Building a responsive website can be an exciting project for many businesses. Whether it’s upgrading your existing site to be mobile friendly or creating a new website from scratch, there are a lot of unique designs and added value that you can bring to a mobile website as opposed to a desktop website.
However, It’s important to not rush into the design, content and structure without thinking about SEO services first. You might think that incorporating SEO activities should be an after thought. Many businesses and individuals think the visuals of a website should be the basis and then build on it from there.
When you leave the online search ranking ability of your website until last, this can lead to significant website headaches down the track. When you put your online visibility first, then everything else should incorporate into this leaving you with a optimised, user friendly and informative website.
Online ranking activities aren’t just about keywords. There are various other priorities that tie in with this. With mobile website conversion rates now being more important than ever, here are top ways SEO services for website can help improve your mobile website.
Faster page speed time
Every second more it takes to load a page can lead your user to closing down the page. It doesn’t matter how creatively designed and dynamic your website might be, if it takes forever to load, then no-one will be patient enough to even get to your site.
Online ranking activities take into account page loading speed due to its impact on your bounce rate. The higher your bounce rate the less search engines will see your website as an authority and therefore will be less likely to rank your website.
When you base your mobile website build around faster page speed time, you will increase user satisfaction and user experience. A way to ensure this SEO activity is a priority in the build of your website is making sure you don’t have any large images and video files. Having large, slow loading visuals and video are some of the main reasons a page can be slow to load.
Warn against the use of pop-ups
Many of us have come across a pop-up when going to different websites on a desktop. Think about how intrusive they are on a desktop. Now times this by 10 when the user is on a mobile device. Just like page load speed, this is another factor that encourages visitors to close down your web page. It’s a barrier between them and your actual website.
On mobile, it’s more difficult to click the little “exit” button. Sometimes due to the configuration of the pop-up the exit button can even be difficult to find, such as being cut off or hidden when the website is viewed in portrait mode.
When you put these types of data gathering practices ahead of SEO and user experience, it will impact the traffic you receive to your website. Data gathering is a great marketing tactic. However, an SEO expert will find a place for it that isn’t intrusive to the user and actually adds to the visitor experience.
Encourage a user-friendly design
Not all website designers build a website that puts user experience first. There are a lot of elements that go into building a mobile website that they may be preoccupied with. For example, colour scheme and device compatibility. Yes, these elements are important but they shouldn’t overshadow user experience.
When you build a mobile site that is designed for a positive user experience, it should encourage your visitor to view more pages on your website and delve deeper. This inturn decreases your bounce rate, making your site more attractive to search engines. For example, elements such as an easy scroll function and ensuring buttons are big enough for the average thumb and index finger are just some of the factors you should be thinking about for a mobile site.
Prioritise titles
Not only is there the keyword search ranking importance of titles and meta descriptions, but when it comes to mobile websites, you also need to take into account how your titles will look.
A visitor should be able to understand from the first 2 seconds what your web page is about and how it relates to their initial query or their navigation journey. On desktop, it’s easier to have a longer title that explains what a page is about, however, when viewed on mobile, longer titles can be difficult to read.
A person that may not be familiar with SEO could delete the H1 because it looks too text heavy in mobile. This will severely impact your online visibility. Instead, opt for a shorter H1 that will look good on both desktop and mobile.
Summary
With the trend of responsive websites not going anywhere, and more people using their smart phones and tablet devices to conduct online searches and view websites, it’s important you get your mobile website right from the start.
As time goes on, you will be consistently upgrading and tweaking your website. But some tweaks are easier to do in the future than others. Changing an image or adding content is much easier to do than having to change your entire website structure due to page load speed or a poor user experience.
Don’t forget that implementing mistakes such as mobile phone pop-ups and confusing titles can hurt your bounce rate, which may take you a long time to improve once it has been impacted.
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