It’s not enough to have a website focused on the desktop experience in today’s world. Your website needs to give a good user experience for mobile since more and more people browse websites on their phones now. Both technical SEO and website optimization need to be performed to improve user experience.
User experience is one of the factors that Google and other search engines use to determine website ranking. Google has indicated that everything will switch over to mobile indexing in March 2021 (desktop-only websites will be dropped from the index). If you haven’t considered a website redesign and your website is not mobile-friendly, now is the time to get started.
How Technical SEO and Website Optimization for Mobile Blend Together
One of the main factors of website optimization, especially for mobile, is technical SEO. There are three focus areas for technical website optimization: website speed, site architecture, and structured data mark up.
Improving mobile site speed helps with the user experience of the website. There are a few ways to improve the speed of your pages:
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- Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
- Simple Templates
- No Redirects
- Browser Caching
AMP pages restrict code to help increase page loading speed. In addition to AMP, a simple template will help improve page speed. A typical page speed is under three seconds, and adding unnecessary elements to the page will cause it to load slower. Images can bring down the speed, so images need to be compressed to improve load times. Redirect chains should not be on your website if you want to increase loading times. If there are 404 errors, resolve these using 301 redirects. Adding browser caching to your website is straightforward in your HTTP header to make your site load faster. Without adding browser caching to your website, browser cache will begin to accumulate your website resources, and the site will be slowed down.
The second part of your mobile technical SEO is site structure. You want users to navigate to your pages quickly, and all pages need to be relevant. To do this, it’s a good idea to create silo content that helps make your content easier for the search engine and the user. Within your silo content, you can use keyword-relevant terms. Using breadcrumbs will help your website have a clear hierarchy and help indicate where you want the user to reduce the number of clicks they have to make. The breadcrumbs should be used as secondary navigation for large sites or eCommerce sites where there are many pages, and navigation can be confusing.
Structured data mark up will help Google interpret your on-page optimization and your content. There are different types of structured data mark-up that can be used, depending on the site’s needs, like star ratings and the number of reviews. Google has resources for structured data markup to have this on a website.
Voice Search and Mobile-Friendly Content
Having mobile-friendly content is an essential part of technical SEO and website optimization. In addition to optimizing your content for mobile, you may also want to think about voice search simultaneously. To optimize for voice search, you will need content on your website that answers common search questions.
An easy way to do this is to start with the 5Ws (Who, What, Where, Why, and When):
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- Who (as in “who” is this product or service for)
- What (“what” is this product or service)
- Where (“where” can I get this product or service)
- Why (“why” do I need this product or service)
- When (“when” is this business open or when is this product or service going to be available)
When coming up with search queries to create your content, keep in mind the conversational nature of voice searches. Take a look at your high performing pages in Google Analytics and work on optimizing those first. Other pages that are good for mobile-friendly content are Frequently Asked Questions, blog posts, and other question pages.
Headlines are essential for creating mobile-friendly content. Headlines should be kept short and easy to read since a mobile screen is much smaller. Headlines should still be relevant to the content, and a user should clearly understand what the content is about from the headline. In addition to a short headline, the content will need to be made shorter to make it easier to read on a mobile device. Sometimes, a sneak peek can be used to answer the user’s question without having to scroll endlessly.
Types of Mobile-Friendly Sites
Google recognizes different types of mobile configurations, responsive web design, dynamic serving, and separate URLs. While each has its benefits and drawbacks, it’s best to use responsive web design.
Responsive website design will allow the desktop pages to be viewed in response to the screen size. This means you only have one website, and Google and other crawlers only have to crawl once, which will make sure that your pages are correctly indexed.
Most high-quality modern WordPress themes are responsive, so if you are using a quality responsive WordPress theme for your website, you are already on the right track. At LOCALSYNC, we use DIVI from Elegant Themes for a large portion of our WordPress website development, and LOCALSYNC designed WordPress websites are responsive and mobile-ready. Another great theme option that is responsive, lightweight, and fast (and we also use in WordPress development) is the Astra WordPress Theme.
Final Thoughts – Technical SEO and Website Optimization
Mobile optimization is essential for your business to compete online, and that means responsive website design. The right design can help you convert more visitors into customers and even keep you on Google’s index after March 2021!
Scan your business using the LOCALSYNC scan tool and scroll down to SEO performance in the report to check your company website’s mobile performance online.
