What is Mobile Optimisation?
Mobiles and tablets are everywhere, and subsequently people use their devices constantly to access websites. However, many sites still aren’t set up to take into account the varying load times and screen sizes.
The term mobile optimisation broadly encompasses page speed, site structure and site design in order to ensure the best possible experience for visitors. Too long to load, and you lose them. Screen size won’t ‘fit’? – they’re gone to someone else. It’s a split-second decision-making process, and if you’re not mobile-ready, then not only are you losing potential customers, but you’ll be penalised by search engines too.
Here’s a great beginner’s list of things to discuss with your designer in order to maximise your site’s mobile potential.
Mobile SEO Best Practices
Ideally, your site should be well-optimised. If so, just a few additional things will be the icing on the cake:
Configuration of Your Mobile Site
Do you want to use a responsive, dynamic serving, or separate site configuration?. Each has its advantages and disadvantages. Google prefers responsive design but supports all three options as long as you have set them up properly.
Responsive site: Automatically adapts to a mobile, tablet or desktop.
Dynamic site: More technically challenging and higher to maintain, but there’s just one URL for all devices and there’s the ability to tailor a fully mobile-centric user experience.
Separate site: A separate mobile version of your site, using separate URLs, using mobile sub-domains, or separate folders. You will not be penalised for duplicate content if the site uses proper bi-directional annotation.
Page speed
Loading quickly is essential. Your designer should do this by:
Optimising images
Use of clear images, good proportions and properly down-sized in terms of pixels for mobile use.
Reducing re-directs:
Re-directs affect how users and Google, see the pages. They’re costly for mobile users, and bad for performance speed.
Minifying code:
Removing unnecessary characters that aren’t used for the code to execute its task. This speeds up page load with the result both visitors, and search engines, are happy!
Code and leverage browser caching:
The browser cache is a temporary storage location on your computer or mobile. It stores a record of the sites you visit for future access. (When you clear your browsing history on a device, you’re clearing the cache of its records of where you’ve been). Each time a visitor accesses a new page on your website these files will then be accessed from the visitor’s computer instead of your server, which will greatly speed up page load times.
Never Block JavaScript, CSS or images:
Years ago, some mobile devices weren’t able to support all of these elements, so webmasters would block one or all three of them. Now, the Smartphone GoogleBot is seeking to view and categorise the same content so don’t hide these elements. They also let Google see whether you have a responsive site or a different mobile solution.
Don’t use Flash:
If your user’s phone doesn’t have Flash plug-in enabled, they’ll miss out. Use HTML5 to create special effects instead.
Avoid Pop-Ups:
There’s nothing more frustrating than trying to close pop-ups on a mobile. This will surely lead to a high bounce rate off the page.
Design For Bigger Fingers:
We’d shy away from using the phrase ‘fat finger’, but with touch screen it’s easy to navigate away unintentionally if buttons are too small, too large or in the way of a page scroll.
Optimise Titles and Meta-Descriptions
Be concise when creating URLs, meta-descriptions and titles. There’s less space to play with on a mobile, so make everything count.
Optimise for local search:
This means including your city name, your address, phone number and your site’s meta-data. Particularly useful if your business has local links.
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