Mobile SEO

As you may or may not be aware, more people today use a mobile device such as a tablet or smartphone to view websites than a desktop PC.

Often their smartphone is the first thing people look at when they wake up, and the last thing before they fall asleep. With that in mind, it’s important to make sure your website is optimised well to appear higher in Google rankings on mobiles, using mobile SEO.

The purpose of mobile SEO is to attract your target audience through their mobile devices with the intention of turning them into customers. There are three different aspects that apply to mobile SEO:

• Performance – your customers prefer faster websites, and so does Google, especially when analysing for mobile devices.
• User experience – users on mobiles have less room to work with, so the removal of unnecessary clutter is advantageous, as is a large font and sufficient spacing between clickable aspects.
• Content – make sure the content is as easy to view from a mobile device.

Mobile-First Index is Coming

It was made clearer in Google’s statement that at some point during 2018 Google will switch to its ‘mobile-first’ index. This means its rankings will be based on the quality and optimisation level of the mobile version of the website, rather than the desktop version. Your website will be given a rating based upon its performance, user experience and content at mobile level, which your new rank on Google will be based upon.

Even if you don’t focus on the mobile version of your website, you will still be judged by it.

In an interview with Google’s Maile Ohye he said:

“To “optimize” for a mobile-first index, make sure that what you serve to mobile users is the version of the content you’d want Google to index, not a pared down version, or a version that gets updated later than desktop, or version that redirects to the mobile homepage.”

Here are a few things to consider:

• Keep your mobile website as accessible as possible to Google, removing obstacles such as scripts that take too long to load.
• The mobile version of your website can no longer be a reduced version of the desktop site. From now on, everything that you want to be ranked by Google and judged upon must be available in the mobile version.
• Be aware that people often change how they search on Google when using a mobile device. Look at the keywords people have been using from mobile devices to find your website and make sure it is optimised appropriately.
• Let Google know that your website is mobile-proof by adding the correct Viewport declaration
• Consider implementing AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages), a Google-led project designed to help your pages load as quickly as possible.

You can test your website using Googles Mobile Friendly Tester.

Somerset Web Services can assist in ensuring your website’s mobile SEO is up to scratch. If you are interested in any further information then please contact us or give us a call on 01823 353760.

This article is a summary of information provided at https://yoast.com/mobile-seo-ultimate-guide