What is Mobile Optimization in SEO: Absolute Beginner’s Guide
Every digital marketing and SEO enthusiast asks me what is mobile optimization in SEO and how helps rank your website.
In our 13 steps guide, we have also explained in detail how SEO helps in digital marketing. You would love to read that too!
In this absolute beginner’s guide to mobile optimization, we will answer this question and look at what you expect to follow for digital marketing success.
If you’re new to SEO, chances are that the terms mobile optimization and mobile-friendly have been bandied about quite a bit.
With more and more people accessing the web on their mobile devices, such as smartphones or tablets, it has become especially important to make sure your site is great looking and up-to-date (and just plain works) for all these new visitors.
We’ll see, then, what organic search engine optimization really means and why it matters. And in this beginner’s guide we explain exactly how to optimize a website for mobile usability given all the options available today.
Here are some key stats that highlight why optimizing for mobile matters:
- More than half of total website traffic is from mobile now.
- According to Google, mobile-friendliness impacts a search engine’s ranking for queries on mobile devices.
- Pages that load quickly and look good on a mobile device generally have better user engagement.
And so, if your site is not optimized for mobile, you aren’t even reaching over half of potential visitors! Also, Google want so send mobile users to sites which are user-friendly.
Therefore making your site more mobile friendly will help you bring up the rankings.
Elements of Mobile Optimization
Optimizing your website for mobile is not a one-time thing. Those are several factors you have to take into consideration that affect both the user and crawlability by search engine spiders:
Responsive Web Design
The starting point is a responsive site that can adjust to different screen sizes without missing a beat.
Responsive design thus means that web pages reflow content so as to create an ideal view and interaction experience, regardless of whether the user is on a desktop computer or mobile phone.
Page Speed
Site speed is especially critical on mobile, where attention spans are even shorter. Fast page load times depend on optimizing images, minimizing redirects, enabling browser caching, and more.
Tap Targets
Tap targets are the areas people touch on phone screens to activate an element. Links and buttons should be large enough for accurate tapping with a finger.
Viewport Settings
The viewport meta tag defines how browsers render pages on various devices. This helps control page zooming and readability.
Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
AMP is a Google-led project designed for ultra-fast loading mobile content. Implementing AMP pages can improve page speed and mobile user experience.
There are additional advanced elements to consider once the basics are covered, like dynamic serving and separate mobile URLs. But, optimizing these essential items is a priority.
Why You Need a Mobile-Friendly Site Design
Having a modern responsive design is the baseline for delivering a quality experience to site visitors on phones and tablets. The fluid grid-based layouts of responsive sites reformat page content to eliminate horizontal scrolling, uncomfortable zooming, or other mobile friction points.
Here’s a look at some of the user perks of a mobile-friendly responsive site:
- Easily read text without awkward zooming in and out
- Quickly tap links and buttons meant for fingers over mice
- View images and videos above the fold without extra scrolling
- Access site content faster with quicker page loads
By giving users an intuitive, app-like experience, a responsive design also encourages more time on-site and higher engagement. And remember, Google wants to feature sites that satisfy mobile users!
Optimizing for Faster Mobile Page Speeds
Site speed is a vital consideration for all websites, but on smaller mobile screens where attention spans shrink, slow loads hurt even more. If a website takes more than three seconds to open, 53% of visitors will abandon it!
There are a number of ways to help reduce mobile page load times:
- Enable browser caching through headers
- Compress images and media files
- Minify CSS and JavaScript files
- Defer non-critical JS loading
- Async load 3rd party scripts
- Eliminate unnecessary redirects
- Optimize web host configuration
The goal is achieving sub-3 second load speeds (preferably under 2 seconds). Better SEO results are the result, along with more engagement and decreased bounce rates. Google now considers page speed when assigning rankings, emphasizing the importance of mobile site speed.
Tools like Google PageSpeed Insights, Pingdom Website Speed Test, and WebPageTest provide page speed test results along with optimization recommendations. Running regular mobile page speed checks also lets you monitor improvements over time.
Improving Tap Target Sizes for Mobiles & Tablets
Unlike using a mouse cursor on larger desktop monitors, mobile users rely on tapping and touching screen elements with their fingers.
Having properly sized tap targets for mobile devices goes hand in hand with responsive sites in ensuring usability.
The standard recommendation is to make buttons and touch points at least 48 CSS pixels tall and wide.
This leaves enough surrounding space or margin for error to help prevent accidental taps on other elements.
Responsively designed sites can dynamically serve larger tap targets to mobiles as needed.
When tap targets become too small and tightly packed, users experience unnecessary frustration and failed taps, leading to slower task completion.
Auditing that text links, CTA buttons, form fields, and other tapable items adhere to tap target standards is important in mobile UX design.
Defining the Mobile Viewport for Proper Rendering
The viewport is the user’s visible area of a web page. Browser viewports vary significantly between desktop monitors and compact mobile screens – forcing developers to control how pages render through meta tags.
Setting the viewport meta tag helps web pages display content more cleanly in the shortened, scrollable mobile viewport without unnecessary horizontal scrolling or zooming.
Defining viewport width and scale settings benefits both visual design and information accessibility.
Here is the standard mobile viewport markup:
<meta name=”viewport” content=”width=device-width, initial-scale=1″>
This safely locks the page width to the device screen width while setting the initial zoom level to 1. From there, users can zoom in and out as needed while avoiding content spilling offscreen, causing scroll bars.
Structured Data Markup for Mobile Search Results
In addition to responsive design and speed, don’t overlook structured data markup when optimizing for mobile SEO.
Like viewport tags, structured data provides helpful cues search engines use for displaying branded content more attractively across devices.
Certain types of schema markup–breadcrumb navigation, review snippets, site links and corporate contact details to cite a few examples can make search listings more attractive small screens.
Know what form of structured data best represents your brand’s products, services and content in a full-bodied mobile SERP.
Take, for instance TEST brand’s markup of 5-star customer ratings and prominent corporate data in mobile search results.
Conclusion on What is Mobile Optimization in SEO
To optimize for ever-important mobile users, you need to understand responsive design and site speed and tap targets viewports and markup.
Tweaking both visitor experience and mobile accessibility, brands can ensure long-term presence in search results while growing organic engagement.
We hope this beginner’s guide has clarified what mobile optimization in SEO means, and why it is so important to modern websites.
Keeping these crucial pages optimized for mobile in mind makes websites the friendliest across all devices and leaves users happier, bounce rates lower, and genuine organic reach greater over time.
So follow these guidelines, and you will be a clear mobile competitor ahead of the crowd!
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) on What is Mobile Optimization in SEO
A: Mobile optimization in SEO ensures websites are user-friendly and easily accessible on mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. It’s crucial due to the high volume of mobile traffic and its impact on search engine rankings.
A: Essential elements include responsive design for different screens, fast page load times, appropriately sized tap targets, proper viewport settings, and the use of Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) for quick mobile content loading.
A: A mobile-friendly design offers easy reading, quick access to links and content, faster page loads, and higher user engagement, aligning with Google’s preference for mobile-friendly sites.
A: Strategies include enabling browser caching, compressing images, minimizing CSS/JavaScript files, deferring non-critical script loading, eliminating redirects, and optimizing web hosting for faster load times.
A: Tap targets need to be at least 48 CSS pixels, ensuring usability on mobile screens. Properly defining viewport settings helps pages display optimally, preventing unnecessary scrolling or zooming for a better mobile user experience.
