What does a sudden drop in search engine traffic mean for your website? Is it because your website is not mobile-friendly? If all signs point to this, it explains why your ranking dropped on Google. You can increase your website’s ranking again, stabilising and improving it. The answer to your question — can a mobile-friendly website improve your SEO is yes, it does! In an SEO strategy, a mobile-friendly website is crucial for “search engine ranking success.”
The Change in Search Ranking Algorithm
Google, the head honcho of search engines, frequently changes its search ranking algorithm to cater to mobile-friendly websites. When the search engine noticed that people were using their mobile phones more to perform online searches than their desktop computers, they decided to shake things up in the world of search ranking algorithm by giving preference to mobile-friendly websites.
If your website is not mobile-friendly, this, right here, explains why you are not ranking well on Google. But there is a simple solution to your problem — hire an SEO agency to take care of the SEO side of things for you.
Before an SEO Melbourne Agency Can Help You, You Need to Make Your Website Mobile-Friendly First
3 Ways to Make Your Website Mobile-Friendly
Responsive. Mobile-Friendly. Mobile Optimised.
Let’s learn the difference!
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Responsive Website Design
We would tell you to go with a responsive website design. By far, it is one of the most popular and effective ones. Unlike the other two, which we will go over in a minute, a responsive website design can accommodate any digital device, be it laptops, desktop computers, tablets, and mobile phones.
Since your aim is to attract traffic, your best bet is to go with the website redesign. When you view a website with a responsive design on a mobile phone, multiple columns will become one, the content and images will be removed to simplify viewing, and the navigation menu will be summarised typically into a burger menu.
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Mobile-Friendly Website Design
Mobile-friendly website design remains the same, regardless of the type of digital device you are accessing the website from. This is because it is designed to work on both desktop computers and mobile devices. The only difference is that on a mobile device, you will be viewing its smaller version.
Websites with simple designs often opt for this type of website design. Mobile-friendly website design is not perfect. The main disadvantages you receive with it include font size being too small, difficult in following links, images being too small, the desktop version may not be as complex as one wants.
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Mobile Optimised Website Design
Your website’s desktop version will be completely different from its mobile version. The big flaw in this is that you will have to repeatedly make changes to each version of the website, which itself is tedious and time-consuming. For example, you want to add a new product or service to your website. You will first have to add to the website’s desktop version than its mobile version. In short, you are doing everything twice.
You already know which one we would prefer you use, but after knowing about the three options in more detail, you should have a pretty clear idea on the option you should opt for. Did you pick responsive website design? If you did, your website will go places on Google!
Once you have made your website mobile-friendly, it is time for an SEO agency to get to work in developing an SEO strategy by conducting a thorough SEO audit of your website.
How an SEO Melbourne Agency Can Help You?
Through an SEO Audit, the agency will work on improving the following elements of your mobile-friendly website and ensure it ranks on Google:
Page Speed
For mobile phones, you require optimal page speeds. If you do not optimise your website for speed, the pages may load slowly on mobile phones, compelling users to exit from your website in frustration. Here is what you can do:
- Minify the code of your website
- Use browser caching
- Limit the number of redirects
- Make sure you optimise the images
JavaScript, CSS, and Images
Back in the day, websites used to block these elements because it was too much for older mobile devices to handle. With the invention of tablets and smartphones, loading these elements is a breeze. The biggest indication of why these elements are important for websites to display is because Google loves JavaScript, CSS, and images.
Google uses these factors to identify what solution you have come up with for users to access your website on their mobile device. If you are blocking them from displaying, stop. Instead, optimise your website to display them on today’s mobile devices.
Schema.Org
Search engines use Schema.org to show rich snippets of information from your website on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). For instance, you ask Google a question, “How can I incorporate SEO Copywriting into my website content to rank better on SERPs?”
Next or above your organic search results, a box will appear with the answer to your question. Mobile devices are fond of rich snippets because they take up less screen space. Rich snippets also stand out more, cater to the user better, and get more positive attention from Google.
URLs, Titles, and Meta Descriptions
On mobile devices, you do not want your website’s URL, title, and meta description to take up the entire screen space, as it is limited. You need to make the information concise, but doing it is harder than it looks. This is exactly what an SEO Audit will achieve for you.
Local SEO
Local SEO targets people in your locale. If you want to reach audiences in your area, this is the way to do it. For mobile phones, this is crucial, as users search for businesses using the keyword “near me.” An SEO specialist can perform SEO keyword research for local SEO. SEO Keyword Research includes two elements, updating your NAP citations and adding your city to the meta descriptions. NAP citations include your name, phone number, and address.
When an SEO specialist conducts an audit to determine an SEO Strategy to implement, they will examine your website to ensure everything is correct and optimised for SEO. For instance, for meta tags, they will include geo-locators such as your city to the meta title.
By doing everything above, you will reap a lot of benefits in your organic presence and your users experience.
The Benefits of a Mobile-Friendly Website
Having a mobile-friendly website will provide you with the following benefits:
- Streamlined experience on all digital device
- Positive search ranking signal
- Improved user experience
- Improved mobile conversion rate
- Increased download speed
- A flexible and cost-effective solution than developing a mobile application
You do not have to believe us. The proof is in the stats on how having a mobile-friendly website can improve your SEO.
Stats Don’t Lie. How Having a Mobile-Friendly Website Can Improve Your SEO?
Here is a quick look at the stats that explain the correlation between a mobile-friendly website and higher search engine rankings:
- More users use mobile devices than desktop computers to perform search on Google in 10 countries.
- 30 percent of all searches on mobile phones are related to a location.
- Google drives 81 percent of all mobile search traffic.
- Mobile phones accounted for 61.9 percent of paid-search clicks on Google in 2017.
- 3 in 4 mobile phone users first use their mobile phone to perform a search for addressing their immediate needs.
- 79 percent of keywords overall and 47 percent of keywords in positions 1 to 20 rank in different places on search engines on mobile phones and desktop computers.
- 53 percent of users exit from a website on their mobile device if it takes longer than three seconds to load with conversions falling by 12 percent for every one second delay in the website’s loading speed.
- 35 percent of the time the first page that ranks for a website on a question displays in a different place on mobile phones and desktop computers.
We think the above stats sum up the importance of creating a mobile-friendly website to improve your SEO. An SEO Agency in Melbourne can optimise your mobile-friendly website by performing SEO Copywriting, Audit, Keyword Search, and an ongoing SEO Campaign for long term sustainable success against your competitors.
You no longer have to sit on the sidelines, watching other websites rank higher than yours, not when you have SEO Specialists representing your business, taking care of every little detail on your end. The right SEO Agency will ensure everything goes smoothly and you rank higher on Google to help increase your sales and bottom line business growth and profits.
For an obligation free review and consultation visit TopRankings at www.toprankings.com.au today or call 1300 881 911.