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3 Ways to Optimise Your Website for Mobile Search in 2020

According to a recent survey, 50.6% of all Internet traffic comes from mobile phones, surpassing traffic from laptops and tablets. The number is expected to grow in the coming years as more people gain access to the Internet.

It should come as no surprise then that Google switched to mobile-first indexing. Instead of desktop versions, it started looking at mobile versions of websites to determine their search engine rankings.

Needless to say, if your site looks bad on mobile, your search engine rankings could drop, resulting in lesser conversions and revenue loss.

In this blog post, we’re going to discuss 3 ways to optimise your website for mobile search.

Let’s get started.

What is mobile optimisation?

Mobile optimisation is the act of using strategies so that visitors can easily access a website no matter what device they’re using. You’re ensuring that users can find what they’re looking for on your website, improving both your conversion rate and search engine rankings.

For example, your website could have two versions, one for desktop users and another one for mobile users. You could upload a smaller sized image for the mobile version since users will be looking at it on a smaller device.

If you’d like to an example of a website with desktop and mobile versions, you need to look no further than the world’s most popular social media platform Facebook. If you don’t use the app and open Facebook on a browser, it automatically adjusts based on the device used to view it.

Test if your website is mobile-friendly.

Before you optimise your site for mobile search, you need to determine where you currently stand. Begin by testing how mobile-friendly your website is.

There are plenty of tools online that you could use. Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test is one example. Open the tool, enter your URL, and hit enter.

Mobile-Friendly Test will then scan your website and tell you whether it’s mobile-friendly or not. It will also show you a screenshot of how your website looks on mobile.

You can click on View Details for more information. For example, it could tell you which elements like images or video failed to load properly.

If you want more options, try Responsinator. Enter your URL and click on Go. You can then see how your website looks on different mobile devices, including the latest Android, iPhone, and iPad models.

You can even navigate your website as if you were on a mobile phone. This way, you can see for yourself if it’s easy to navigate or not. You might notice that the font on your homepage is too small or that a pop-up notification takes over the entire screen.

Using the aforementioned tools could help you spot issues that need to be resolved right away. You might want to list these issues down and start addressing them whenever you have time to spare.

Speed up your website.

You need a fast website if you want to improve your mobile search engine rankings in 2020. According to a recent survey, 40% of people leave a website if it takes more than three seconds to load.

Google also rolled out its Speed Update in mid-2018. The update made page speed or how fast your website loads is now a major ranking factor in mobile search engine results.

Due to the update, creating and publishing excellent content is no longer enough to improve your search engine rankings. Your website also needs to provide said content quickly.

You can test how fast your website currently is with PageSpeed Insights. It’s a free tool created by Google that measures your website speed using data from Google Chrome users. Enter your URL and click on Analyze.

The tool will then grade your website speed. It will also provide improvement suggestions and these suggestions often include adjusting your website’s image sizes, optimising your code so that it takes resources to download, and more.

You can also use Pingdom, another tool that tests your website speed. With Pingdom, you can test your website speed based on a user’s location. For example, if the majority of your target audience is located in Sydney, you can choose Australia from the dropdown menu.

Pingdom is more specific than PageSpeed Insights. Instead of grading your website’s overall speed, it divides website speed into several factors and scores each one.

You could get a C for your overall website speed, but get an A for “Avoid URL Redirects” and F for “Make fewer HTTP requests”.

Once you’ve tested your website speed, create a list of issues that need to be addressed. Your list could include resizing the images on your website, removing unnecessary elements from your homepage, and so forth.

Do keyword research for voice search.

It’s undeniable that voice search if the future of SEO. According to a recent survey, 20% of all searches are done through voice. The number is only expected to rise as more people gain access to mobile phones and devices like Alexa and Google Home.

When searching for information online, most people often type keywords in the form of phrases. Let’s say you were looking for the nearest Italian restaurant near you. You would most likely enter “nearest Italian restaurant” or “Italian restaurant near me”.

Voice search queries, on the other hand, are often in the form of questions that begin with who, what, when where, why, and how. For example, you would say, “Where is the nearest Italian restaurant?”

Consider questions potential customers might ask search engines to find you. You could also use Answer the Public to get more ideas.

It’s a free tool that generates keyword ideas and even has a section for keywords that begin with what, when, where, why, and how. Try to incorporate the keywords you find through Answer the Public in your existing pages or future content.

Conclusion

Since more and more users are switching from desktop to mobile search, search engines are putting more importance in mobile search engine results.

To avoid dropping in search engine rankings, make sure your website is optimised for mobile search. Test if your website is currently mobile-friendly, improve your page speed, and incorporate voice search keywords into your content.

If you’d like to optimise your website for mobile search, we’d love to help. Cornerstone Digital is an SEO agency in Sydney that can help you find your ideal customer via SEO. Call us on (02) 8211 0668 or email us atinfo@cornerstone-digital.com.au.

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Darlyn Herradura

A self-professed book and digital marketing nerd, Darlyn Herradura focuses on building trust between customers and businesses with the written word. She understands that creating valuable content is the best way to get found online and happily spends her time doing that.