Mobilegeddon. The relationship between SEO and mobile devices

SEO has gotten more complicated over the years, and as technology advances, it has become even more difficult to stay up-to-date with everything you need to know in order to have your site rank at the top of the search engines. One area that many companies neglect, however, is optimizing their website’s content so that it’s optimized for mobile devices. 

Over half of all search queries on Google are made from mobile devices, and if your site isn’t optimized for these devices, you could be missing out on potential customers and even ranking lower in search results. If you have a website that needs to be optimized for mobile devices, there are plenty of ways to do it – this article describes some of the basics to get you started with mobile optimization.

Google uses mobile-friendliness as a ranking factor

No matter what type of business you have, it’s important to make sure your website is optimized for mobile devices. With 97% of consumers using smartphones, it’s clear that mobile traffic is here to stay. Google uses mobile-friendliness as a ranking factor, so if your site isn’t optimized for mobile devices, it could negatively impact your search engine rankings. 

Google Mobile-First Index

This is a change in the indexing of pages by Google. In this case, the search engine first targets the mobile version of the website and then determines the search ranking. Mobile-first makes Google treat the mobile version of the website as the basic one.

This is a big change in the way pages are rated. Why did it even happen? Nothing simpler: the trend of mobile devices is constantly growing (interestingly, it has not changed during the pandemic period), and Google has noticed great differences between the desktop and mobile versions of the website. From March 2021, Google completely switched to mobile-first indexing.

The most common errors that affect the Mobile-First Index:

• blocked CSS, JavaScript and robots.txt files,
• incorrect 301 redirects,
• faulty 404,
• full-screen ads covering the content of the page,
• incorrect internal and external linking,
• wrong font,
• placing interactive elements too close together.

Improve your rankings by making your site more user friendly on mobile devices

Today – with the growing number of internet users and the development of technology – if you do not have a website adapted to a small screen, you practically do not exist. This is the natural course of things in the face of high competition, where new tools appear on the market replacing the old ones that have not adapted.

Be flexible and choose Responsive Web Design (RWD), i.e. flexible, responsive websites. It is currently the most popular technique of automatically adjusting the screen to the size of the browser window, e.g. of smartphones or tablets. When designing your website, it’s important to keep this in mind because Google better evaluates the pages that are displayed correctly on mobile devices. Next:

• make your homepage text visible on smaller screens;
• change your navigation links to match one-click accessibility;
• remove videos or pictures that may not load properly on mobile devices;
• use shorter paragraphs so they’re easier to read;
• avoid putting anything too heavy (like images or multimedia files) above the fold;
• focus on speed – the faster your site loads, the better.

Tips

• The popularity of animated 3D graphics that move is currently increasing. This can be seen with how e-commerce websites utilize them to give viewers a more in-depth look at products. 
• One advantage of many websites is the potential for customization, just like we do with our phones. We customize our phones by setting a night mode and changing wallpapers and layouts. 
• Phone use is getting much more intuitive, so many websites are giving up buttons. 
• Swiping is much faster and more convenient. We would advise you to think about adapting your device to a vertical to horizontal resolution switch, as that can affect the entirety of the layout of your project. 
• We may be slowly reaching the split screen trend, which can be used to present different data.
• Don’t forget about local searches – “near me” searches are one of the most popular (so read more about local SEO here: https://www.icea-group.nz/seo-cork/).

Find the best Meath SEO and work with mobile experts – the specialists will analyze your site and provide recommendations to improve the performance of the site when accessed from a mobile device.

Wrapping up

At home, at work, on the go, everywhere – the Internet surrounds us and we are still immersed in it. A device that fits your lifestyle is key, and many people have found that their phone has become a one-stop shop for all of their needs. In order to attract this group of customers, your website must be mobile-friendly. By optimizing your site with these four steps, you will be able to give everyone who visits your site a great experience while they’re on the go!

Photo:LUM3N/pixabay.com