How Can a Mobile-Friendly Website Improve Your SEO Rankings?

Having an online presence is not enough to survive and thrive in this highly competitive business world. In this mobile-obsessed world, people find it easier to browse the web from their smartphones than from desktop computers. A recent survey by Statista suggests that more than 52% of web traffic comes from mobile devices.

To provide mobile users with an excellent, smooth experience, more and more businesses are thinking of creating a mobile-friendly websites to make it easier for mobile users to access their sites.

Regardless of the industry, you are operating in, it’s the right time to optimize your website for mobile users if you want to stay ahead of the curve.

If you are considering optimizing your website for mobile and wondering where to start, here are some effective strategies for creating a mobile-friendly website.

Create an Awesome Mobile Website Design

Keep in mind that mobile users are very goal-oriented; they want easy-to-use options and functionalities that make it easier for them to find what they need.

So, improve your website’s mobile experience and see how your website improves its rankings accordingly. If you don’t want to do this yourself, read here the list of interview questions to hire a web design specialist for this.

You need to consider these design principles when creating an excellent mobile website design that offers a great UX and generates more conversions.

Keep your CTAs visible to increase your chances of getting more conversions
Make it easier for people to find a unique selling point.
Create an easy-to-use and short navigation menu.
Make the site search visible so visitors can easily find what they need.
You can add search filters to provide users with accurate results.
Don’t frustrate visitors by showing popups.
Choose the easiest ways for users to fill out the signup form.
Keep the lead form short, easy to read, and to the point.
Include high-quality product images and video backgrounds.

By keeping these essential points in mind, you can quickly develop an aesthetically pleasing and functional mobile website design.

A professional web design agency can also help you create an effective design strategy for your mobile site and create a better and more impressive UX design. Also, if you already created your website and you consider a redesign or a repurposing like adding new functionalities, integrations, etc then a WordPress development company is your best bet.

Focus on Your Page Speed

If your website loads fast on a laptop, it should load on phones and tablets at the same speed or even better. Websites that load fast can get higher rankings on search engine pages and generate more leads.

How can your website appear on the top search result and get more conversions if your page takes forever to load?

It is important to reduce the mobile load time by following these simple steps:

Improve your web server software or configuration
Enhance the quality and scope of your web hosting service
Minimize redirects to accelerate mobile page speed
Carefully and repeatedly measure round-trip times
Put JS at the bottom and CSS at the top of HTML files
Use gzip compression to reduce the file size

Ensuring your website is optimized for speed it’s not a walk in the park. If it is built on WordPress then I recommended hiring a WordPress support company that will first do a speed audit and then take the necessary steps to improve its loading time.

Use Accelerated Mobile Pages

It is an intelligent strategy to optimize your web pages for mobile users as Google has officially integrated accelerated mobile pages into the mobile search algorithm. If your pages are not loading quickly, it will eventually make your users leave your website immediately. Here accelerated mobile pages (AMP) come into play.

AMP is an open-source project that helps brands create mobile sites that can load faster.

There are three important components of building accelerated mobile pages:

AMP HTML -HTML custom tags command to create dynamic content tailored for mobile devices. It makes it easier to code common patterns.
AMP JS – A JavaScript framework for mobile pages enables the rapid performance of the AMP HTML. You can easily manage your resources with the AMP JS library.
AMP Cache ensures every page works efficiently without external source dependence. It fetches and caches all AMP HTML sites using a content delivery network to make some critical performance optimization.

Compress Images to Increase the Speed

Images are the essential elements of your mobile site that can quickly convey information. Ensure images on your mobile site are light, device-responsive, and easily accessible.

Optimizing your image’s file size is a sensible strategy to improve your site’s performance. One thing you should remember while optimizing your image is that adjustments can reduce their quality. Many intelligent ways reduce the image’s file size without compromising image quality.

Before you start optimizing your images, it is advised to choose the right file type.

PNG is a good choice for posting high-quality images and large file sizes. This format works best for simple images with minimal colours and details. They look better without being too heavy.
JPEG is the lossy image format that reduces the file size by eliminating some of the data in your image. It is a suitable image compression format that you can choose to reduce the file size without affecting its quality.
You can use Adobe Photoshop to resize your images. Identify the image size you want for your mobile site and use the photo editor to resize the image to the proper width and height.
Another great option is to use an image resizer to resize your image before posting. There is a myriad variety of image resizer tools available that you can use to reduce the size of your images.

Since there are a lot of image optimization tools and programs available to choose from, here is a list of some excellent tools to optimize your images: Affinity Photo, Adobe Photoshop, Gimp, Paint.NET, GIFsicle, JPEGtran, JPEG Mini, OptiPNG, pngquant, FileOptimizer, ImageOptim, Triage, ImageResize.org

Mobile-First Indexing

Most people worldwide are browsing on mobile devices and visiting the mobile version of websites. Therefore, Google has started using the mobile version of your website for indexing and ranking.

The ultimate goal of mobile-first indexing is to improve the search experience for mobile users by providing relevant information. It has become crucial for nearly every business to create a mobile version of their website that is easy to use and provides information pertinent to the users.

A brand with a mobile-first approach to content and design will gain higher rankings and generate more conversions from their organic traffic.

Use Free Tools to Make Sure Your Website is Mobile Friendly

Since mobile-friendliness has become an important ranking factor, if your website is not mobile-friendly, chances are your site will disappear from SERPs. If you are unsure whether your site is mobile-friendly, plenty of tools enable you to analyze your site’s mobile-friendliness.

Here are some tools that you can use to check if your site is mobile-friendly or not.

Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test

Google Mobile Friendly test — Google Mobile-Friendly test

Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test is a fantastic tool that will allow you to make sure your website is mobile-friendly. A green banner is a positive sign that your site has successfully passed the test. If not, Google will tell you the common reasons why your site is not mobile-friendly.

Google’s Test my Site

By simply entering your URL, you will get a detailed report on the status of your site. The tool will let you know about your mobile site’s speed and which pages need your immediate attention.

W3C mobileOK Checker

The tool provides you with technical details such as web standard errors, graphics, or HTTP issues that will help you address all these issues. This actionable tool also suggests what needs to change and provides solutions to these problems.

Varvy’s Mobile SEO

It is another effective tool that marketers can use to check the mobile-friendliness of their website. It lets you know how your pages look on a mobile screen and give you a solid set of recommendations on making them look better.

This tool can check mobile speed, page redirects, Google access, mobile markup, mobile performance, and other essential details.

Rank Watch’s Mobile-Friendly Tool

The tool allows you to view how your site looks on mobile devices. It gives you a clear picture of your website’s responsiveness and determines how user-friendly your site is.

Get Mobile-Friendly Now!

Believe it or not, mobile optimization has become integral in taking online businesses to a new level. If you haven’t optimized your site for mobile, now is the right time to make necessary tweaks to your site and optimize it for mobile devices.

The quicker you can optimize your site for mobile, the quicker Google can rank you higher on search engine result pages.

So, improve your website’s mobile experience and see how your website improves its rankings accordingly.

By following the strategies mentioned above, you can easily optimize your site for mobile searches, eventually increasing your chances of reaching a wider audience and getting maximum conversions.