Mobile Optimisation - Our 44 Step SEO Process
We’re continuing with our series of blogs looking at the 44-step process we go through to bring you Search Engine Optimisation success.
In the last article, we explored ‘on-site optimisation’ which is all about making sure your website is technically designed to help, rather than hinder, the SEO process.
Your website needs to be structurally set up in a way that is most optimum for search engines, and an important part of this is making sure it is also optimised for mobile use.
Recent figures suggest that globally 68% of all internet usage in 2020 was from a mobile device, up 63% from the year before, so you can see why it’s worth making sure you’re taking advantage of this growing trend.
What is mobile optimisation?
Making sure your website is optimised for mobile use is by no means a new concept. In fact, we first blogged about this back in 2015, when Google officially announced the idea of mobile responsiveness as an SEO ranking signal.
At that time, Google was estimating that around half of searches for websites were conducted through mobile browsers. A few years on and more people now use their mobiles to access the internet than a desktop computer.
Put simply, mobile optimisation means ensuring that your website is ‘mobile friendly’ – so when someone loads your website from their mobile phone, they get a special version that fits their smart phone screen.
Ideally it should load with information that fits the mobile screen and can be easily scrolled through and navigated.
If it isn’t mobile friendly, visitors will have to awkwardly zoom in and out and move around left to right, rather than up or down, to be able to access menus and content – which becomes tedious very quickly.
But it’s not just important for the user, it’s also important for the search engines.
Why mobile optimisation matters
We’ve touched on it already, but mobile optimisation is important for a number of reasons. One of the main reasons is for SEO purposes.
Whether a website is mobile-friendly is a ranking factor and mobile optimised websites will show up higher in search results. Google estimates that visitors are five times more likely to leave a website that isn’t mobile-friendly.
People are not going to stick around if pages don’t load, information can’t be found and navigation isn’t clear.
The huge rise in smartphone use for internet browsing is actually a big plus for your business because it means people have access to your products and services all day, every day, from the palm of their hand. You just need to make sure you are capitalising on that.
How, we hear you ask?
Making sure your website is mobile responsive
As this has been around a while, you may have already taken action to ensure your website is mobile responsive. It can be built into any new website or retrospectively added.
Like anything website or SEO related, it also has to be maintained.
Do you know how many of your website’s visitors are coming via a mobile device? Is this increasing or reducing? Have you placed enough focus on your mobile experience for the number of users coming via that route? These are all questions we will help answer as part of our SEO process for you.
Mobile responsiveness is about site speed, site layout, how easy people can interact with the buttons, how easily they can perform common tasks, such as making a purchase or finding contact information.
To get a mobile-friendly site, you might have a responsive design built-in, which involves creating a layout that adapts to different screen sizes and devices, or you might have separate versions – one for website, one for mobile.
We will also check for redirects for mobile users, which ensures that visitors are directed to the mobile version when searching from a mobile device.
Next in our series of blogs about the 44 Step Process is Off-Site Backlinking