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Are you reading this article on your mobile device? Is it your go-to when you browse and search for ‘what’, ‘where’, ‘how’, ‘why’? A handy tool you use to connect with family and friends near and far? Is it your device of choice when scheduling appointments or events, paying bills, buying products and services online?
If so, then you belong to an extensively trending group of consumers who live in the digital world from the comfort and convenience of the screens held in their hands. Since mobile dominance over desktop regarding usage in mid 2014 (based on a comScore report and Google), reports confirmed this in 2015 that ‘more Google searches took place on mobile devices [not including tablets] than on computers. This was found in 10 countries including the US and Japan’, mobile browsing has not shown any indication of slowing down.
In fact, in August 2017, BrightEdge research concludes that 57% of all online traffic among its clients is on mobile, whether on their smartphones or tablets. That roughly translates to 6 out of 10 consumers – a reality that could be the same for your potential leads and customers as well.
With this trend getting more and more evident, is your SEO strategy ready for the ever-evolving mobile revolution?
Mobile First Strategy
The digital universe is preparing for yet again an imminent disruptor implemented by search giant Google – mobile-first indexing. In very simple terms, mobile-first indexing means that websites will be ranked according to their mobile versions. If your website is optimised well for mobile, both your mobile and desktop versions will fare well in search results. Websites that don’t have mobile versions, or if they do but don’t perform well, will lose out. So mobile-first indexing is great news only if your website works well on mobile already.
With this tidal wave of change predicted to happen sooner than later this year, businesses need to step up their SEO game by ensuring that they have a solid mobile-first strategy.
Mobile-first means mobile ready, mobile friendly, and mobile optimised. Let’s take a look at some of the ways mobile brings your SEO strategy to a whole new level.
Responsive Design
Responsive design as the name implies enables your website to respond or change based on the needs of your website visitors or repeat customers. A host of factors go into play behind responsive design, but at the very core, what you should target to achieve is the best customer experience on whatever device they’re viewing and browsing your website.
So, it is not merely just configuring your website content to adapt to screens of different sizes( which is already a plus towards both your desktop and mobile rankings) but ensuring the overall performance and usability of your website regardless of device, browser, even customer intention. You need to ask- do your website visitors use your mobile version to browse, connect, enquire and your desktop version to purchase or the reverse or simultaneously both? Does your website design allow a seamless experience even as these visitors switch from one device to another?
Not only does responsive design make your website content more mobile ready catering to the majority of online consumers, but as mobile-first indexing takes precedence, your search ranks for both desktop and mobile depend greatly on this factor.
If your website is responsive already, then you’re on the right track. The next thing you need to consider is your sites speed.
AMP – Accelerated Mobile Pages
Another key customer satisfaction metric is page loading time and the demand for an almost instantaneous loading of pages. A Kissmetrics Blog report indicated that slower page response time results in increased page abandonment, with 40% of people abandoning a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load. Mobile consumers can sure be a tough crowd to please!
It was a welcome development in October 2015 that Google introduced accelerated mobile pages (AMP), a website tool that strips away unnecessary coding to boost loading times of mobile pages, making sure that content is easily viewed and delivered fast. With responsive design making your website mobile ready, AMP makes it mobile friendly. More so, other than speed, pages amplified with AMP get featured in the search carousel, driving increased organic traffic, increases to visitor time, and allowing for more website engagement.
Whilst some view AMP as difficult and consequently feel the need to hire a professional, the pros far outweigh the cons. If you’re wary to spend, think of it as an investment, reaching your leads and converting them will be worth the cost.
And if you have the luxury of time to do it yourself, AMP is an open-source initiative. With a working web development knowledge aided by tutorials and resources provided by Google, its implementation can become fairly easy.
Mobile Site Speed Ranking Factor
On top of expecting an experience comparable to its desktop counterpart in terms of content, mobile browsers demand ultra-fast speeds too and Google agrees! Quality trumping speed is not acceptable. According to their February 2017 report, 22 seconds is the average time for a mobile landing page to fully load, but 53% of visits are abandoned if a mobile site takes longer than 3 seconds.
So, in response to this problem, Google announced on January 17, 2018, that it will consider speed as a ranking factor for mobile searches starting in July 2018 (though it clarifies that this has been in effect for desktop ranking for some time now). The Speed Update primarily focuses on providing mobile users with a better search experience and does not necessarily depend on whether your mobile and desktop have the same content or uses AMP. It will take your overall page performance and apply speed as one of the filters – so it’s still possible that a slower, but more relevant page will appear first than a faster, but less relevant one.
Having a mobile first strategy is not so much just an SEO requirement that you need to comply with in order to be competitive; it’s a clear indication that consumer demands are changing and businesses need to keep evolving too to stay relevant. Yes, you have a superb product and/or service, your customer journey mapped and optimised, but if you’re not reaching the larger bulk of your target market who might be on mobile, your marketing efforts and dollars go down the drain, wasted.
More established businesses that want to stay on top of their game have to consider all aspects – the whole end to end process, including mobile in SEO. Newer businesses who rely on mobile-only websites or even mobile apps for their customer interaction are said to be benefitting from this mobile revolution.
You can easily check how mobile friendly your website rates using this Google tool, but that’s just the first step. Talk to an SEO expert today and don’t be left behind in the mobile revolution.
“The opinions expressed by BizWitty Contributors are their own, not those of BizCover and should not be relied upon in place of appropriate professional advice. Please read our full disclaimer."
