If you have a website for your business, chances are you’ve heard the letters S-E-O more times than you can count, and for good reason. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one of the most important tools for any digital marketer. The better your SEO, the higher your website is placed in the search results when a potential customer hops online. So, you’ll want your website to appeal to the search engine’s algorithm. However, amid the endless keywords, inbound and outbound links, and carefully worded subheadings, there might be one very important aspect of SEO that you’re overlooking. Let’s talk about mobile optimization.

The New Way to Search: Optimizing for Mobile Users

Mobile optimization is exactly as it sounds, making your site work as smoothly as possible for consumers on mobile devices. This basically means ensuring that your headlines, descriptions, visuals, and navigation tools work well on a much smaller screen. While it might seem like a small thing at first, this aspect of SEO has become increasingly important as more consumers move to browsing on mobile devices every year.

According to Pew Research Center, 85% of Americans own a smartphone of some kind, and 15% of Americans use their smartphone as their primary access point to the internet. That’s a pretty good chance that visitors coming to your site are on a mobile device. Your website needs to be optimized to mobile users if you want to leave a good impression.

 On the search engine side of things, Google likes to prioritize sites that are set up for “mobile first.” When Google’s web crawlers assess your site, it will first look to see if your site meets Google’s requirements for mobile first. If you want to see if your site matches the requirements, or what you need to do in order to make it so, we recommend checking out this article from Google.

Tips for Optimizing a Website for Mobile

If you’re looking to make your website a little more mobile-friendly, here are a few tips to get you started.

• Page Speed:Consumers are becoming less and less likely to stick around for long loading times. Ensuring that your website runs smoothly on mobile is essential to a good first impression.
• Smaller Screens, Bigger Buttons: Everything is smaller on mobile, and hitting tiny buttons with big fingers is a constant frustration that might cause a customer to give up on your site and look elsewhere.
• Declutter Your Page: Speaking of smaller on mobile, your webpage won’t have as much space to display everything like it might on a computer. Taking out some of the non-essential visuals and streamlining your page for mobile users is a great way to ensure a good experience on the site.
• Always Check on Mobile: While this might seem like a no-brainer, it can be an easy step to miss. When implementing your site, be sure to check it on mobile too, just to make sure everything it working as intended. If you’re looking for a little more robust testing, we’d recommend using a site like com.

Mobile optimization can be a bit more work for your company, but the end result is more than worth the effort. If you want to upgrade your SEO, consider checking your mobile site for anything that can be improved.

Still have questions? Contact us! We’d be happy to help you optimize your company’s website for mobile users.