Guide to Mobile SEO - User Experience vs Website Content

These days, many webmasters are finding it difficult to figure out what's still important for SEO and what's no longer relevant. In an effort to clarify important trends in the SEO industry we presents this simple, but comprehensive guide to mobile SEO. If you haven't already optimized your website for tablets and smartphones, then this should be your number one priority when it comes to SEO.

Some elements to consider include:

• Ensuring you have a responsive website
• Ensuring all elements of your website are mobile-friendly
• Tailoring your content to all readers
• Factoring in the rise in voice search queries
• Making use of a "click to call" feature
• Keeping in mind the differences in user intent between mobile and desktop users
• Making sure your content loads quickly on mobile devices

Mobile User Experience

First, mobile Internet usage ​exceeds​ desktop. People using smartphones ​make up ​more than half the consumer traffic to top sites globally. Second, more searches take place on smartphones than on desktop computers, according to Google. When it comes to your mobile SEO strategy, user experience is the single most important factor for success. Welcome visitors with a fast-loading website and good mobile design. These things impact your site's rankings, since search engines want to give their searchers a satisfying experience.

Optimize your mobile website for faster page-loading times

On a mobile device, a slow website feels even slower. Optimizing those fat images for mobile SEO is the No. 1 thing you can do to improve cellular phone user experience. The larger your image file sizes, the longer it will take your web pages to load, especially on a phone or other device such a tablet. Videos can also cause your web pages to take too long to load. Consider embedding smaller or lower quality videos to reduce the amount of data required, as long as it doesn’t impact the viewing experience too much on faster devices. Another option for downloads of videos and other large files is to offer several download sizes. ​Then users can choose which one best fits their current bandwidth and device.

Keep your responsive website simple and easy to navigate

Have you ever visited a website from your smartphone that made you zoom and reposition the screen just so you could see it? A poor user experience like this causes most people to leave the website and find another with a more optimal cell phone user experience. When it comes to mobile search, less is more, and it is always written with the user's perspective in mind. Easy to access with large tap targets and clear navigation options. Readable with large enough text in a font that's legible on a small screen.

Tailor your content to fit the needs of your audience

Keep in mind that a mobile user's search intentions probably vary from that of a desktop user conducting a similar search. Design your content to give users what they need. Make sure you include enough content on your mobile website to support your long-tail rankings, due to Google's mobile-first index. Also include markup there to qualify for featured snippets and other search results page enhancements.

Mobile SEO Affects Voice Search

Mobile optimization will also help you future-proof your SEO strategy. That's because voice search is becoming huge, mirroring the rise of mobile search. These days, voice search isn’t just on smartphones and tablets, but on home assistant devices like Amazon's Alexa and Google Home, which means people will be able to find well-optimized content from anywhere.