Optimizing your content for mobile remains a critical SEO factor. Over 60% of organic search visits come from mobile devices. This means that there’s an increase in mobile search in comparison to desktop search. If you are not optimizing your content for mobile, you are losing out on the opportunity to gain more audience.
Here, you will learn what mobile optimization means, why mobile optimization is important, tips to create mobile-friendly content, and tips to make your website mobile-friendly. So, let’s dive in!
What is mobile optimization in SEO?
Mobile optimization in SEO refers to the process of ensuring that your site’s visitors have a user-friendly experience when they gain access to your website from a mobile device. This process requires the same practices as desktop SEO.
After all, we live in a mobile world where people use mobile devices to search more for content. Hence, it is crucial to prioritize the mobile experience. This process often includes considering and optimizing the site design, load speed, content, and lots more.
The importance of understanding user behavior on mobile
For many years now, mobile internet usage has become more prevalent and accounts for over 75% of total usage in emerging markets. It has dramatically changed how we live. Whether it is interacting with friends, shopping for products or services, or consuming content, these pocket-sized devices brought a revolution.
Having mobile-friendly content should be an utmost priority for every brand. Why? A lack of mobile-friendliness for your website correlates to a bad user experience.
Imagine a scenario where the blog posts on your site don’t fit the mobile screen of your users. Or another scenario where your content takes too much time to load. Do you think they will stay on your site to check what you have? Of course not! They’d visit your competitors instead.
Let’s take a look at this example to understand why you should consider optimizing for mobile. In a 2020 report by Deloitte, the data revealed that a small change aimed at improving a brand’s mobile experience could have a significant impact.
A vivid example from the report showed how eBay improved its loading speed and streamlined user experience. This led to a 0.5% increase in their add-to-cart count for just a 0.1-second improvement in load time.
How to create mobile-friendly content
Having mobile-friendly content doesn’t have to do with the mobile design of your site. Instead, it involves the overall web content for mobile devices, whether text, videos, or other content that provides value to your audience. In this section, we will explore how to create mobile-friendly content.
Keep the title short
Your title is the first part of your content that your readers see in the search engine. It determines whether they will click to learn more about what you have for them or go to the next relevant content. Aside from this, your title determines how your content appears in the search engine.
Simply put, you need your page title short, concise, and displayed on a single line in the search engine result page. To do this, you should keep your title length at six words and no more than 70 characters. The shorter the title, the easier your readers will comprehend the information.
Also, you should include the keywords in your title. This helps to improve discoverability and increase ranking in the SERP.
Start with a strong introduction
Mobile phones are a bit smaller than desktop computers. As a result, you must consider the initial information that you present to your visitors. Why? A mobile visitor only sees the first few paragraphs before scrolling down for more information.
This explains why you must create a compelling introduction that will capture the attention of your readers. After all, the average mobile user spends 3 minutes or less on a website. Craft a strong introduction that gets straight to the point. Avoid unnecessary information and only share the relevant ones that provide value to your visitors first.
Break content into short paragraphs
Grabbing your reader’s attention with a lengthy paragraph on a mobile device can be a bit difficult. If your website is full of heavy text with no formatting or line breaks, they’d move on to the next website that creates a better experience.
For easy reading, you can create content that you can distribute evenly into divisions and subdivisions. Use lots of H1, H2, H3, and H4 subheadings to organize the ideas in your content. This enables your readers to scan with ease and obtain the vital information they need from your content.
Here is what content with shorter paragraphs looks like:
You can also incorporate some other elements to make it easy for your audience. Some of these elements include:
- Bullets/Lists,
- Summary,
- Italics,
- Whitespace,
- Block quotes, and more.
Add images/videos
Images or videos are excellent pieces of visual content. They break up your text, making it easy to be read by your audience. A study revealed that visuals are processed up to 600 times faster than text.
This implies that leveraging visuals will help your readers to better understand your content and increase your search rankings. When using visual content, ensure that it is entertaining, informative, and valuable to your audience.
Also, you can make your visuals mobile-friendly by optimizing the images. Ensure that you use responsive and compressing photos of the right size for mobile devices.
Avoid complex phrases
When you are writing content for either mobile or desktop, ensure you keep it simple and clear for your audience. Using complex phrases only makes the reading experience tedious for your audience. To make things easier, you can use the Yoast SEO plugin to determine the readability of a text.
Besides, you can also consider the following tips when crafting content:
- Shorten lengthy sentences that are too lengthy and difficult to process
- Avoid using words with four or more syllables as they are difficult to comprehend
- Avoid redundancy. That is, using similar words to describe the same concept
- Eliminate unnecessary modifiers and determiners
- Don’t over-explain the message you are trying to convey.
Place a strong and clear CTA
The biggest mistake you can make when writing a piece of content is by failing to place a clear call-to-action (CTA). Without this, your readers may not know the next action to perform. In fact, this becomes a problem for mobile users who scan content for valuable information within a restricted time.
Thus, if you fail to place your CTA in a visible spot that is obvious within a few seconds of visiting the site, you will miss out on conversion opportunities. To avoid this scenario, place your CTA at the front and center of your website to enable your readers to perform the desired action.
How to make your website mobile-friendly?
Having a mobile-friendly website is a great way to improve your ranking on the search engine.
Develop a responsive layout
A responsive layout allows the website to scale its size to fit the user’s device. In other words, it can adapt to different screen sizes while displaying the relevant content. An instance is when it moves from a two-column layout on a desktop computer to a one-column design on a mobile device. If the design is responsive, the page speed shouldn’t be affected even when it is adjusting to the screen size.
Choosing a mobile-responsive theme for your website remains a crucial way to improve SEO. It allows users to share and link to your page with a single URL, saves time, and doesn’t require redirection for users. In fact, Google recommends using responsive design for your site.
Here is what a responsive design looks like:
E-commerce websites such as Squarespace and Wix have mobile responsive themes that you can customize. WordPress also has themes you can customize. That will save lots of time and won’t make you worry about how the design will look.
Optimize your site speed
Your site speed is the first impression on your visitors. According to a survey, a website that loads in a second has a conversion rate that is three times higher than a website that loads in five seconds.
This emphasizes the need to have your website load at a high speed. One way to improve your site’s speed is to host videos on a third-party site such as Youtube and Wistia, and embed them on your site. This won’t affect your site’s speed as it won’t feel the weight of these sites.
To check your website’s speed, you can make use of tools such as PageSpeed Insights to get a free report. This tool can verify your website speed for both desktop and mobile devices.
Avoid intrusive pop-ups
Pop-ups work well on a website in its desktop version, but not on mobile devices. They are difficult to view on smaller screens as they cover the page’s content as soon as it loads. In worst cases, pop-ups can be difficult for a user to close on a mobile screen because the “X” button may not be visible to them.
Google penalizes “intrusive pop-ups” on websites, especially when it affects the user’s experience such as when it covers the screen or becomes difficult to close. But, you can use it when it will only take a reasonable amount of screen space. So, if you must use pop-ups at all, use them sparingly, and don’t let them cover the entire screen.
Compress images
Although visuals are essential for your content, don’t forget to compress the images. Compressing the images helps to reduce the file size and help with the loading speed. You can use different free tools on the Internet to reduce the file size without sacrificing the quality.
Also, ensure you use proper image formats such as JPEG 2000, WebP, or AVIF as it results in smaller file sizes (JPEGs and PNGs) without compromising on quality. You can also try the lazy loading strategy where images only load when needed. Simply put, the images only load when a user scrolls down.
Choose a readable font
The recommended font size for a desktop screen is at least 14 pixels. However, this might not be legible enough for smaller screens. The best way to determine the legibility of font size is to test it on a mobile device.
Avoid experimenting with new fonts (such as script-type fonts) for mobile screens because your readers may not read them easily. Ensure you stay consistent with font style and use black as the font color. This helps the users to see your content properly when the background is a different color or in the case of reflections, such as sun glare.
Declutter web design
Avoid cluttering your website with multiple calls to action on a page. If the CTAs are too many, it can create confusion and prevent your users from navigating the small screen successfully. Use only the critical functions that your users need, such as the contact form.
Ensure the design is also simple. It helps your users to navigate your website easily. Use white space to keep your content organized and help users to see everything at a glance. Remove outdated or unnecessary content so it doesn’t take up unnecessary space.
For menus, don’t use long lists of options and features. Instead, you can try a hamburger menu — a button that opens a longer menu. It will save space on smaller screens.
Test regularly
To ensure that your website is mobile-friendly, test your website. Test the websites for user experience. Ensure you test for both Android and iOS devices. You can use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test to run your test and evaluate its performance.
The Role of mobile-friendly Design in SEO
Wonder how a mobile-friendly design plays a huge role in SEO? Here are a few reasons to see its importance.
It is accessible
If your website is inaccessible and difficult to use on a mobile device, your audience will likely leave your site and go to your competitor’s. This can result in a high bounce rate which can harm your site’s ranking.
On the other hand, having a website that is mobile-friendly enables your audience to interact with your brand across various devices, without feeling inconvenienced. Your website goes faster and becomes easier to navigate, thus promoting a good user experience.
When you provide a good experience for your users, they will be tempted to stay and see what you have for them. They can also visit your site in the future. This does not only improve customer retention and loyalty but tells Google that the website is valuable.
It increases ranking
In 2019, Google implemented the use of mobile-first indexing for search results. This implies that Google primarily utilizes the mobile version of webpage content to rank pages. It doesn’t matter whether the user is using a mobile device or a desktop. As long as your website’s content is mobile-friendly, it can rank well on Google. Increased ranking correlates to more organic traffic on your website.
It enhances trust and credibility
If you are trying to capture new demographics or retain existing customers, you need to establish trust. Customers must gain access to your website at any time. How do you do this? The answer is simple. You need to have a mobile-friendly website. It helps to create a sense of trust with your targeted customers.
Having a mobile-friendly website shows them that you are adaptive, flexible, and can meet customers’ demands and exceed their expectations. It can also make their journey seamless and provide a sense of authenticity in the customer journey.
High conversion rates
A mobile-friendly site leads to more conversions. When your shopping carts, contact forms, site layouts, and page experiences are designed for mobile devices, it prompts the audience to engage with your site and convert. Otherwise, your website can drive mobile users away leading you to lose organic traffic and business opportunities.
More mobile shares
When users like your content, they tend to share it with their friends and loved ones. Having a mobile-friendly website enables your users to scroll through efficiently, engage with your site, and share it on social media.
Although social shares don’t directly affect rankings, they can help to grow your audience. More social traffic implies that more users visit your site, thus promoting visibility for your business. With easy-to-use social share buttons, your mobile-ready site can share your content and make you reach a wider audience.
Bottom line
This article emphasized the importance of mobile optimization for SEO content. By not having a mobile-friendly website for your content, you leave your audience with a bad experience and give them no choice but to visit your competitor.
However, if you develop a responsive design, optimize your site speed, compress images, declutter web design, and test regularly, you give your audience the chance to stay and explore what you have for them on your website.
