What is mobile SEO?
Why is mobile SEO important for your small business?
What is the difference between mobile and desktop SEO?
What are the best mobile SEO best practices?
1. Research and use targeted keywords
2. Analyze your competitors’ sites
3. Create content that is consistent in both desktop and mobile
4. Use structured data
5. Choose the right title tags and meta descriptions
6. Use correct image content size
7 Optimize site speed
Which is better: Google ads or mobile SEO?
It is evident that, nowadays, most consumers are constantly glued to their mobile devices.
Besides being easy to carry wherever you go, smartphones or mobile devices can now process and provide you with any information right at your fingertips.
This apparent convenience creates an opportunity for small business owners to make an impact and reach as many customers as possible.
It’s important to note that this doesn’t imply a complete shift from desktop SEO to mobile. In fact, the key lies in the synergy between the two, working in tandem to enhance your online visibility.
We will share the best practices of mobile SEO with you in this blog, so you can reach a wider audience and realize your business goals as a small business owner.
What is mobile SEO?
With the global trend of smartphone usage on the rise, it’s crucial for small business owners to recognize the potential of mobile SEO.
As of May 2024, approximately 60% of the world’s population, which is roughly 4 billion people, are using smartphones for almost everything.
This shows how important it is for you, as a small business owner, to optimize your mobile site.
Mobile search engine optimization (SEO) aims for two things: (1) to make your website more user-friendly and (2) to increase your ranking in relevant search engine results when viewed using mobile devices.
Mobile SEO follows the same best practices as desktop SEO, making it easier for website owners to prioritize the mobile experience. This would entail considering several site designs, content, and other factors that affect mobile user-friendliness.
However, it is crucial to keep in mind that when optimizing your mobile site, target keywords and other elements could change, which we will discuss in depth later.
Why is mobile SEO important for your small business?”
Mobile SEO is a necessity for every small business. Most online audiences are now accustomed to easily accessing the websites of giant companies on their mobile phones. This means they don’t have the time to wait around and deal with a lagging website or a dull mobile experience. To stay competitive, small businesses must prioritize mobile SEO.
According to Microsoft, the average attention span for an adult is only 8 seconds. Hence, when it comes to your website’s functionality and online content, you must ensure that it is effective, efficient, straightforward, and engaging.
Google now employs a mobile-first approach to ranking websites on the search engine results page. This process entails crawling the site’s content from its mobile version for indexing purposes.
Google’s approach encourages businesses to allocate time and effort to ensuring that their websites consistently provide positive consumer experiences on devices and are mobile-friendly.
mobile-and-desktop-seo-difference”What is the difference between mobile and desktop SEO?”
Most users prefer using mobile devices when performing search queries, as it is more accessible, easier, and faster than looking for and using their computers.
Although mobile and desktop SEO are similar, because of the introduction of mobile-first indexing, they are not overall the same. In fact, there are some differences you need to take note of between the two.
When it comes to layout, desktop SEO is all about maximizing space, whereas mobile SEO must consider screens’ size limitations, especially when it comes to white spaces and text sizes.
On the search engine results page, since mobile devices tend to have smaller screens, fewer results will be generated as compared to desktop pages.
Most mobile devices nowadays have a built-in global positioning system, otherwise known as GPS. With this feature, it is much easier and better to optimize search engine results based on location than on desktops. Moreover, results can be variable and dynamic compared to desktops since search engines will generate different results as you move to different geographic locations.
What are the best mobile SEO best practices?”
If you want to increase your ranking on the search engine results page, it is vital to incorporate best practices in optimizing your website for mobile SEO.
1. Research and use targeted keywords
It all boils down to the foundations of your overall SEO strategy: targeted keywords.
Keyword research should be part of your SOPs because targeted keywords are a crucial component for desktop and mobile SEO strategies.
When using their mobile devices to perform search queries, users tend to manually type their searches and use the shortest terms possible. This behavior creates a slight difference between mobile keywords and desktop keywords. Therefore, when it comes to mobile SEO, always go for shorter keywords.
Since most mobile users are always on-the-go, for example, when looking for a great place to eat and relax, location is also relevant. Their search behavior will zero in on that specific area where they are currently looking for such information, making it imperative to ensure your keywords match their queries.
2. Analyze your competitors’ sites
Although the digital space is a great place to be when it comes to launching or promoting your products or services, that does not mean you are not competing against other content creators.
Everyone in the digital space is vying for attention and the eventual conversion of a specific target audience, which makes location a must-have element you need to include in your mobile SEO strategy.
When the location parameter is included, there are fewer alternatives, which limits the results generated. Because of this, it’s more crucial than ever to monitor your competitors’ mobile search engine optimization tactics.
3. Create content that is consistent in both desktop and mobile
Mobile and desktop content must be similar across all platforms because of how crucial it is for Google ranking.
Google stressed that websites had to offer the same user experience on desktop and mobile devices when it unraveled its mobile-first strategy. This includes specifics like making use of identical headers and verifying that Google’s site crawlers can access the resources and information on desktop and mobile pages.
4. Use structured data
First and foremost, search engines must be able to understand the purpose of your website before they can crawl it in an effort to find the best results to recommend to users.
Structured data allows you to describe your website in a way that search engines can understand. It functions as a kind of language that enables crawlers to understand and categorize your website content.
To give search engines the most accurate results, structured data is labeled with particular text groupings through mobile SEO. This aids search engines understand the context of your web content.
5. Choose the right title tags and meta descriptions
Before going into this best practice, let us first describe these two: title tags inform users and search engines what the subject matter is of certain web pages; meanwhile, meta description explains the content of a website.
Both of these elements are under on-page SEO, which denotes that they are components that can be directly found on the website page that help users and search engines navigate your website.
Your title tags and meta descriptions are crucial for improving your search engine results and increasing your click-through rate (CTR).
Below are some of the guidelines you can implement in writing your title tags and meta descriptions:
- Limit the length of meta descriptions to 120 characters and title tags between 50 and 60 characters.
- Ensure that the titles match the descriptions of your web content
- Add your main keywords to both
- Write clear and excellent descriptions
- Add a call to action.
6. Use correct image content size”
When it comes to optimizing your site for mobile, always take into consideration your readers.
Images can be used as a powerful arsenal in your SEO toolbox. They make it simpler for readers to ingest your material.
To make your site more mobile-friendly, you may need to adjust the size of your photos. Avoid using pop-ups on mobile sites, as they are not as effective when seen on smaller screens.
Since most users prefer images to text results, Google generously provides guidelines on image SEO. To aid crawlers in locating and processing images, the search engine advises using standard HTML image elements and formats such as JPEG, PNG, WebP, and the like.
7. Optimize site speed
Desktop site speed optimization is different from mobile.
According to Google, approximately 50% of mobile users will abandon a website if its takes too long to load. With this, always remember the 8-second rule.
To optimize your site, you can always count on PageSpeed Insights. This tool will let you know about user experience and performance issues and its completely free.
Once you have the data, you can begin taking action to address the performance problems of your website and speed it up in no time.
Which is better: Google ads or mobile SEO?
With all of these things being said, you may be wondering which road you will choose: Google ads or SEO.
If you want long-term and greater visibility without having to pay the exorbitant advertising costs of Google AdWords, you can choose search engine optimization.
However, if you aim for an instantaneous boost to your website’s visibility coupled with incurring advertising expenses, then Google Ads is the way to go.
Final Thoughts
As you implement digital marketing strategies and grow your business, your #1 goal should always be to create connections with everyone (specifically your target audience) at all times.
Plus, with the continuous rise of mobile device users, it is impossible not to take this into consideration and make the most of it. This is an opportunity you should not miss as a small business owner. Hence, mobile SEO is crucial to catapult your business to greater heights and reach milestones.
It is also important to remember that just because the number of mobile users is increasing, you will put aside your desktop SEO efforts. These two must go hand in hand to improve your user experience, no matter where they are or what devices they are using.
If you haven’t optimized your mobile site yet, now is the time. You can implement these best practices.
However, if all these technicalities are too much for you, you can always count on our SEO virtual assistant to do the heavy stuff for you.
They have the skills and experience to increase your visibility across different search engines and turn your leads into paying customers.
Call us today to find out more!
