Is Mobile SEO The Future?
Think about it: how often do you pull out your mobile phone or tablet when you want to search for a product or service online? If you’re like billions of other people across the world, the answer these days is probably more often than not. And that’s why mobile SEO is vital for businesses.
With increasing prevalence of mobile devices and their owners’ reliance on them, mobile SEO is now more important than ever before. In fact, Google, the largest search engine worldwide, assesses how mobile-friendly each website is when determining its ranking in the search engine results pages. There’s no doubt that mobile is the future! Are you ready to dominate the search rankings and futureproof your business by implementing mobile SEO?
Here at Position1SEO, we’re one of the leading SEO agencies in the UK, specialising in ensuring our clients’ businesses and websites are optimised for mobile SEO. Get in touch today for case studies detailing our previous successes.
Mobile SEO isn’t just the future: it’s the here and now! Research shows that well over 50% of Internet users globally are accessing the World Wide Web on increasingly sophisticated mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. And since 2018, Google has been implementing its mobile-first principle, meaning that whatever type of device you access its search engine through, you’ll get results from its mobile index.
So whether your customers are searching for your products or services while on the go or on a desktop computer, if you don’t have a website that’s optimised for mobile, you could well be missing out. Why? It’s already a well-known fact that three-quarters of searchers never make it further than page one of the search engine results. And Google ranks sites by how well they perform against the criteria laid down in its algorithm; so while you won’t necessarily be penalised for not having a mobile responsive website, it’s unlikely to score as highly as one that is. You could see a drop in your search engine rankings and worse than that, your competitors’ fully responsive websites will get seen before yours.
So what mobile SEO services do your website need to be in order to meet the requirements for mobile-responsive? There are four broad factors to address. First, you should check whether your pages, including images, text, navigation buttons, and so on, load up on any type of device or size of screen, from a desktop to a tablet or smartphone. Second, each page must load quickly, not least because research has found that pages taking three seconds or longer to appear have a much higher bounce rate. Third, all your content should be visible on the mobile version of your site – if it’s not, it’s likely to be missed by search engines when they’re indexing it, not to mention by prospective customers. And fourth, all internal links and page redirects must be working.
If any one of these factors has been missed, your ranking on Google is likely to drop. So how can you cater to Google’s mobile-first policy? Well, you can have two separate sites, each with its own URL, one version for desktop searchers and the other for mobile users. But maintaining each of these and ensuring content is duplicated across both can be time-consuming and resource-intensive. Instead, you could set your site up to identify the type of device a searcher’s using, and then display the content accordingly (a dynamic serving configuration). This is better in terms of SEO for mobile devices, but can still be problematic. Often, the desktop version is shown to mobile users; plus you still have to create alternative versions of copy to cater to new devices.
Google recommends responsive web design as being the best solution. This means one URL, one set of source code, one set of pages – but the content and layout are dynamic, so alters itself to adapt to every user’s device.
Once you’ve tackled this aspect, what are the most important considerations for mobile SEO? Above all, the user’s experience should be your number one priority if you want your site to rank well. That means, as noted above, ensuring your pages load up as quickly as possible. Check all links are working and remove or redirect error pages. And disable pop-up ads – these cause mobile users problems and what’s more, Google’s not a great fan of them either.
In terms of your content, writing for mobile devices means keeping titles and meta descriptions short and snappy, descriptive enough for users and Google to quickly be able to assess what the page is about. On-page, make text easy to read on smaller screens by short paragraphs, concise text, and using tools like bullet points for clarity and fast scanning.
And be aware that a lot of mobile users are increasingly searching for information, goods, and services while they’re out and about, which means that local mobile SEO is more important than ever. Get your company name, number, and location in local directories, claim your listing on Google My Business – in short, get your company on the map.
No Time To Go Mobile-Responsive? Ask The Experts
We’re not all technical geniuses, and if you’re trying to kickstart a new business, keep an existing one afloat or grow it to increase your share of the market, it’s unlikely you’ll have the time, skills, and resources to address mobile SEO effectively. That’s where we come in at Position1SEO. Over the decade we’ve been working in the SEO field, we’ve been staying ahead of the latest trends to help countless businesses of all types to reach the number one spot on Google for their target markets. We can help you do the same.
As a fully clued-up mobile SEO agency, we’ll ensure your website is ready for mobile-first indexing. Our first step will be to carry out a complete audit of your site, to find out where improvements are necessary. We can help you improve the technical side so Google can crawl and index your site effectively; but we’ll also focus on making your website more appealing to your prospective customers in a whole range of ways.
For instance, in consultation with you, we’ll get to know your aims and goals for your business and give you insight into how our SEO keyword packages can help. Great content is what sells products and services, so we’ll ensure that not only do your keywords attract Google’s attention, they also form the basis for informative, engaging text that tells users what they need to know.
We’ll check and enhance all internal links so customers can smoothly navigate through your pages in a logical fashion. At Position1SEO, we are also adept at generating the right quality of backlinks from reputable sites, raising your profile and authority throughout your industry and beyond.
And we also place a lot of emphasis on Conversion Rate Optimisation. Having more visitors to your website is great, but ultimately, you want a percentage of those to become paying customers. We can make that happen.
So you can monitor the value of what we do, we compile detailed monthly reports which we’ll send you. We also use these as a prompt for us to monitor how each aspect of our service is working for you. We’re not afraid to refine an existing mobile SEO strategy or develop a brand-new one if we think it will produce better results in the future.
Seeing the results of improved SEO isn’t instant – it can take time for changes to bed in and for websites to rise up the rankings. But the right strategies will create long-lasting, profitable results for your business. Find out more about what we do throughout our website here at https://position1seo.co.uk/. And if you’d like more information on mobile SEO or how we can lift your site to the number 1 spot on Google, just give Position1SEO a call on 0141 846 0114. We can get you where you want to be. Call today.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Why is mobile SEO important?
Mobile SEO optimization ensures that visitors accessing it on a mobile device have just as good a user experience on a small screen as on a desktop. Mobile optimisation includes specific factors governing site design and structure, page loading speed, and more. Google now ranks mobile sites first, so if yours isn’t mobile-friendly, you could be penalised.
Does SEO really work?
SEO is proven to work. It increases the volume of traffic to your website by making it more visible, as search engines rank well-optimised sites higher in search engine results pages. It also ensures a better user experience, which keeps people on your website for longer, giving you more opportunity to convert them to paying customers.
What is a mobile optimised website?
A mobile optimised website recognises it’s being viewed on a small-screen device and reformats itself automatically to provide a better user experience. This includes making content easier to read, bigger navigation buttons, and presenting images so they can be viewed clearly. That all makes it easier for visitors to engage with your website.
How do I optimize my website for mobile devices?
First, test your existing website with the mobile-friendly tool in Google’ Search Console. If you use WordPress, choose a mobile-responsive theme. You should also ensure your web host is reliable; improve page loading times and enable AMP pages. Effective mobile search engine optimisation also includes linking pages internally and making button sizes larger for efficient navigation.
Does mobile friendly affect SEO?
Not providing a mobile-friendly experience for visitors can have a negative impact on your website’s search engine rankings. Optimising your site for mobile devices with the right mobile SEO techniques, though, can result in a boost to rankings, so it’s well worth taking into account.
Why do you need a mobile friendly website?
As well as providing a good way to rank more highly in search engines’ rankings, having a mobile responsive site increases your potential to reach your target audiences. People are increasingly using mobile devices to access the internet on the go. Mobile-friendly websites make sharing online much simpler, so you can both grow and engage better with prospective customers.
Are all websites mobile friendly?
Not by default – websites designed for desktop use don’t appear in an easy-to-use format on mobile devices. Pages and the text and images on them may not show up properly. Ask your web designer to ensure your website is mobile-friendly and therefore responsive to all potential users. Your online web marketing depends on it.
Is AMP good for SEO?
Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) isn’t a specific ranking factor for search engines, but fast-loading pages are. AMP boosts page speed loading times and makes all kinds of content more accessible for users, so indirectly, AMP is very good for SEO.
AMP reduces bounce rates and keeps visitors on your website for longer, which can lead to higher conversion rates.
Is AMP only for mobile?
AMP creates mobile web pages that load up to four times faster than they would otherwise. AMP also ensures faster loading times for pages on desktops too, with similar benefits in terms of improving a site’s ranking for speed. If AMP is a mystery to you, a good mobile SEO company will be able to implement it on your behalf.
Why does Google focus on being mobile?
Well over half of all internet searches worldwide are now done on mobile devices like smartphones. Recognising this, Google now prioritises indexing and ranking mobile-responsive sites first so users can access relevant, high-quality search results that are fully and easily readable on their devices.
You need good optimisation services for mobile to stay ahead of your competition.
Mobile SEO Is A Must
Over 50% of internet users now search on mobile devices, a number that’s rising all the time. Mobile optimisation means ensuring your site, its design, and content are all fully available to visitors on whatever screen size and platform they are searching on.
Google used to crawl, index, and rank desktop versions first, but now gives priority to mobile versions, ensuring search results are more accessible to users. Mobile pages are shown in search results in preference to desktop ones. Desktop sites are still crawled and there’s no direct impact on SEO rankings, but fast-loading pages tend to score better.
The Beginner’s Guide To Launching A Mobile SEO Campaign
Here’s some tips to get a better mobile website ranking:
- Use Google Search Console mobile-friendly test to check your site’s mobile-responsiveness and what needs doing if not.
- Check site speed with PageSpeed Insights and use Google AMP tools or hire an expert to help fix slow-loading pages.
- Claim your business listing at Google My Business and raise your profile online.
- Create mobile-friendly digital content: short text, bullet points, compressed images, and concise meta titles and descriptions aid visibility and easy reading.
- Use local keywords to attract local traffic.
- Optimise your site for voice search.
Mobile Search Engine Optimization
Mobile SEO optimisation is mainly focused on on-page content. It consists of:
- rendering images to fit smaller screen sizes;
- improving speeds and page loading times; and
- facilitating ease of navigation and ease of viewing content without the user having to scroll from side to side or manually resize text to read it.
Other tips include making blog and other content short and snappy; using visual aids like bullet-pointed lists so it’s easy for readers to scan; and making full use of tools like Google My Business to capitalise on local searches.
The Importance Of SEO For Mobile
Without a mobile optimised website, you could be jeopardising 50% of your online traffic. Standard websites offer poor user experiences on small screens. It’s impossible to read small text, users have to scroll back and forth to view the whole page, and images load slowly.
It’s also harder to buy or engage with a site that’s not mobile responsive, so you could be losing out on sales too. Google’s officially stated that all users, no matter what device they’re using, should have an equally good user experience, so if your search engine optimisation for mobile phones is not on point, then get expert assistance.
Facts To Know About Mobile SEO
Here are five facts to persuade you how important mobile SEO is to your business:
- 87% of mobile owners use a search engine daily to find information.
- 46% of Google searches are for local businesses.
- 61% of searchers said they’d be far more likely to use a local business if its website was mobile-friendly.
- 96% of search traffic on mobile devices is carried out on Google.
- 75% of searchers never stray beyond page one of Google’s results.
All this means your website must be optimised with mobile SEO Google approves of to stay ahead of your competition.
If you need an experienced hand to get your mobile SEO up to scratch, call the team at Position1SEO today. We can provide you with the best mobile SEO services in the UK!
