How To Optimize Your Website For Mobile SEO?

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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has completely ruled the last decades for websites.

Till date, there are a lot of people who are still unaware, struggling, or trying several strategies of SEO for their websites. 

And now it’s Mobile SEO to add more spices to the party. According to which you need to optimize your website for Mobile devices as your website rankings are going to depend on mobile too.  

Well, there’s nothing to worry about as you can easily analyze and optimize your website for Mobile SEO.

But before that, it’s important to know what Google considers about a mobile-optimized site.


What is a Mobile Optimized Website According to Google?

Google considers a website to be mobile optimized on the basis of these parameters –

1. Fast site speed

2. Responsive (also known as Mobile-friendly)

google-mobile-friendly-test-tool

3. Mobile content must be the same as your desktop content.

4. Structured data and metadata should be present on mobile and desktop both

5. Keys resources (CSS, JavaScript, or images) must be crawlable and should not be blocked by robots.txt

There are many other parameters related to the content, technical aspects and UX which plays an important role in the mobile optimization of the website.  


How to Optimize Your Mobile Site?

Now that you know the parameter to take care of for an optimized mobile site! Let’s move on to the next step, i.e., Mobile Optimization.

I’ve divided the Mobile Optimization into 3 parts –

1. Optimize Content For Mobile

A good piece of content is always a key element for SEO. Mobile SEO works on the same principle as well.

If you’re ranking on Google till now, you can continue to rank in mobiles as well if your content is powerful and optimized for mobile enough. 

And if you’re not ranking till now, there’s nothing to worry about! You just need to take care of following things – 

a. Word Count

Extra-long articles are quite troublesome for users to read on mobile devices.

And especially when people read a lot on mobile, it becomes your responsibility to serve a good reading experience to your mobile users.

And you can provide that by keeping a content length between 700-1000 words in an article. 


b. Relevant Keywords and Phrases

Keyword stuffing and relevant phrases play an important role in great content.

Don’t overdo it!

It works on mobile SEO just like it worked on desktop rankings till now. 

relevant-and-semantic-keywords-phrases

c. Meta Title And Meta Description

We are aware of the length of meta title and description for desktop.

Google truncates the title if the length exceeds 70 characters. And the length for meta description should be 300 characters on desktop.

ideal-title-length-for-desktop-laptop-devices

But what should be the length of meta title and description on mobile search?

Google prefers the same length of the meta description as of desktop, i.e., 300 characters, but the length of meta title can be increased to 78 characters when optimizing for mobile.

ideal-title-length-for-mobile-devices

d. Structured Data

Rich snippets grab a lot of attention lately as they stand out when it comes to Google Search.

schema-structured-data

Web pages created with structured data certainly have higher CTR (click-through rate) than others. 


2. Mobile Optimization for Technical Aspects

Technical aspects like errors, speed, and AMP does matter a lot when it comes to Mobile SEO optimization.

Let’s take a look at all the factors that can affect your website optimization for mobile. 

a. Site Speed

We all know that nobody likes to wait. So a website with great site speed will certainly be favorite for a user instead of a slow one.

We’ve already seen how you can check your website’s speed and what factors affect them.

Website loading speed plays an important role in the site rankings as well.

Slower your website, higher the bounce rate will be. Higher the bounce rate, lower the rankings on Google. 

Recommended Reading How to speed up your WordPress website and boost its performance in search results using WP Rocket?


b. Mobile Usability Issues

It is needless to say that if a user will face problems like a flash, not loading or viewport not configured in a mobile device, he will instantly close your website.

We’ve already seen how to figure out the issues with Mobile Usability Tool and fix them up. 


c. AMP or Non-AMP

AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) are designed to provide a better web experience for users across all the devices.

These pages load 4 times faster than a Non-AMP page because it strips out the unnecessary resources.

Google is going to prefer Non-AMP version of the mobile website. So it is not mandatory for you to implement AMP on your website. 


3. Mobile Optimization for User Experience (UX)

Besides the fast speed and great content, your website should have an enjoyable user experience (UX).

No matter how good your SEO is, if your website has a bad UX, a user won’t stay on your site, hence affect your rankings in Google. 

You need to understand the problems users are facing when visit your website and try to remove them ASAP.

It will not only decrease your website’s bounce rate but boost your site’s ranking as well. 

There’s a lot of things you can consider when improving and optimizing user experience – 

a. Design (or layout)

As a web developer, I suggest designing a website according to the things visitors do on your website.

Things like proper navigation, various elements placement like a web form, guides, ebooks, courses, and much more.

You can analyze your visitor activity through Google analytics or by asking your regular clients and friend’s feedback about your site.

A mobile website should be optimized in such a way that if a user is browsing on your website, they can easily find what they’re searching for.

Of course it will vary user to user, but still, design can be optimized as much as we can.

Distractions should be minimum on your website when it comes to mobile. 


b. Images

Image optimization is one of the key elements in the optimization process.

Same goes for mobile! Follow these tips for optimizing images for SEO – 

  1. Choose the right format (PNG, JPG, WEBP, and SVG)
  2. Enable GZIP compression for SVG assets 
  3. Boot your site speed by compressing images without quality loss. Try Shortpixel [used for compressing images on TheMaverickSpirit]
  4. Serve scaled images properly on different devices. 
  5. Prioritize critical images, lazy load the rest on loading
  6. Automate image optimization by using tools. 

c. Typography

Typography on desktop and mobile phones are completely different. Desktop font-size will look shabby in the mobile phones.

You need to make sure that your content is easy to read on mobile devices. Below are some tips – 

  1. Though the font size varies according to the font family you’re using! But the font size should be at least 14px on mobile or small screen devices.
  2. Line height (space between two lines) should be enough that the user can read the lines easily. 
  3. Font color must be eye-catching. It should not pitch in the eyes. 
  4. Paragraph length must be short around (2-3 lines per paragraph)
  5. The line should not exceed a character length of 60 characters, though it’s not mandatory. 

d. Touch Elements (Also known as interactive elements)

Size of touch elements like buttons, checkboxes, input elements must not be small on the mobile website.

If you are keeping them small, you’re likely decreasing your website’s conversion rate.


e. Internal Links

Internal links are important for mobile SEO just like the desktop.

Many people say you need to keep only a few links!

But, I believe if Google wants the content the same on desktop and mobile! Then, we can’t alter or delete the links on mobile devices. 


f. Voice Search Optimization

Voice search will be the new upcoming hotshot in the future.

Many people are already using it for searching and browsing, hence important for mobile SEO.

You need to pay attention to voice search optimization as well if you’re optimizing your website for mobile devices. 


g. Interstitial Pop-ups

Pop-ups are always irritating and an element of frustration on the desktop.

I will never recommend you to use them on mobile devices.

You will definitely notice a depression on conversion rate and a boost in bounce rate for your website.


h. Use HTML5 and CSS3 for Video and Animated Content

If your website still uses flash elements, then I will recommend you to use HTML5 and CSS3 for embedding videos, animated content.


Final Words on Mobile SEO Optimization

I am sure by now that you have understood the importance of Mobile SEO.

As the world is getting fully digital! More and more people are going to view your business websites on mobile in the upcoming years.

It thus becomes important for you to run a Google mobile test and check the mobile-friendly score.

Well, if there are still any doubts about creating a mobile-optimized website? Drop them below and let’s clear them out.

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