14 Mobile Optimization Best Practices You Need To Know
To achieve the absolute best mobile implementation, make sure you create a mobile site that adheres to these 14 best practices.
%20(4).png "14 Mobile Optimization Best Practices You Need To Know")
It's been a long time since Google launched its index mobile-first.
When it was first announced, SEO pros everywhere were scrambling to make sure their site complied with Google's core web trends and best mobile development guidelines.
Optimization for the mobile web is quite an extensive sub-field within SEO, requiring expert-level knowledge and its own set of best practices to succeed.
So much so that many industries require a complete standard implementation of their website on mobile. Not everyone measures this.
In many cases, most sites sometimes fail to achieve their goal of compliance.
This is obviously wrong given the fact that mobile design is a prevalent part of our digital society:
- 96% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 own a smartphone.
- As of 2020, there were 3.6 billion users worldwide using a smart device. 4.3 billion by 2023.
- In 2020, mobile users spent 90% of their time in apps compared to mobile browsers.
- Google has a 93.22 percent share of the US mobile search market in 2021.
- The primary mobile search result on Google yields an organic click-through rate (CTR) of 26.9%.
Now, Google is updating the desktop page experience. But this update is outside the scope of this article, even though it is an integral part of the overall page experience.
To achieve the absolute best mobile implementation, it's important to ensure you create a mobile site that adheres to best practices, and this also creates opportunities to increase your organic web trend numbers.
By using responsive design instead of the m.dot subdomain, observing best practices in image creation and optimization, and monitoring compression and zooming, you can create a high-quality mobile site that will attract as many people as possible from your audience.
This is where your mobile site will succeed.
1. Make sure all content is the same on desktop and mobile.
The idea behind this best practice is to avoid accusations of fake content and anonymity.
To be safe, always make sure that all content is as present on the desktop version of your site as it is on mobile.
One of the best techniques that can be used to ensure this is responsive design.
Responsive design, for those who don't know, involves creating a style sheet that uses “media queries” to automatically move designs between a wide range of platforms and devices.
If you want to increase possible speed and keep your design simple and average, consider using CSS sprites to reduce server-side requests.
2. The top of the fold is not completely finished.
It's important to remember that in a mobile environment, where things scroll infinitely, the top of the layer never ends completely.
It's still better to have at least some text content above the fold on a mobile design, to let someone know there's a reason to scroll.
The psychological benefits and desires of wanting to see what you have to offer haven't completely gone away, so you still have to optimize it to some extent on many different mobile devices.
3. Use the "top-down" development method.
A "top-down" approach to development means that you consider all possible consequences of every design decision you make from start to finish.
You're designing for mobile first instead of desktop first and then working on mobile design after that. This development approach is ideal because you do not cause problems in the final design.
Here's an example: I created a desktop website. After about three-quarters of the process, you decide you want to build a mobile site on top of it.
You create a mockup. But, after coding the mockup and going through all the transformations, you see an error here. And you get a worm there. Then you will find an error there. This is because the bottom-up approach does not work and causes loss of scale.
This is a tendency where unseen issues appear at the last minute, leading to unforeseen errors and increased work hours that were not originally delivered when the project was originally scoped.
The truth is that if a top-down approach to mobile responsive design had been taken from the beginning, these bugs and things that needed to be worked on would not have surfaced in the end, causing this terrible problem.
4. Don't focus exclusively on mobile users
As mobile and desktop merge, the goals and desires of users of these platforms also merge.
When you focus on what your customer wants to achieve based on the platform, you create a holistic approach that reaches customers more effectively through your website.
Whether a customer is purchasing a product or looking for the services you offer, customer objectives will continue to be combined with customer acquisition and business acquisition.
So much so that it will become less important to focus specifically on these ideals and values.
And just as important, keep in mind that this mix of mobile and desktop is becoming less and less important as it continues.
5. Use responsive design techniques.
The days of separate m.dot sites (m.example.com) are over.
There is no compelling reason to use such an app in the mobile-first era.
The structure can be very messy, with multiple URLs causing duplicate content issues if not properly optimized.
There are many techniques available to ensure efficient transformation completion, but otherwise m-dot implementation has taken the way of the dodo as new technologies have emerged.
Today, ideal implementation includes responsive design. These designs use so-called media queries to determine which display resolution the design will support.
Each separate resolution is what's called a "breakpoint" in the design, or the point at which responsive design transitions from one resolution to another.
The advantage of using this type of structure is that you do not encounter the duplicate content issues that you might encounter when implementing m-dot.
Also, your mobile phone implementation will be on the latest technology.
6. Think “code” instead of “images everywhere” to increase site speed
Do you really need to use that two-color background as a repeating background 2 pixels wide and 1200 pixels high?
If you don't, and you can encode it instead, encode it instead.
Although something as small as this won't make a huge impact on site speed, improvements can add up when complete.
Next time you're doing a site audit or building a website, think: "Do I really need this image here or can I just mark it up instead?"
If an image isn't really necessary, object markup can help speed up a site significantly, especially in site designs that use an abundance of graphics.
7. Customize WordPress for mobile
There are many plugins available for WordPress.
So much so that some provide functionality for compatibility with mobile devices.
The most useful plugins for this purpose are Duda Mobile and W3 Total Cache, as well as HTML and CSS minification plugins.
8. Don't use intrusive interstitials to sell your product.
Yes. We know. Your product is the biggest, coolest thing ever to grace this planet. For this reason, we will likely go to your website and research it before purchasing.
But we don't need to place any intrusive ads that block your entire site to prevent our activity from shutting down.
Where possible, keep intrusive interstitial ads to a minimum, keep ads at the bottom or click on an ad with an option next to it and minimize it.
It is important to note that Google penalizes interfering brokers.
It's worth reading their developer guides on this issue as well as their webmaster guidelines and their blog post on the topic.
9. Test your site on multiple operating systems and displays.
Any SEO should know how to identify weaknesses in a website's current implementation, including where and how to look for issues on different displays and devices.
You want to test your site on multiple operating systems as well as multiple monitors. Doing this ensures that your site is compatible with the widest possible range of displays and platforms.
But, what if you can't afford a thousand devices to check them?
It all comes down to the applications. Yes! It is possible to check for these types of problems through more than one application.
Chrome extension for web developer from Google
If you're on a limited budget, using the Google Web Developer Chrome extension can help you test how your site appears on many different screen sizes and resolutions.
It also provides the ability to see how your site looks across different devices, how touch inputs react through simulation, and more.
It is also possible to use their debugging tool to check the site code for issues.
Browser stack
BrowserStack.com is a great tool for testing on many different browsers, operating systems, and display resolutions. They also have a Google Chrome extension that you can make use of for this purpose.
You can test any website on over 2,000 real devices, browsers and operating systems.
By having a paid account, you get unlimited access to their browser extensions for testing.
Cross-browser testing
CrossBrowserTesting.com is an alternative to BrowserStack that you can use to test browsers and devices.
Offering over 1,500 browsers and platforms to test, their product offering is nothing less than what you can do.
It is possible to compare screenshots using their tool, along with the ability to simulate how your website behaves on real-world devices.
10. Follow mobile video best practices.
Yes, mobile video is the best way to do SEO! Google still needs to include some signals on the page so that its search engine can better understand the video on that page.
This article by Matt Southern of Search Engine Journal outlines five of Google's recommended video SEO best practices.
Things like on-page text, referral links, structured data, and video files are important.
There are other things you want to look for when creating a video.
For example, you want to make sure that your videos are publicly available. This means making sure your YouTube privacy settings are set to public, and that you have a Google-accessible webpage that includes the video.
For structured data, Schema.org recommends using the VideoObject data type.
Google recommends using the following mobile video best practices to implement flawless mobile video:
Use custom controls with a root div, a video media element, and a custom child div for video controls.
Use the video play/pause button.
Ensure that the user can search backwards and forwards.
Its comprehensive technical execution on mobile video is unparalleled and walks you through the process step by step.
As Google says:
“If video is the main reason for a user's visits, the user experience needs to be immersive and engaging.”
Besides the obvious, other mobile video SEO best practices include:
Make it as easy as possible for Google to find your videos. this means:
Use a video sitemap: If you don't submit a video sitemap, Google may not be able to find your videos directly. A video sitemap makes it easy for you to submit this sitemap to Google Search Console, making it easier for Google to crawl and index your videos.
Don't use complex user actions or URL fragments: If they are used to upload your videos, Google may not find your videos at all, because they are on your page. Things are too complicated for Google to understand.
Use easily recognizable HTML tags: Some valid tags include video, iframe, object, or embed. It becomes easier for Google to identify videos when they are included within popular tags.
Make sure your videos can actually be indexed. It happens: Sometimes someone can make a change to your robots.txt file that prevents your videos from being crawled (through no fault of your own... hopefully). If your videos were being indexed, and then suddenly they're not, take a look at your robots.txt file to make sure they're not blocked.
Use Google-supported thumbnail formats: There are also thumbnail best practices you should follow in the Google Web Developer documentation above.
Mobile video SEO isn't always as easy as one might think.
While not every box needs to be checked, there are things that can hurt your mobile video being crawled and indexed if this isn't done.
11. Use Schema.org structured data.
Schema.org structured data is important not only for determining which pages on your site contain specific, structured information that search engines need to see, but also when the mobile index comes into play. So expect to see more dependencies on the schema.
It's a short and easy way to understand information that can then be translated into rich snippets in mobile search results.
But, either way, this author argues that schema structured data should also be used in desktop applications because it can help you show up in richer results based on your targeted keywords. It can help increase your site's visibility when implemented correctly.
12. Do not block supporting scripts such as JavaScript, CSS, or images
This should be common sense when developing sites for any platform, be it desktop or mobile, but some people still do it.
It is important to ensure that you do not block scripts supporting your mobile design, as such blocking can lead to issues such as mobile soft 404s. This can also lead to desktop 404s.
However, if you prevent Google from crawling these files, Google will not be able to crawl these files to see if your website is working properly.
When they can't, it can lead to lower rankings because they can't fully understand your website.
13. Image compression and optimization
For the mobile web, image optimization is a critical component to success. This means that you must ensure that images are properly optimized for all image sizes and at all possible resolutions.
It is not possible to create an image and be sure that it can be seen everywhere. So can you. But they will appear distorted at the resolution they were not designed for.
Instead, it's recommended to use comprehensive SEO best practices and ensure that you create high-quality images that are accurate but also load quickly.
That's why there are several responsive design best practices that Google recommends using to optimize your images for the mobile platform. They recommend the following:
Use the appropriate image size. If you use relative image sizes, you prevent them from exceeding the capacity tag of the container containing the image.
Use embedded images. It is possible to reduce page speed by ensuring that inline images are used to reduce file requests. They should be used on pages that cannot be used anywhere else on your site.
For high DPI devices, use the srcset attribute for images. This helps you add multiple image files to different devices.
If you're doing ecommerce SEO, you'll need to make your product images scalable. Consumers may want to zoom in on an image of what they may be purchasing on their devices to see it better. Therefore, it makes sense to offer this option.
The trick to incorporating images into your mobile optimization is: balance image size, upload it to a mobile device, and ensure accurate page speed without compromising image quality on any larger device. What your audience is looking for.
14. Improve overall page size
Page size is an important consideration for a mobile-friendly website. To be truly mobile friendly, the page size needs to load quickly. To do this, the overall size of the DOM must be optimized.
To do this effectively, you should not only consider what I describe in the link above, but you should also consider the following:
Don't use unnecessary custom fonts.
Using unnecessary custom fonts can complicate your page loading and increase the number of scripts required to process your page.
This translates into increased page load times and can increase your core web performance indicator scores beyond the desired range.
Where possible, use system fonts instead and you can reduce this effect.
Enhance your photos
You also want to make sure you optimize your photos while maintaining image quality. This is not a professional result. If someone visits your site and your image quality is grainy due to high compression, then you did not achieve the best result.
Ideally, you should use the image file size that will produce the highest quality on the mobile devices your site is optimized for while making sure you don't drop below this quality point.
It's a delicate balancing act and requires someone skilled in image enhancement to achieve the desired results.
Reduce the amount of resources required for the extensive DOM and critical rendering paths.
The more resources required to display your page, the faster your page will download. You should never need more than 10 plugins (maximum) and three to four script files to process a web page.
This author has seen situations where 160 plugins were loaded and the page file size was 10MB. This is not where you want to be.
For maximum effectiveness, this author argues that pages on a WordPress site should be no more than 150-250 KB in size - on average - and contain no more than five to seven resources (CSS, external fonts, ad file, JavaScript file , and three additional components if necessary). If you need more, you may not be as good as you think
Don't underestimate the savings that using system fonts over third-party web fonts will provide you.
Minimize your pages.
The process of minifying your pages involves compressing your files to save space and thus reduce overall page loading times.
Using minification as a process will help you get rid of unwanted white space in your code, and compress that code so it takes up as little space as possible.
Ideally, best practices will not include any additional components. You may want to hire a developer to manually minify your pages.
If you are already loaded with plugins, it is not a good idea to add another plugin to slow down your pages. In these cases, you will need to hire a professional developer to ensure the best result.
If you already have the bare minimum of plugins, hiring a professional developer for this task will help you improve your page load times and Core Web Vitals scores even further.
If you must use a plugin, be sure to only use it as a temporary measure until you have a professional developer minify your code manually.
Mobile here first; The need for implementation has reached a critical level.
With the advent of Google's mobile-first index, implementing your website across platforms, across devices, and is cross-compatible is now a top priority.
This means that the longer you delay, the more likely it is that not only mobile implementation, but not correct mobile implementation, will cost you in many ways.
Not just classification.
If you haven't moved to mobile yet, why not?
No comments