Mobile SEO Guide: 11 Tips to Optimize Website for Mobile

Do you have a mobile SEO strategy for your business?

No, then you are losing a golden opportunity by ignoring 90% of prospective buyers. Here’s an interesting scenario of why you need a mobile-responsive website.

Let’s assume!

You do a quick Google search to find the best digital marketing agency in Dubai. After going through a bunch of results, you identify a top contender offering digital marketing services that match the needs of your business.
But the first website you clicked on failed to load correctly on your mobile.

What do you do?

You immediately close the website and move to the next website that offers services that meet your criteria.

Nothing to worry about, right?

But what if the top-ranked website that you initially clicked on and closed immediately is yours?
Have you ever pondered how frequently this has happened to your website?
If not, then you must, because the more number of people visit and immediately close your website, the more likely it is to eventually lead to an increase in your website’s bounce rate, suggesting to search engines that the quality of the content on your website is poor. This could result in a significant drop in search rankings.

So, are you making a similar mistake?

Today, almost everyone has a smartphone. According to statistics published by Statista, there are more than 9.6 million smartphone users’ in the UAE, and they are using their phones readily to search online. You can no longer survive without a mobile SEO strategy. Your foremost priority must be to ensure that your website is optimized for viewing on all devices to deliver a seamless user-experience and improved SEO performance.

 

What is Mobile SEO?

Mobile SEO is the process of optimizing websites for easy and smooth access on mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets. This is important for webmasters, as more than half of internet users browse websites on their mobile devices every day. Google also gives preference to sites that are mobile-friendly.

Mobile SEO services help your website get increased traffic, improved user experiences, higher conversion rates, increased time spent on your website, lower bounce rates, faster page loading times, competitive market advantages, more customer engagement, and improved performance on Google and other SERPs.

According to the research conducted by Bright Edge,53.3 % of all website traffic comes from organic searches.

Why is it important to have a Mobile SEO strategy?

With more than 59% of online traffic generated via mobile devices in the last quarter of 2022, having a mobile optimized website has become a necessity for businesses globally.

It is not just users that are frequently using their mobile devices to visit your website, but Googlebot too. Google readily crawls websites via Googlebot smartphone user agents, meaning Google predominantly utilizes mobile versions of content for indexing and ranking.

Google started rolling out mobile-first indexing in the second quarter of 2018, and most websites moved to this new crawling format by the end of 2021. Although this new update from Google continued to be a hot topic amongst the SEO community, today mobile-first indexing has become a part of life, as stated by John Mueller.

How to Configure Your Website for Mobile?

Since you now know what is mobile SEO, here are some steps that you can follow to configure SEO for mobile. When it comes to making your website mobile-friendly, you need to consider three options.

• Responsive Design: Whether the potential visitors of your website use a desktop tab, a mobile, or a tablet, the design of your website should be adjustable enough to fit any screen size.
• Dynamic Serving: Your website should have a custom version for each device type that visitors use to access it.
• A mobile app: Having a separate mobile application for your target audience is a win-win situation for your website.

 

Mobile SEO Optimization Tips for Phenomenal User-Experience

The mobile SEO strategy for optimizing a website is a great way to improve your website’s performance, user experience, and ranking on search engines. Here are some tips to help you with that:

1 – Give your website a responsive layout and a mobile-friendly design

Nowadays more and more people are using their smartphones to browse the web, search for information, and make purchases online. That’s why it is essential to have a website that is responsive and mobile-friendly.

A responsive website adapts to the screen size and orientation of the device, ensuring that the content is easy and ready to navigate. A mobile-friendly website also follows the best practices for mobile SEO, such as fast loading speed, simple design, and user-friendly features.

By having a responsive and mobile-friendly website you can reach more potential customers, improve your ranking on search engines, and provide a better user experience for your visitors.

 

2 – Make Your Website Look Appealing on Mobile

You have done the hard part by making your website responsive to different screen sizes. Now you are almost ready to wow your mobile visitors. But before you launch, here are some tips to make your site even more appealing.

• Make your mobile app SEO successful by using big and bold text that grabs the attention of potential customers. Ensure that your headings and subheadings are unique so your website stands out.
• Make your interactive elements ( such as buttons and checkboxes easy to spot and tap ). Don’t let them get lost in the crowd.
• Keep your paragraphs short and sweet. Long blocks of text can be overwhelming on a small screen.
• Use plenty of white space to create a clean and spacious look on your website. There is no need to cram so much information into one place.
• Give some room to your website’s link and other interactive elements. You don’t want your users to tap on irrelevant elements.

 

3 – Do Not Block Your Content with Popups

Popups make it difficult for your potential visitors to get the information they need, and as a result the bounce rate increases. And it leaves a detrimental effect on your website.

However, some pop-ups are necessary. For example, you probably need to use cookies on your website, and the GDPR requires you to ask for the user’s consent to collect their data. But you need to understand one thing: customers do not come to your website to see the popups.

Your website’s visitors want to have access to your content. If a popup blocks the entire page, and asks the users to accept cookies, they might get frustrated and leave the page.

A better Solution 

Users don���t mind popups as long as they are small and easy to close. That way, they can still see your content and decide if they want to interact with the popup or not.

 

4 – Fix The Technical Errors in Your Website

Glitches on a small screen spoil the user experience and exasperate them, especially the 404 errors. A 404 page with a humorous design might be fun but it’s still a problem. It interrupts the overall user flow. For a successful mobile SEO strategy, it’s better to avoid them altogether.

Some of the other technical errors that frustrate the mobile user are links that don’t work, images that don’t load redirects that go nowhere, CSS and Javascript errors, and server problems ( E.g. gateway timeout ). All of them will make the user redirect if you don’t act fast. Resolve the technical errors as soon as possible.

Let our digital solutions experts tackle your biggest business challenges. We are just a call away!

 

5 – Make Your Website Load Quickly

You want your website to load fast, but it doesn’t. What a bummer! Maybe the internet is slow. No? Well, your users might think that your website is broken and it will never come back.

That’s why you need to make sure that your website is always speedy and snappy.

How to make your website load faster?

• Optimize your images and make them smaller by adjusting their height and width. Choose the right format and compress them.
• Turn on compression (if it’s not on already). GZIP compression is one of the best ways to do that.
• Use browser caching. Go to your domain’s .htaccess file and set how long your page elements should be stored in the browser.
• Use lazy loading. It might be already working for you. If not, you can add the loading=” lazy” attribute to the HTML tags of the elements you want to load later. Or just use a plugin like Smush.
• Optimize your pages’ code. If you know how to code in HTML, Javascript, and other languages that make up your site, you can try and cut out the unnecessary parts. But be careful not to mess anything up
• Combine elements when you can. For example, if you have two images next to each other, you can join them into one image to save some loading time.

 

6 – Optimize Your Website for Local and Voice Search

Smartphones can be easily carried everywhere and it makes them the perfect tool for online browsing, irrespective of your location.

Use words and phrases that mention your location or nearby places in your content. These words are often like where, nearest, closest, near me, or ‘ in the name of your location ‘. For example, car wash services near me.

Have a page on your website that answers frequently asked questions. Keep your answers brief and clear. Include your business’s name, address, and phone number on your website’s home page. Even better, put them in a footer.

Reliable mobile SEO companies creates a profile on Google business profile and adds as much information as possible.

 

7 – Make Your First Scroll Efficient

Ideally, you want to captivate your visitors as soon as they see your website. But they can see so much on a small screen. So, how do you make the most of it?

Make sure your site’s “above the fold” (what users see when they scroll down) creates a stunning impression.

Here are some must-haves you should include:

• A descriptive, eye-catching title.
• A navigation menu.
• A search bar.
• A call-to-action.
• But those are just the basics.

Here are some expert-level ideas by SEO company Dubai to spice up your first scroll:

• An interactive element (like a panoramic photo, a 3D model, or a simple game). Even an ordinary video works.
• A floating CTA that stays visible as you scroll down.

 

8 – Make Your Search Results Attractive

You might have heard that the second page of Google is the best place to hide a secret. But that’s only true for desktop users who see 10 results per page. However, mobile users can scroll through 40 results before they reach the “See More” button.

But whether you rank on the top ten pages or not, your search results won’t get any clicks if they don’t grab the user’s attention. To do that, you need to make your search results stand out from the crowd.

To set your search results apart, you need to make your search results more appealing and enticing for your potential visitors.

• Use the best keywords: Don’t just focus on search volume – Use the keywords that match the search intent of users better than others. To find out about those keywords, you need to think like the users or ask the users about their preferences.
• Use eye-catching titles and descriptions: Keywords are important, but so are powerful words that spark the users’ emotions. Do you know which emotions are suitable for your content?
•  Add structured data: Use markup to create rich snippets that add extra information and visuals to your search results.

 

9 – Turn Off The Option of Auto-Correct on Forms

Enhance the form-filling experience of your visitors. Say goodbye to annoying autocorrect mishaps by simply adding “autocorrect=’off'” to your input fields in the HTML.

Keep it hassle-free and convenient by creating short forms that are ideal for all devices, especially smartphones.

 

10 – Avoid Using Flash

Adobe stopped the development of Flashback on December 30, 2020. This clearly means that none of the major browsers like Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and Safari is supporting it.

Most of the flash-based content has been transformed into modern standards such as HTML 5 and WebGL.

 

11 – Use The ViewPort Meta Tag

The viewport meta tag allows you to manage how your web page is displayed within the visible area of a user’s device.

By adding this tag to the < head section > of your website’s HTML page, you can control the scaling of your content to ensure optimal presentation on various devices with different screen sizes.

This ensures that your webpage adjusts its width appropriately to adjust the screen dimensions of the visitor’s device.

 

Final Word – Amplify Your Mobile SEO with Digital Gravity

Mobile devices have changed the way we access and consume online content. They have made it more convenient, faster and enjoyable. However, not all websites are ready for this shift. Some are still stuck in the past, with outdated designs, slow loading times and poor usability.

That’s why you need Digital Gravity Agency, the leading SEO Services Agency in Dubai, to optimize your website for mobile SEO. They will help you analyze your site’s performance, identify and fix any issues, and make sure your site looks great and works well on any device.

Fill out the form and take the first step toward a brighter digital future. We will help you unlock your business’s full potential.

 

FAQs 

1 – How does mobile optimization impact SEO? 

Mobile optimization and SEO rankings depend on page speed as a crucial factor. Websites that load fast on mobile devices meet the expectations of mobile users and the criteria of search engines. On the other hand, websites that load slowly can lose visitors, which lowers their SEO rankings.

 

2 – Does mobile speed affect SEO? 

The speed of your mobile site is crucial for your site visitors’ satisfaction. You can’t just focus on your desktop site speed and ignore the mobile version. You should take action if your mobile site is loading slower than 3 seconds.

 

3 – Why are mobile websites important? 

Mobile-friendly websites increase your sales and conversions by making your website easy to access on any device. Users can connect and interact with your brand seamlessly across platforms, without feeling frustrated or annoyed.

 

4 – What are mobile SEO services?

Mobile SEO services refers to search engine optimization practices aimed towards improving the rankings of the website in search engines for using browsing through their mobile devices or tablets.

 

5 – What is mobile SEO audit?

A mobile SEO audit is the process of checking the performance of a website on mobile devices. This involves checking whether your website adheres to Google’s mobile-friendly guidelines, and whether it offers a positive user experience across all devices or not.

 

6 – Do I need to hire a mobile SEO company for my e-commerce website?

Yes, you certainly need to hire a mobile SEO agency for your e-commerce website. It helps in offering a good user-experience, which in turn helps in attracting a greater number of visitors to the website. This ultimately results in generating more qualified leads and a higher ROI.