As of 2020, over 58% of site visits now come from mobile search traffic. If you aren’t taking mobile into account heavily enough, it’s likely hurting your business.

The use of mobile devices is rapidly changing the way consumers search, engage, and shop online. Most people now have access to high-speed internet while they’re on the go, so website traffic from mobile devices is increasing rapidly. Beyond social engagement and consuming content, consumers are making plenty of their buying decisions on their phones.

Mobile Search: The First Step of the Buying Process

According to Morgan Stanley, 91% of adults keep their smartphones within arm’s reach—that’s 91% of ALL adults—and this is shifting both business culture and research practices. Rather than dedicating time to researching a topic, today’s users perform micro-searches on the go and then follow up on those solutions later on.

So, how big is this trend? An IDG Global Solutions survey found that 92% of senior execs own a smartphone used for business, 77% research business purchases from their mobile device, and 95% finalize related purchases via laptop or desktop. That’s a huge portion of the B2B purchase pool starting their journey from a mobile device. Missing a user during the initial mobile search could mean that your business is losing out on a huge portion of the market.

How Mobile SEO Impacts Local Businesses

This trend is even more compounded for local businesses, as 58% of mobile users search for local businesses daily. What’s more, 89% of those users search for a local business at least once per month. We also learn from HubSpot that when consumers do a local search, 72% of them visit a store within five miles.

With such a large percentage of users accessing information through mobile phones, it’s clear that businesses could greatly benefit from making their online presence mobile-friendly. This means search engine optimization for mobile phones should be considered a necessity rather than optional.

What Does the Rise of Mobile Search Mean for Businesses?

Businesses can reach a wider audience, drive more traffic, and ultimately increase their revenue and growth by adapting to the changing landscape of online search. Websites need to be responsively designed so they can serve mobile users just as well as desktop users.

Responsive design adapts to the size of the user’s viewport (i.e. screen) by changing font sizes, adjusting images, and even collapsing page elements to make navigation simpler. More importantly, responsive websites that follow modern design standards can help users access and understand the information they need more quickly from search engines. This is why mobile SEO is key.

Today’s users also view responsive functionality as a symbol of trustworthiness. A study conducted by socPub indicates that 57% of internet users will not recommend a business with a poorly designed mobile site.

Because mobile users comprise an increasing number of searches and site visits, they now represent the largest source of traffic in a slew of markets (with new industry segments falling into this bucket each month). Our clients regularly pick up market share with simple mobile-friendly design updates, especially within industries that are traditionally late adopters.

Your Website Is Your Storefront

Your site is now your storefront. If your site looks terrible or functions poorly, users will leave instead of working to get your information. It costs nothing for a user to click the next result in a search.

Google Prioritizes Mobile-Optimized Sites

Google has switched over to mobile-first indexing. Mobile-first indexing prioritizes mobile-friendly websites over other websites in organic search results. Even if your target consumers aren’t heavy mobile users yet, your site still needs to be mobile-optimized if you want to show up higher in the search results for both desktop-based and smart device searches.

Users Are Making Purchase Decisions From Search Alone

With mobile devices rapidly changing the way consumers access information, your offsite optimizations are also becoming more critical. For example, most users performing local searches never go past the search engine results themselves (aka, they don’t actually click on websites anymore). Local search users typically find the information they want directly within the search results through features like the local Google Map Pack.

How Can I Improve My Mobile SEO?

The first step toward reaching mobile users is having a mobile-friendly website. Currently, responsive web design is the best approach for mobile-friendliness for the following reasons:

• You serve the same content to both mobile and desktop users.
• The content will adapt responsively to all screen sizes and mobile device types.
• Search equity is centralized to a single URL for all pages.
• It’s a better user experience.
• Google prefers responsive design.

What exactly is responsive design?

It’s an approach for creating web pages where layouts and content dynamically adapt to the size and orientation of the screen or the viewport being used.

In the example below, you can see that the desktop version of this responsive site has text and video displayed side by side. In the mobile version, those elements have been stacked.

This responsive theme adjusts to the width of different devices from smartphones to tablets, even large wide-screen viewports, by rearranging and resizing the design elements for better mobile SEO.

There have been a few ways to handle mobile sites since the invention of smartphones; the first two mobile design waves were plagued with usability issues and hard to maintain. Let’s take a look at what didn’t work and why you should consider migrating to a responsive design if you’re still employing one of these outdated mobile design tactics.

Outdated Approach #1: Mobile Subdomain, Separate Mobile Website

The first wave of design involved creating a different site entirely to serve as the mobile site. This approach involved serving a mobile version of the site using a different URL, a mobile URL. For those of you who have been around long enough, you may remember pages you visited from a mobile device redirecting from “domain.com” to “m.domain.com.”

This approach required canonical tags for every page because each mobile web page contained duplicate content to the desktop page. It also split the search equity for each page—desktop users interacted with the desktop site, and mobile users interacted with the mobile site.

When users shared pages from the site and created backlinks, they were split between the mobile subdomain and the regular site domain. Separate URLs were being served to each user group. So, every time an edit was made to the content on the desktop site, a second round of separate edits had to be made on the mobile content. Mobile pages under this paradigm often provided a worse user experience as they typically served less content than the full desktop site did for desktop users.

Outdated Approach #2: Dynamic Serving of Mobile Sites

The next wave of mobile design consolidated pages under a single URL but dynamically served cached pages based on the user’s device type using a Vary HTTP response header. This iteration allowed sites to consolidate search equity between a desktop site and a mobile site. It also removed the need for canonical tags on virtually every site page.

However, it also meant that every time a device came out with new dimensions, a new instance of the site had to be spun up, formatted, and tested to be served to users. This system became increasingly impossible to maintain as the market diversified and the dimensions for mobile screens became rapidly non-standard. Dynamically serving a mobile version of your site was plagued with issues, including repeated issues with serving the desktop version to mobile users.

The Solution for Mobile SEO: Responsive Design

Responsive design consolidates the mobile and desktop versions of a webpage under a single URL. It also serves the same instance of code regardless of the size of the mobile screen or desktop viewport.

This allows site owners to combine their desktop SEO and mobile SEO efforts, employing a single set of SEO best practices and strategies. Responsive design is easier to maintain because you don’t have to manage different content or code for a single page.

Instead, all of the elements can be fluidly rearranged to suit mobile and desktop visitors as needed. If a user switches from full screen to half-screen with their web browser, the design elements can shift accordingly, so the user experience remains largely unchanged.

How to Make Your Mobile Site Google-Friendly

Search itself has become mobile-first. In July 2019, there were over 1.69 billion more mobile searches than desktop searches performed in the US alone (source, source). When checking your site for mobile optimization, start by checking out how Google views it.

Developing a Mobile SEO Strategy That Revolves Around Google

Google holds over 90% of the market share for mobile search traffic in the U.S. because it has spent years optimizing search specifically for mobile users. Many of Google’s search results are so well optimized that mobile users don’t even need to click into an actual result to find the information they need.

Rich snippets and rich results now display enough information for users to take action based on the search results alone, from finding movie times and the addresses of local businesses to how to troubleshoot tech problems.

But how did Google get so far ahead of the competition with mobile search? They started testing and prioritizing mobile features years ago, and as mobile search volume overcame desktop search volume, Google shifted to prioritizing mobile users over desktop users.

Understanding the History of Google’s Mobile Search Results

In 2015, Google rolled out mobile-friendly search results, serving a separate set of search results to mobile devices. This update, often called Mobilegeddon, prioritized mobile-friendly websites in the search results.

In 2016, Google began to experiment with mobile-first indexing, cataloging the mobile version of page content rather than the desktop version.

In March 2018, Google formally began rolling out mobile-first indexing and migrating over to the mobile version of pages for sites that it had already indexed as desktop versions. To quote Google themselves, “Mobile-first indexing means that we’ll use the mobile version of the page for indexing and ranking, to better help our – primarily mobile – users find what they’re looking for.”

Essentially, the entire index is going mobile-first. This process of migrating over to indexing the mobile version of websites is still underway. Websites are being notified in Search Console when they’ve been migrated under Google’s mobile-first index.

In July of 2018, Google rolled out page speed as a mobile SEO ranking factor, ranking sites with slow load times lower in the search results.

Figuring Out Which Trends Will Last

Over the past decade, the Google search engine has also continually rolled out additional data-rich, mobile-first search features from movie times and reviews to product images. Google often pivots when rolling out new features, as it continually tests and prioritizes what works best for serving users the most valuable information.

For example, Google originally published a guide helping webmasters create separate mobile sites under the “m.domain.com” URL—a tacit approval of the process—only to pivot within a year to recommend responsive web design under a single unified URL.

Similarly, the AMP (accelerated mobile pages) standard has been pushed heavily in the past few years. AMP pages, which load in a fraction of the time of normal pages, seem to be struggling with many of the issues that “m.domain.com” mobile pages had back in the day.

Sites using AMP pages are managing two sets of page content, with one set slimmed down to meet the AMP standard. There are also challenges with AMP pages being served from a Google URL rather than the site’s own domain. While Google recently addressed some of these concerns with signed exchanges, it’s still causing questions about whether link equity is being split among the AMP viewer URL, the original AMP source, and the AMP cache URL.

So, what mobile-friendly trends are here to stay? Responsive web design, quality content that gets right to the point, and making sites as fast as humanly possible.

Checking for Flagged Mobile Issues

So, what should you pay the most attention to in terms of mobile optimization? If you already have a website, start with Google’s Mobile Friendly Test. This mobile SEO tool will give you an aggregate rating for whether or not Google thinks your site is mobile-friendly. The tool will also prompt you to view a full usability report in Google Search Console.

If you want to access this report directly from Search Console on your own, log in to your account for the domain and use the left-hand navigation to click on “mobile usability” under Enhancements.

Here, you’ll find a list of the mobile issues that Google has detected on your site. Examples include text that is too small to read, clickable elements that are too close together, and content that is wider than the screen.

Click on any of these issues, and you’ll see more granular information to help you improve your mobile SEO, like the pages where the errors are found. You’ll also see a space to validate that the error has been fixed once you make adjustments to your site.

These are errors Google is specifically recognizing and calling out for your site. From a search rankings perspective, fixing these should be at the top of your list!

Making Sure Google Is Indexing Your Webpages

Google can’t serve pages in the search results that it can’t see. Make sure that Google indexes your pages for search results.

Enable Crawl by Googlebot

Check your robots.txt file, and make sure that it’s not blocking Googlebot. Your robots.txt file can be used to block certain types of bots and crawlers, but if you’re trying to rank highly in the SERPs, Googlebot should not be one of them.

To check if your robots.txt file is blocking Googlebot, you can use a free robots.txt tester or the link inspection feature in Search Console.

NoIndex

A few years ago, you could check blocked resources straight from the Google Console in a consolidated view, but as these issues became less prevalent, Google dropped the aggregate view. Secondary tools like Screaming Frog can still give you a full list of NOINDEX and NOFOLLOW pages from your site. Alternatively, you can check the status of individual links straight from the Search Console using the URL inspection tool.

This tool also allows you to manually submit links and request indexing of new pages, revised pages, and pages that crawlers have yet to discover.

How to Determine If Your Mobile Site Is User-Friendly

Now that you’ve resolved a majority of the technical usability issues, it’s a good idea to check for issues mobile users face that may not have been caught by Google.

How Does the Site Appear on Mobile?

Start by examining how your site appears on different devices. This free tool will let you select from a variety of mobile and desktop devices to give you a full sense of how your site looks on different devices.

You should quickly be able to see any major issues with formatting that could be hindering the mobile user experience or making your site look unprofessional. Some examples include poorly formatted text, grainy or stretched images, and overlapping page elements.

Work with your webmaster or web development team to clean up any page elements that aren’t displaying well on mobile. Once your site layout is mobile-optimized, you’ll want to check that your site is compelling to mobile searchers on the Google search results page.

Are the Visible Portions of Page Titles and Metas Compelling?

Users will only click on a site from a search if the rich snippet, page title, and/or meta description are compelling. Your page’s title tag needs to front-load target keyword(s), and the meta description should include the most pertinent information about your page first.

Page titles can be very similar between pages, so meta descriptions can often determine which result site visitors actually click.

Also, keep in mind that rich snippets can provide even less space for title tags and metadata. In the example below, each result only displays about three to four words from the page title.

If you use a major platform like WordPress, there are SEO plugins that will help you manage your title tags and meta tags. But if your site is custom, you may need to edit this information directly in the HTML code.

If you’re seeing a good amount of organic traffic from your target keywords, the next step is to ensure that the traffic is actually seeing your mobile-optimized content.

Are You Losing Visitors to Page Speed?

Over half of mobile searchers will abandon a page that takes longer than three seconds to load. For every additional second, conversions fall by 12% (Google, 2018).

To check your mobile page speed, use Google’s PageSpeed Insights Tool and see how quickly your site loads on a 4G connection. This tool gives you a granular breakdown of all the speed issues you can address to improve your site.

Most major website platforms (WordPress, Squarespace, Wix, etc.) will have native features and plugins that can automatically optimize images for mobile devices to reduce page load times.

Do Any Pages Have Super High Mobile Bounce Rates?

Bounce rates are a great indicator that a page is not providing value to users. If you see bounce rates much higher on specific pages for mobile users than for desktop users, this is a sign that the page may have some issues with mobile formatting, mobile load times, or that the relevant content may take too long to scroll to on mobile.

To check bounce rates, simply log in to your Google Analytics dashboard. You’ll be able to view aggregate bounce rates for your site and bounce rates by page and track how bounce rates change as you make adjustments to webpage content.

Do You Have Intrusive Pop-ups?

Intrusive pop-ups and poorly designed pop-ups can increase your bounce rates on mobile and tablet devices. Intrusive pop-ups can also hurt your organic search rankings, especially with Google. Google rolled out an update in 2016 that devalues mobile pages with intrusive pop-ups, lowering the page’s rankings in the search results.

There are two major pop-up issues that can cause bounce rates and devaluing of a page in SERP. Pop-ups that have not been optimized for mobile traffic can be impossible to close on small screens and may cause mobile searchers to bounce from your site. Pop-ups that prevent a user from accessing content on-load will hurt your mobile SEO, especially with Google. Overall, it’s important to remember that Google considers pop-ups that block site visitors from content to be “intrusive.”

Examples of intrusive pop-ups and interstitials:

• A pop-up that displays immediately or while the user is trying to read through content
• An interstitial that has to be exited before the user can access the main content
• A full-screen interstitial that has to be scrolled past to access the main content

That doesn’t mean you should abandon pop-ups entirely. When they’re used correctly and designed with mobile UX in mind, pop-ups can actually help improve your conversion rate.

Examples of pop-ups and interstitials that are okay:

• Pop-ups that notify mobile searchers that a site uses cookies.
• Pop-ups that confirm a user’s age for restricted content or services.
• Pop-ups that take up a reasonable amount of room and are easy to dismiss.

Pop-ups that help the mobile user along their journey are contextually relevant to the content or are a legal requirement are all fine to use.

Optimize Your Site for Voice Search

A report issued by PwC states that 71% of respondents prefer voice searching to traditional searches. Now that we know users prefer voice searches let’s look at how we can optimize our websites to reach them as part of our mobile SEO strategy.

1. BE CONCISE. The average voice response ANSWER is less than 30 words long. Avoid filler or unnecessary terms like “however” or “thus,” and be as direct and straight to the point as possible while completely answering a question. Google actually has an entire guide outlining the type of responses selected for voice searches, and the biggest takeaway is that answers should be brief and direct.
2. Voice searches pull in part from “featured snippets.” So, when someone asks a question using voice search, Google pulls answers from approximately 30% of these snippets.
3. Consider the user’s intent. When crafting your content, ask yourself what users are searching for before landing on your site. Doing this will help enhance the content’s relevance. Therefore, if you’re optimizing your page for a specific featured snippet, your goal should be understanding your visitor’s intent and providing them with an answer immediately.
4. Use long tail keywords and questions in headers. When users opt for voice search, they search for answers as if they’re speaking to a human. Short, choppy keywords are rarely in use. Long-tail keywords and phrases are how people talk. So, when optimizing your site, consider using natural phrases in conjunction with questions. That way, your website will pop up more often when users are trying to solve a problem, find a product, or use a service.
5. Optimize for local searches. Users are going to search for local SEO. According to Small Business Trends, 58% of mobile users find local businesses using voice searches. Adding phrases to your content like “near me” or using your geographic area will help boost your rankings.

Are You Addressing the Customer’s Journey?

Mobile-friendly websites have to think through the customer’s journey. Ask yourself these three questions:

• What types of users hit my site? Who are they, how old are they, and what are their roles?
• What would those users want from my site? They might want to establish pricing, find my business location, complete an online purchase, or share a story.
• Can each user easily complete their journey using only the main nav?

Your main navigation should help users quickly and easily get what they want from your site without needing to use site search or “click around.” Once you have a handle on your audience segmentation and goals, you should confirm that your users aren’t facing any major barriers along each journey.

There are a few ways to do that; here are two.

If you have a program like Hotjar or Lucky Orange installed that allows you to view your own users’ onsite journeys, you can watch user recordings to see if users are struggling to complete tasks. Here are some examples:

• Users abandon scrolling because information is too far down a page
• Users have a lot of “U-Turns” – pressing back almost immediately because what they wanted wasn’t on the page they clicked into.
• Users rage-click an element that’s not opening or functioning correctly.
• You see error messages displayed to the user from your site.
• You see users begin conversion but abandon forms or carts.

You can also conduct direct user research:

• Recruit users that you’re able to interact with directly.
• Request they complete specific tasks on the site.
• Have them explain their thinking and reactions as they interact with your site.

Your marketing shouldn’t be only about what devices your potential customer is using; it should be about the journey they’re taking. What are their lifestyles, habits, and device preferences? Conduct research, surveys, and interviews with your current audience. This marketing tactic is an excellent opportunity to develop a relationship with your existing customer base. Offer incentives and prizes to those who choose to participate.

Create Journey-Driven Designs

Designing websites focusing on mobile users means you have drastically less real estate, so minimalism is critical. The last thing a user wants to do is scroll through or resize your pages. According to a scrolling and attention study conducted by the Nielsen Norman Group, 74% of users indicated that their viewing time is spent on the first two screens of content. That’s why responsive web design is the solution. You can accomplish this in a variety of ways, including:

• Hiding content under sliders
• Using sticky live chat or feedback widgets
• Implementing mobile pop-ups
• Redirecting to social media
• Creating a bare-bones presentation
• Eliminating sidebars
• Taking advantage of banner space
• Replacing graphics with a search bar

PRO TIP: One overlooked difference for mobile users is that tap areas need to be large enough for users to click on interactive elements (links, buttons, drop-downs) with precision.

Mobile SEO: User Experience Optimization Recap

For local businesses:

• Make sure to include NAP (name, address or service area, phone number) on your website.
• Claim and complete your Google My Business (GMB) listing and your Bing Places account.
• Optimize pages to include names of local cities and landmarks.
• Focus on location-based rich snippets like the Map Pack.

For all businesses:

• Make use of structured data to leverage Google Search’s rich snippet features.
• Confirm your responsive design is acting as expected.
• You can use a tool like this Responsive Design Checker to confirm how your site looks at the most common breakpoints.
• You can check out alerts and mobile feedback directly from Google through your site’s Google Search Console.
• Install a user-session recording software.
• Hotjar, for example, will let you see if your users are struggling in any areas (ex: pages are too long and users abandon before hitting content critical to conversion).
• Focus on SPEED: Optimize images for mobile (reduce file size)

PRO TIP: Start out with a responsive design or theme, and it should handle this for you.

• Minify CSS.
• Leverage caching.
• Enable Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP).
• Switch anything you have on flash over to HTML5 instead.

Unlock the Power of Mobile SEO

Mobile searching remains the leader because everyone loves the convenience of using their devices. Your audience is busy, on the go, and living in a digitally-driven world. As a result, their mobile queries will continue to be on an upward rise. Even though mobile searches are similar to those on a desktop, your site should be optimized for your target audience’s visits. Your brand should be easy to use and also support your customer’s journey. The ultimate goal of unlocking the power of mobile search is to use a mobile-friendly design that responds to the level of mobile searches you receive.