Mobile Optimization

Why is mobile optimization important?

Customers today spend increasing amounts of time exploring all types of content on mobile. According to Google, more searches are now performed on mobile than on desktop. In BrightEdge Research’s mobile study, we found that 57% of all online traffic occurred on smartphones and tablets. Email Monday found that between 15 and 70 per cent of emails are opened on mobile devices, depending on the target audience. Mobile search has overtaken desktop for most industries and today is one of 200 ranking factors.

How do I optimize for mobile?

Nearly any type of content you develop may be viewed on mobile. Creating a strong user experience requires you to make sure all content is ready for this possibility.

1. Optimize videos on your pages to make them compatible with smart devices.
2. Make content scrollable, rather than forcing people to click through multiple pages, which can be challenging on mobile.
3. Your images should be high-quality and closely cropped to maximize detail, even when shrunk to fit a smaller screen.
4. Any buttons on the screen should be easy for mobile customers to use.
5. Use a responsive template for everything, including emails.
6. Do not use long paragraphs. Remember that people are often on-the-go when using mobile, long paragraphs will often lose them.
7. Keep the motivations of your mobile customers in mind. If most people come to your site looking for certain types of content, such as directions, make that content particularly easy to find on mobile.
8. Use Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP). These are light-weight web pages that create fast mobile experiences.

Mobile devices now dominate a significant portion of the online space. To be effective marketers, you need to make sure that your content is ready for these users and easy to engage with regardless of the device. You also need to be sure you’re keeping up with the changes Google makes to stay on top of your SEO game. Check out how the mobile SERP layout has recently changed mobile optimization and how you can leverage new branding opportunities.

How to Implement a Mobile-Friendly Website

To manage screen views of multiple sizes and types, Google allows us to implement a mobile-friendly website in 3 ways:

1. Separate URLs
2. Dynamic Serving
3. Responsive Design
4. Mobile Subdomain

We will check each one of these ways in-depth but just to let you have an idea of the basic differentiation; here is a comparison:

Separate URLs

This configuration works on the principle of first detecting the user’s device and then serving the optimized URL for that device. 

In simpler words, there is also a mobile version of your website along with the desktop version, known as the mobile or “m” configuration. A different code on different URLs is served to mobile and desktop, hence the name “separate URLs.”

If you are wondering that managing these URLs for both mobile and desktop could get hectic, you are right on point. You will have to use the following annotations to manage separate URLs:

• Add a rel=”alternate” tag on your desktop page to point to the corresponding mobile URL.
• Add a rel=”canonical” tag on your mobile page to point to the corresponding desktop URL.

Owing to this rigorous and difficult task of implementing separate URLs for each page, Google itself doesn’t recommend this website configuration.
Dynamic Serving

In the dynamic serving configuration, the URL doesn’t change for different devices, but different versions of HTML/CSS are served for mobile and desktop.

The server detects the user’s device and requests the corresponding user agent to crawl the page and present it. There are some issues attached to this. Let’s understand this better.

For instance, Google’s user agent for desktop won’t be able to crawl mobile content. Thus, when someone is visiting your website via mobile, the server should request Google’s user agent for mobile to crawl the page and show the content. This detection is often flawed and can lead to errors. Consequently, it can lead the wrong versions of the web page to be displayed and ruin the user experience.

On a personal note, I don’t recommend serving content dynamically either.
Responsive Design

At last, we have this highly recommended way of implementing a mobile-friendly website. In the responsive web design setup, the same HTML code is served on the same URL, irrespective of the user’s device.

As the name suggests, the code and content responds to each individual user and adjusts to different screen sizes.

Here are the main reasons as to why Google recommends the responsive web design setup:

• The crawling of your website becomes highly efficient, which, in turn, improves the overall SEO of the site.
• No redirection for users on different devices means your website’s load time is improved.
• Fewer chances of errors and mistakes in terms of device detection, URL redirection, and displaying content means the user experience on your websites is enhanced.

Keeping the above points in mind, the majority of websites nowadays are configured using the responsive design setup. So if you are still in the minority, you know what to do next.