5 Ways to Optimize Your Business Website for Mobile SEO

With Google’s mobile-first index finally live and fully implemented, mobile SEO is now at the forefront.

Search engine optimization is different for desktop and mobile users. Desktop SEO is more straightforward, while mobile SEO requires a number of considerations, most of which revolve around usability and speed.

It’s all the more important now to shift your focus to mobile SEO, as more and more people (4.17 billion, to be exact) are using their mobile devices to access the web — and the number just keeps growing.

Mobile user experience also influences sales and conversions, as well as affecting how users perceive your brand.

How to Optimize Your Business Website for Mobile SEO in 5 Ways

What does it mean to optimize for mobile SEO? It’s not just about making your website mobile-friendly and responsive — ultimately, it’s about making the customer experience as seamless and consistent as possible.

1. Implement responsive web design

The most obvious first step is making your web design responsive. Surprisingly, studies revealed that nearly 24% of the top 1 million websites worldwide are not mobile-friendly and that 93% of small business owners still have outdated web designs.

Here are 4 basic responsive web design (RWD) elements to implement:

• CSS media queries: To define breakpoints
• Meta viewport tags: To give browsers instructions on how to adjust the content
• Site grids and fluid design: Ideally proportionate and with unfixed variable measures to make it responsive
• JavaScript: To change the rendering and behavior of the website on different devices

2. Focus on usability and user experience

As we previously mentioned, mobile-friendliness is all about how usable your website is across any device and how much it can foster a positive experience for users.

A few things to consider in the UI/UX of your mobile website:

• Intuitive navigation: Your website should be easy to navigate, even to first-time visitors and non-techy users.
• Eligible fonts: Ensure that your content can be read even on smaller devices. Consider sans serif fonts for body text, with at least 14px font size.
• Thumb-friendly design: Make sure that clickable buttons are easy to tap, even with a huge thumb, and that the essential features can be easily accessed on the lower right side of the screen or at the center (where users’ thumbs are located).
• Easy to find CTAs: Your call-to-action (CTA) buttons should be easy to spot and rightly sized for easy tapping. Consider using a contrasting color for your button and placing it in a thumb-friendly location.
• Be careful with pop-ups: Whether it’s an ad or a newsletter subscription opt-in, pop-ups can distract and frustrate mobile users, especially if it’s difficult to select “exit.” Use pop-ups sparingly, or never use them at all.

3. Improve page load speed

Page speed is a crucial ranking factor for mobile SEO, and website loading time is one of the first things that users notice when using your website. In fact, 47% of consumers expect a page to load within 2 seconds; otherwise, they will abandon your site.

Here are ways to improve your page load speed:

• Optimize images and videos: Optimize not only their resolution but also their file size. TinyPNG and Compressor.io are good image optimizer tools that are free to use.
• Minimize redirects: As much as possible, simplify the experience of your website.
• Enable gzip compression: To reduce the size of transferred responses.
• Enable browser caching and cookies: Caches remember page elements to open them faster in your next visit, while cookies are users’ browsing data that can be stored with your consent to make the user experience more automated and personalized. Be sure to be GDPR compliant and have a cookie notification on your site.

4. Take care of Core Web Vitals

Google recently added a new ranking signal, Core Web Vitals, which evaluates the overall user experience. These work hand in hand with existing UI/UX page metrics.

Essentially, these cover 3 vital elements of your web design:

• Loading: A page’s loading speed measured in Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) — aim for 2.5 seconds LCP or less.
• Interactivity: A page’s responsiveness measured in First Input Delay (FID) — aim for less than 100 milliseconds.
• Visual stability: The stability of web content as it loads, measured in Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) — aim for less than 0.1.

Fortunately, Google has several tools for measuring Core Web Vitals and a Core Web Vitals report in Google Search Console to help you understand the technicalities.

5. Integrate local SEO

Local SEO is an integral part of mobile SEO because users typically include the search phrase “near me” when they look for services and products. Google also tends to show businesses in search results that are most relevant to the user’s location.

Here are ways to optimize your business website for local SEO:

• Use local keywords: Use tools such as Keyword Tool and Google Ads Keyword Tool to find relevant local keywords. Optimize your blog content and web pages using these keywords, particularly your page titles and descriptions and your contact page.
• Get listed in local directories: At the very least, have your business claimed and verified in Google My Business to expand your search visibility, both on Google search engine results pages (SERPs) and Google Maps searches. You can also opt for other local online directories such as Bing Places for Business, Yahoo! Small Business, Yelp, and Yellow Pages.

Summing It Up

There are many facets to mobile SEO, and the things we discussed are the most basic ones you should cover. To learn more about SEO, UI/UX, and web development and design, visit our blog at https://www.ilfusion.com/blog.