The number of people accessing the internet via their mobile phones is becoming higher and higher with each passing day. Whether it is about having a conversation, getting news updates, or shopping for something online, browsing the internet with a mobile device has become a way of life for most people.
Reports by Statista indicate that over 50% of the global online traffic has been attributed to mobile devices. This is an indication that owners of websites should take mobile SEO more seriously than they did.
Besides accommodating more traffic, both mobile search optimization and mobile optimization are capable of boosting conversions and growing your business.
In this post, we will be discussing how we can come up with the ideal mobile SEO strategy for enhancing the user experience for mobile devices and having your conversion rate increased.
What’s Mobile Optimization?
This simply refers to measures taken to redesign a website to improve mobile user experience, as well as increase conversions.
Previously, you only had to implement a responsive design to ensure an optimized website for mobile devices. It means users can equally view the site desktop version, though most of the site components will scale down to fit the screen of the mobile device. Currently, mobile optimization seems to have undergone some evolution, and mobile SEO techniques have gone through serious changes.
Google introduced mobile-first indexing in 2019, which has made mobile responsiveness to be inadequate for mobile optimization. Now, a site has to be optimized in respect of mobile-first indexing.
By July 2019, Google introduced mobile-first indexing. It means Google would have to crawl a website’s mobile version to evaluate its ranking and indexing. That is why one needs to take SEO for mobile seriously – your website can leverage Google’s mobile-first indexing update if you know what to do.
Many site developers have been left with no option but to redesign their mobile websites from scratch to enhance the mobile user experience, to ensure that visitors could enjoy effortless mobile navigation that is in line with Google’s mobile-first indexing standards.
Some features of a site that has been optimized for mobile are:
- Simple, uncluttered design
- Responsive design
- Big, bold buttons
- Hamburger menus
- No popups
- No sidebars
- Compressed images to enable faster loading
- Texts that can be scanned.
Mobile SEO takes into account how users are going to navigate the site. The navigation process has to be simple enough for users to buy whatever they want, register, or undertake any other CTA on your website.
What is the significance of Mobile Search Optimization?
Optimizing a mobile website because of Google indexing is just one of the reasons mobile SEO has become important. There are several benefits when you implement mobile SEO; one is to improve the mobile user experience, and that is something that can increase conversions, and ultimately earn you more profits on your investments.
Another notable fact is that over 50% of those who shop online do so via their smartphones. This was established by a 2020 survey that was carried out by Episerver. Anyone who ignores mobile SEO will definitely lose out big time in the online market. It is important to enhance mobile usability to ensure better customer satisfaction and conversion.
You know you are meeting your business goals when site visitors quickly become customers. That is why you should think of implementing an SEO strategy for mobile for your site.
Recently, Google said it was launching a brand new algorithm update known as Page Experience come May 2021. That update will consider user experience when it is ranking websites for the sake of producing search results. Also, Google equally said that user experience comprises the mobile-friendliness of the site and its speed.
How Does Mobile Optimization Increase Conversions
It is hard enough to convince a prospective buyer to purchase anything online. So you don’t want to make life more difficult for yourself by complicating their experience on your site. Paying more attention to mobile SEO conversion optimization seems like the best way to secure maximum profits. If you have an eCommerce website, a simple, one-time checkout will be a classical way to make purchase transactions to be so much easier and less stressful. There should not be any confusion regarding how to purchase something on your site.
For many years, businessmen and women have paid attention to the conversion rate optimization of a website. With many more customers shopping through their mobile devices, mobile conversions have become key to succeeding in this field.
How to Implement SEO for Mobile
The opinions of experts regarding website optimization for users of mobile devices are numerous. From getting rid of pop-ups to improving the website speed, there are several mobile SEO techniques you can apply to ensure optimization of your conversion rate.
There are some technical requirements when it comes to enhancing your mobile SEO. You may not be able to do that effectively. Hence, you need to get help from mobile SEO companies that are skilled in the area of WordPress mobile optimization. There are others who are experts for handling mobile SEO in other platforms like Amazon and Shopify.
If you don’t mind conducting your SEO mobile improvements, you can work with these steps;
Run a Mobile SEO Audit
How can you tell whether your website will benefit from the mobile indexing rule of Google? You cannot know what is required if you do not carry out any research and get the required data. With a mobile SEO audit, you can ascertain your website’s performance in terms of mobile SEO, helping you discover an effective mobile SEO technique for you.
You can commence your mobile SEO audit through a Google tool used for testing the speed of mobile websites. It is called Test My Site. It is a free tool you can implement to evaluate your website’s performance against Google indexing.
You can input the URL of your website to birth the information below:
- Mobile Friendliness – it’s this parameter that tells you how easy users navigate your site via mobile devices. Small buttons, ambiguous navigation prompts, as well as other difficulties that hamper mobile user experience could reduce this score for you.
- Mobile speed score – here is how you know your website’s speed on mobile devices. We will talk of how you can enhance the speed of your site later.
- Desktop speed – it simply talks of how quickly your site can load up for users accessing it with desktops. Website speed on desktop and mobile can differ to a great extent, based on factors like site structure and bandwidth.
The moment you are convinced about your position regarding mobile-first indexing of Google, you can come up with a strategy for making your score better.
Remove Clutter
Websites for mobile devices are assumed to be limited in space, so they shouldn’t have layouts like desktops. This complicates navigation on mobile sites.
Take the sidebar for instance. A sidebar is a small column to your right or left of a site, they are normally dropped down mobile website version so that users can scroll to the page’s end to view it.
Getting rid of the side helps to take out the visual clutter, allowing the user to concentrate on the site’s major content.
The same is applicable for ads and pop-ups that can distract a user. Let us assume you want your users to do the following;
- Purchase a product
- Register for your email list
- Subscribe to your service
- Enlist for a call
If you have those as your goals, then your site should not have any distractions regarding mobile navigation. Whenever all the elements on your website point to conversion, you are bound to get improved results. Most importantly, these factors are equally considered in mobile indexing.
Concerning WordPress sites, most WordPress mobile optimization plugins and themes are there to assist you in achieving a minimalistic, clean design that can improve your site’s mobile SEO.
Some difficulties mobile device users experience when browsing through a site that is non-optimized for mobile are;
- Confusing or inconsistent filters
- Endless scrolling
- Slow loading time
- Small text and images
- Elements that cannot be tapped
- Filling of forms is difficult
If you seek expert help, you can contact any mobile SEO company which can provide the necessary mobile SEO services, which will assist you in achieving the required results. Anytime your website is in line with the Google mobile indexing requirements, you are on the correct path.
Improve Site Speed
Website speed happens to be a significant aspect of mobile SEO as well as technical SEO. As revealed by a 2018 Google paper, 53% of users of mobile devices would exit a site if loads for more than 3s. On average, a mobile website takes about 15s to load up. This has a huge influence on conversions and traffic, which means that mobile conversion optimization cannot be overemphasized for your business.
Additionally, website speed can enhance user experience and can help in making a visitor convert to a customer faster than you can imagine.
Google announced it would add website speed to the current parameters when executing mobile site ranking. As such, Google suggests that mobile websites should be converted to AMP or Accelerated Mobile Pages, which implements a simpler HTML code for quicker loading.
A couple of other strategies for site speed improvement are:
- Enabling compression of images
- Creating simple layouts
- Run a website speed audit
- Employing a CDN or Content Delivery Network.
If you are not familiar with these techniques, then hire any mobile SEO company whose expertise is on mobile SEO services, as well as optimization of conversion rates. A couple of web design outfits can help with effective WordPress mobile optimization techniques.
Focus on Your Call-to-Action
Pay more attention to the main goal of your website instead of filling the whole place with irrelevant content. Having a simple CTA on the homepage of your website can bring about immediate conversion.
If you run an eCommerce website, buttons such as Add To Cart or Shop Now shouldn’t be difficult to locate on all your product pages. For a consultant, a CTA such as Schedule A Call or Let us Talk should be at the center and front of your landing page.
Hopefully, you want your visitors to do something after going through your offer, so it is up to you to ensure they have a great experience.
Conclusion
This is the era of mobile consumers, and brands and businesses are already leveraging the mobile SEO optimization bandwagon. Although this can be a bit expensive, it is an investment that always yields good returns.
Are you prepared to offer your website visitors the best mobile UX? Then explore our mobile SEO services, as they specialize in local SEO, eCommerce, Amazon SEO, and Shopify SEO. Reach out to Enlivio Web today, and commence your mobile indexing best practices through the assistance of our experienced mobile SEO professionals.
