Mobile SEO: Make Your Website User Friendly!

All the tests, trials and mass scale of notifications (in Google Webmaster tools) warning sites that they aren’t mobile friendly is a clear indicator that you should be on your website, making sure it’s mobile friendly. It’s here, it’s now, get on it.

Technically, if your website has been optimised for search, then it should follow through to your mobile site (if you’re using a responsive site). However, there are certain nuances and differences in optimising mobile sites that just aren’t the same for the desktop. But how do you make a desktop page automatically turn into a mobile friendly page? Below are some suggestions.

Content

Users are different people when they are on their mobile (I know I am anyway); they require information quicker and need better accessibility than on a desktop. For SEO purposes, the more content, the better! However, the way this content is displayed on a mobile could deter a user straight away.

So there are two things to think about here:

1. Appearance/ where/how content is placed
   • Add drop down boxes or ‘read more’ sections. This way you still have a solid amount of content sitting there while keeping your website neat on both mobile and desktop
   • Structure your site to load the best content above the fold. If you don’t want a drop down box or ‘read more’ option, break up your content. This helps readers skim the bits they know they don’t want to read and get to the part they do want.
2. Amount of content
   • Keep your content concise and relevant

“That’s hard, how do I write a lot about a subject that is so niche/boring/I don’t know a lot about?” There is an entire information bank (the Internet) out there you could be researching. You don’t have to depend on yourself to know everything and you’ll be providing awesome information as well as learning more yourself in the process

3. Avoid waffling on for the sake of word count

You’ll lose your readers’ interest quickly, ESPECIALLY on mobile.

Tap Targets: Size does matter

Make sure that you don’t have buttons for ants. Remember that when your website adjusts to a smaller screen, things are going to be compressed.

1. Buttons, links, ad and forms to fill out should be easy to click on

“The average adult finger pad size is about 10mm wide”

2. Targets should have enough room between them to avoid tapping another target

“There should still be no other tap targets within 5mm (32 CSS pixels), both horizontally and vertically”

Font

Avoid making your user pinch or enlarge your page.

1. Configure the viewport:

A viewport controls how a webpage is displayed on a mobile device. Configuring your website gives you control over the page’s width and scaling on different devices. If a search engine crawls your website and nothing is configured, your website will render the page at a typical desktop screen width. This makes it small and frustrating to read and use.

Page Speed

Mobile searchers are highly engaged, but less interested in waiting than a desktop searcher and a slow desktop site means an even slower mobile site.

1. Avoid landing page redirects
2. Avoid plugins
3. Enable compression
4. Improve server response time
5. Minify resources – Remove unnecessary or redundant data

There are plenty more ways to speed up your mobile site – have a look at Google’s PageSpeed Insights

Video

What should you avoid:

1. License-constrained media
2. Videos that require flash
3. Players that are not broadly supported

Only use videos that are playable on all mediums. Go that one step further and create a transcript for that video as well. This ensures that if by chance your video doesn’t want to load, your user is still able to access that information they’re looking for.