By: Madison Johansen
We all know that nearly everyone (myself included) spends a large portion of the day on their mobile devices – checking social media, looking through emails, and of course, searching and browsing the internet. Given all the activity and traffic on mobile devices, ensuring that your site is mobile optimized should be a top priority. If your site is optimized for search engines already, following the four tips below will put you on the right path to a fully optimized site across devices.
But, first – what is Mobile Optimization?
Mobile optimization is the process of ensuring that visitors using mobile devices to access your site have an experience optimized for the device. Sounds pretty straightforward, right? Well, there are a lot of different things you should be thinking about when optimizing your site for mobile, but these suggestions are a great place to start.
Tip #1: Navigate through your own site as a typical “user”
Think of the typical reason why users are coming to your site in the first place and try and go through the motions you hope they would take. Keep in mind that users often click on the wrong buttons if they are not sized correctly or if they are placed near a scroll bar – also known as the fat finger effect. Navigate through the site to ensure everything is easily clickable (but will not lead to a ton of accidental clicks) and the flow makes sense.
Tip #2: Increase page speed
Page speed is one of the most crucial aspects of mobile optimization. In fact, 53% of all visits are abandoned if a mobile page takes longer than three seconds to load. Compress images when possible and minimize the number of redirects on each page. To check your site’s page speed and get tips on how to improve it, I recommend using the free Google PageSpeed Tool.
Tip #3: Clean things up
Ensure that the site design is simplified and clean – user experience will suffer if there is too much on the page. Limit the use of any pop-ups as these can often times increase bounce rate. It is also recommended to adjust title and meta descriptions for mobile devices. Although Google allows around the same amount of characters as on desktop, keeping both the title and meta description short will ensure they do not get truncated.
Tip #4: Optimize for local search
If you have an actual storefront or any local element, optimizing your mobile content for local search is critical. Besides standardizing your name, address, and phone number across the site, you should also include your city and state name in your metadata.
To Conclude
Ensuring your site is optimized for mobile devices should be a top priority and it doesn’t have to be extremely difficult to pull off. Even with little SEO knowledge, a few quick changes will help overall ranking and user experience across the site. With frequent industry changes and updates happening, especially in the mobile space, you will need to stay up to date and continue to be proactive in order to keep your site fully optimized.
