement, which means the better the SEO.
Here’s the Google Mobile Test Tool

 

4. Titles & Meta Descriptions

If you’re an SEO, you know the importance of Titles and Meta descriptions. If you’re on top of your game, you’ve probably considered testing your Meta’s for Mobile searches. If not, Well…..
Last May, Google increased mobile title tags to 78 characters — eight more than the recommended character count for desktop. But you’re better off sticking to 70 characters, considering you don’t want any title truncated on mobile.
Meta descriptions should also be shorter for a truly enhanced mobile experience. Google also kept mobile meta description lengths to around 130 characters but has since increased the amount of meta description text shown on mobile. Regardless, keep things shorter than 130 characters because Google is known to truncate meta descriptions on mobile.
Yoast (A plugin I highly recommend for WordPress sites) has a perfect solution for those struggling with optimal lengths for either mobile or desktop. Yoast has settings for both desktop and mobile when creating titles, URLs, and meta descriptions so you can optimize each.

 

5. Simple Design With Clear CTAs

Keep it simple and don’t try to add too much content. Make sure you’re not just adding/ stuffing keywords on a page that go against any white-hat SEO practices. You got want to get penalised by google.
Think with the customer in mind and have CTA across your website where your audience is most likely to convert. Also, make sure all your contact forms are designed for mobile. This is a common mistake among many companies — even enterprise-level companies.
Make sure all contact forms use HTML5 input types, which will automatically register the correct keyboard for mobile browsers, which have various on-screen keyboards for various types of data.

Conclusion

Algorithms are constantly changing to provide a better user experience for mobile users and rewarding sites that have an SEO-friendly mobile design.

As mobile continues its natural trend towards more users over desktop, having a mobile-first design with SEO at the forefront is imperative to success.

Should you have any other doubts or want to add to this, please let me know.

Pushkarraj Mehta

Author Pushkarraj Mehta

Just a human talking to bots

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