Conquer mobile search with mobile SEO! User-friendliness, fast loading times, and a clean design bring top rankings. Make your website mobile-friendly!
Key Takeaway – The most important things in brief:
- Importance of Mobile SEO: Mobile SEO is crucial as more and more users access the internet via mobile devices. Mobile-optimized websites have a significant advantage in search results.
- Three core areas of mobile optimization: Technical factors (such as mobile responsiveness and loading behavior), user experience (touchscreen usability, avoiding annoying pop-ups), and content (mobile-optimized content and structured data) are the key elements of mobile SEO.
- Key optimization measures: Key measures include implementing AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) for faster loading times, ensuring good touchscreen usability, and optimizing images and lists for smaller screens. Furthermore, content should be shorter to meet the needs of mobile users.
“Mobile First” – this rule, which Google plans to introduce for rankings in early 2018, is probably not the first time you’ve encountered it. More than half of internet usage already occurs on smartphones or tablets. A website that not only works on mobile devices but also finds and delights your users is, therefore, something every company should already be addressing. But what is important in mobile SEO? We’ve compiled the most important factors for a good ranking for your mobile website and will tell you what absolutely doesn’t work.
A website is a website – no matter what device I use to access it. Far from it. Many things that excite us on a desktop computer put us off on a smartphone, causing us to scroll further. Mobile SEO can essentially be divided into three basic categories, which encompass almost all measures: technical factors, user experience, and content.
Technical mobile SEO factors
Shortly:
- Mobile responsiveness: Your website should be optimized for different screen sizes and adapt automatically.
- Mobile loading behavior: Make sure your site loads quickly to avoid losing users.
- AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages): Implement AMP to drastically reduce your loading times.
- Mobile crawling and indexing: Ensures that Google indexes your mobile-friendly version and that it can be easily crawled by Googlebot.
- Mobile Sitemapping: Creates a separate sitemap for mobile versions of your website
Before you can engage users with your website, it needs to be found and clicked on. Once that happens, it’s a matter of fractions of a second, because loading speed is one of the most important factors in the technical optimization of a mobile website. The gap between the top 10 and the “slow” pages is negligible. However, as a rule of thumb, if your website takes longer than three seconds to fully load on a smartphone, most users will become impatient and prefer to move on to browsing rather than wait for you.
The fastest mobile pages take just over a second to load. Compared to that, even a three-second limit seems like a lame duck. So, your website should slim down considerably for mobile use.
Google itself offers a good “slimming-down” solution with Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP). This framework reduces the size of your HTML and CSS code. The result is a website with fast loading times and a clean design, without the bells and whistles we love so much on desktops, like sidebars, elaborate animations, and the like.
Mobile User Experience
Shortly:
- Touchscreen usability: Ensures smooth operation on touchscreen devices.
- Avoid pop-ups: Use pop-ups sparingly to avoid disrupting the user experience.
- Images and lists: Optimizes images and lists for the smaller display.
Let’s assume you’ve removed all unnecessary content from your page, so it now loads like lightning. What does the user expect or want? Of course, to find the information or product they’re looking for. To achieve this, your mobile website should be one thing above all else: clear. Lists are a proven way to create clarity. But don’t overdo it with your lists. Smartphone displays are small, so lists that are too long are just annoying. The golden rule is: no more than nine items per list.
What else do users love? Images! They grab attention and are easy to see even on small displays. But be careful! Your images should also be optimized and, above all, compressed. While they are nice to look at, if they are too large, they slow down your website’s loading time. On average, there are four images on a mobile website. They should also be the right size.
Too many internal links have a rather negative impact on the user experience. The display is small, and your thumb is relatively thick. This makes it difficult to find the right link when a different one appears in every half-sentence. Touch elements that are too small, such as buttons, are also not particularly helpful for mobile users. This also includes interstitials that pop up when scrolling or opening the page and are difficult to close again. The font should also be an appropriate and legible size.
Content
Shortly:
- Mobile-optimized content: Make sure your content is easy to read and engaging for mobile users.
- Structured data: Use structured data to help search engines better understand your content.
In general, your texts should be significantly shorter on your mobile website than on your desktop. Keywords are still important and necessary for good rankings, but you shouldn’t over-optimize the content on your mobile site. This means making sure your keywords don’t suddenly appear in every sentence, resulting in unnecessary duplication in your text.
As a guideline, 1,000 words per text should be the absolute upper limit. Nobody reads a novel on a smartphone. What matters here is information that is presented concisely, concisely, and clearly, leading to optimal results.
Advantages and disadvantages of responsive web design, dynamic serving, and separate URLs
| Approach | Advantages | Disadvantages |
|---|---|---|
| Responsive design | – Consistent layout for all devices – Good user experience on different screens – Improves SEO through one URL and content | – Complex designs can increase loading times – More difficult to adapt to specific content – Possible compromises in design and functionality |
| Dynamic Serving | – Targeted adaptation for different devices – Better control over content – Optimized loading times for specific devices | – Maintenance of separate content required – Potential errors in content delivery – More complex server configuration required |
| Separate URL | – Maximum flexibility for content – Specific adaptation to each device – Full control over layout and design | – SEO challenges due to separate URLs – Potential confusion for users with different URLs – High effort for maintaining multiple versions |
Bonus tips
Shortly:
- Mobile Social Sharing: Integrates social media buttons that are easy to use even on mobile devices.
- Responsive Social Sharing Cards: Ensure that your shared links on social media are displayed attractively on mobile devices.
Some measures can’t be assigned to any of the three categories, as they either belong to none or to several of them. We have a few bonus tips for you here that can help you rank your mobile website.
Social signals play a greater role on mobile than on desktop. The average user spends 30 minutes a day on Facebook alone. 77% of all mobile content is shared via messaging services like WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger. So, you shouldn’t skimp on these features.
Also important, especially for mobile websites, is local SEO. A large proportion of search queries on smartphones include location information. Here, too, precautions should be taken to ensure faster discovery.
Checklist: How to optimize your website for mobile devices
Want to make your website mobile-friendly? Here’s a checklist for your mobile SEO:
- Mobile visitor analysis: Measure your mobile bounce rate to understand user satisfaction.
- User-friendliness: Focus on ease of use, clear layout, and fast loading times for your mobile site.
- Consistent design: Keep your mobile site design consistent with the desktop version to provide a seamless user experience.
- Responsive design or subdomain: Decide whether to use responsive design or a separate subdomain for mobile devices. Be careful to avoid duplicate content.
- Keep the desktop version available: Allow users to access the desktop version and make this option clearly visible.
- Check subdomain crawling: If you use a subdomain, check Webmaster Tools to see if crawling your mobile content is working properly. Use a mobile XML sitemap.
- Multi-test: Check the mobile version on different devices and screen sizes to ensure that text and content are easy to read.
- Adequate spacing between links: Make sure that links are sufficiently spaced apart – 28 pixels of spacing between two links is recommended.
- Avoid pop-ups: Avoid pop-ups in the mobile view to avoid disrupting the user experience.
With this checklist, you can optimally prepare your website for mobile devices and achieve improved user satisfaction and visibility.
Is your site mobile-friendly?
Is your site mobile-friendly? Google offers a tool to check whether your website meets the requirements for a user-friendly mobile version. You can find the handy tool at this link: https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly.
The test only takes a few seconds. Simply enter your website’s URL into the field and check whether your page meets the technical standards. If it doesn’t, you should implement the suggested optimization measures as soon as possible.
Conclusion: Mobile optimization is important
Mobile optimization of your website is crucial for success in today’s digital age. A user-friendly mobile site with fast loading times and a clear layout not only contributes to user satisfaction but also positively influences your search ranking.
Choosing between responsive design, dynamic serving, and separate URLs should be carefully considered to ensure an optimal user experience. By maintaining a consistent design across different devices and considering technical aspects such as crawling and link spacing, you can optimally prepare your website for mobile devices.
Never lose sight of the goal: user-friendliness and relevance for mobile visitors. A thorough mobile-friendly website will not only result in improved visibility but also increased user satisfaction and, ultimately, successful business results.