2013 has been named the Year of Mobile Commerce; with the Google searches from mobile devices expected to surpass the searches made by desktop computers each day during this year. With the number of smart phones and tablets in use expanding exponentially, now has never been a better time for companies to embrace mobile websites. Remember, your competitor is now only ever a click away. A poor mobile user experience could see shoppers and clients turn to those who make it easier for them.
When Approaching A Mobile Website
It is vital to remember that mobile visitors are interacting with your website in a completely different way to the desktop user. Use Google Webmaster tools to understand your analytics and segment out current mobile traffic to get a better understanding of how existing mobile users wish to use your website from their devices. This will also help you understand your organic keyword traffic. Although your desktop website rankings can help with mobile SEO, you may find that the keywords used for your desktop site are not relevant to your mobile. This is why re-optimization is advised.
When You Understand The End-User’s Goals
Designing a mobile website is straightforward. If you discover that mobile users are seeking store locations or contact details whilst using their mobile devices, you can make sure these are a prominent feature of your mobile homepage. Mobile sites will load more slowly than desktop pages, so keep your design streamline and low-fuss in order to enhance the user experience. You will need to consider the navigation of your mobile site too, mobile users tend to hate having to scroll.
Did You Know That 40% Of Mobile Search Is Local?
This means it’s important to consider local search and geo-positioning when undertaking your mobile strategy. The use of HTML Geolocation API is advantageous.
In Terms Of SEO Link Building,
Fortunately there is no need to build separate links to your mobile site. Google knows that both sites are the same, despite the difference in content and layout. Today mobile web users expect that your website is responsive, which means the site will automatically convert to a mobile design when being reached on a mobile device. This saves the user hassle and time of having to select a mobile web option or entering a separate domain name. Normally mobile browsers emulates a desktop view by squeezing big resolutions into small screens that is often difficult to read and browse. You must be familiar that how difficult it is to click a web link in IPHONE unless you zoom it.. In order to tell the browser to detect the screen size we will add a META viewport tag inside <head> section of your layout.
Any Template can be converted into a flexible layout in just two simple steps:
1. Add Meta Viewport
Paste Following Code just below <head> tag.
“width=device-width” detect the screen size.
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1,
maximum-scale=1">2. Use CSS3 Media Queries
See these two media queries for smart phone and Tablet devices.
@media screen and (max-width : 480px) {
/* If screen size less than 480px Load this style */
/* Done for Smart Phone */
}
@media screen and (max-width : 768px) {
/* If screen size less than 768px Load this style */
/* Done for Tablet */
}The Use Of A Sitemap Is Also Important To Mobile SEO
You may already have a mobile HTML sitemap in place, but it is best practice to add an XML sitemap to your mobile website and submit this to Bing and Google. This will allow search engines to make a note of your separate mobile website. An effective mobile website is extremely easy to achieve, but alongside SEO techniques for mobile optimization, it is important to keep the end user in mind. This way you will get more traffic and help boost your rankings further. Another tip to remember is that as mobile screens are smaller, it’s important to keep Meta descriptions and tags to a mobile-friendly style too: 40-60 characters for tags and 90 characters for descriptions.