Google’s latest focus has been on mobile-friendly search with every year, more and more people are spending more and more time with their smartphones and tablets. Even businesses are now optimizing their online practices, the organization content, and websites for the mobile platform.
Google’s algorithm tweak which will be happening around April 21, next year is said to be “Mobilegeddon,”since it relates to a mobile environment. SEO might sound overly complicated but in reality, the rules are pretty much basic and simple.
The results will now be delivered in a contextual manner and the best equipped answer will have more prominence for a user’s search query. The search algorithms will be designed for diverse platforms and will be based on user’s experience of mobile offerings.
One needs to implement the following mobile SEO tips to make the most of the changes:
- Design for Performance
Since mobile visitors are likely to be using their mobile devices for browsing, it is important that business owners work towards their sites for better performance. Working with slower computing power, and a low battery life, these sites need to work for better optimization.
If the website takes too long for loading or one cannot find answers to search queries easily, mobile users are bound to leave the site or app.
Designing the website for performance is important along with better features to handle user’s searches. Small image sizes and low-quality videos will help in restricting the amount of data for better site operations. The quality should be optimum enough for delivering a good experience for users with quick connections.
Mobile friendly content is the way to go as that gives users a variety of file size options to choose from. One should have a site that caters to users with slower as well as faster mobile devices.
- Focus on User Experience
User experience is important for visitors, and enhanced mobile SEO can help in increasing the technical factors reserved for search engines. Quick load time, seamless navigation, accurate redirects, and clean URLs can help in enhancing user experience in the long run.
A website needs to provide value to your audience and improve its user experience with relevant content and flexible design. One should keep the content readable without the user having to zoom.
– Scrolling should always be kept vertical since horizontal scrolling is not prevalent on mobile devices.
– Navigation should be highly intuitive and the user does not have to wait to load content.
– Form submissions should be optimized for the mobile device, short and sweet since users are often in a hurry.
– Remove Flash options since they are outdated and cannot be rendered on mobile devices.
– Mobile devices also do not support plug-ins and also cause device crashes and security issues, so it is best to avoid them.
- Pick Responsive Design
Choose WordPress themes since they are responsive and can fit into any device and resolution. Responsive Design is highly important in today’s day and age since users are accessing the web through diverse platforms and the content should be rendered flexibly on multiple browsers, devices and gadgets to make the most of it. Google likes sites which sport a responsive design. Once the website scales flexible and renders well on multiple types of devices and monitors, it can help customers relate to your site better.
Here are some more SEO tips that are relevant for mobile as well as for sites to load on multiple platforms.
- Develop content that is channelled to the top of the funnel where questions are answered that are on a basic level and customers are bound to ask at the start of the purchase cycle. Give them a reason to remember you which would help you to gain higher conversion rates.
- Limit choices since less is more in mobile. Show people only what they would like to know and keep the content to the point.
- Make the site easy to navigate by using responsive design and online retailers will find it feasible to implement a mobile version of their website with big buttons, smaller images and basic product facts.
- Target the local demographics since that would help users to get access to their local vendors based on state, zip code, and town. Local land marks will help you to boost chances of showing up in search results.
- Speed matters and is a huge factor for better loading of pages. The loading factor is an important issue in places where the web speed is slow.
- Don’t force feed apps and do not base your strategy on popups to capture email addresses since they do not pop out on mobile devices. The screens are smaller and it would be tough for users to close the window if they do not want to access it and chances are, the website traffic will be lost midway. Give people the ideal opportunity to sign up and then let them download the same. Do not resort to force with popups and stuff.
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via Keval Padia
Founder & CEO of Nimblechapps. He has acute knowledge of Mobile Game Development and User Experience Design. His vision is to become the best iOS development company, which can transform people’s idea into fully functional application at a very affordable price.
