Mobile support—important SEO explained in
simple terms.
On April, 2015, Google released a game changing update for the SEO
industry. Sites with solid mobile support started ranking higher in the Google
mobile search results. Sites with no mobile support generally started ranking
lower in mobile search results.
Whether we like it or not, mobile users are here to stay and Google are
driving the mobile revolution. With the largest mobile app store in the world,
the largest mobile operating system in the world, and the largest amount of
mobile search users, it’s safe to say mobile users are a priority for Google.
If you are not supporting mobile users, it’s important to implement mobile
support, not just for better search engine results, but for better sales and
conversions—quite simply, the majority of your traffic is coming from
mobile users.
How to best support mobile users.
If you want to increase support for mobile devices and be more search engine
friendly, you have three options:
1. Create a responsive site.
Responsive sites are the cream of the crop when it comes to sites that support
both desktop and mobile devices. With responsive sites, both mobile and
desktop users see the same pages and same content, and everything is
automatically sized to fit the screen. It’s also becoming more common for
WordPress templates and new sites to feature a responsive layout.
2. Dynamically serve different content to mobile and desktop users.
You can ask your web developer to detect which devices are accessing your
site and automatically deliver a different version of your site catered to the
device. This is a complicated setup, better suited for large sites with
thousands of pages, with complicated infrastructure, when a responsive
approach is not possible.
3. Host your mobile content on a separate subdomain, e.g.
m.yoursite.com
While Google stated they support this implementation, I recommend against
it. You need a lot of redirects in place, and must jump through giant hoops to
ensure search engines recognize your special mobile subdomain as a copy of
your main site. Responsive sites are popular for good reason: it’s easier and
cheaper to maintain one site rather than both maintaining a desktop copy of
your site and maintaining a separate mobile copy of your site, on a mobile
subdomain.
Improving performance in the mobile search results.
Google stated mobile support is straightforward, either your site supports
mobile devices or it doesn’t... Well it’s not straightforward. You can get an
edge over competitors by using a handful of tools to improve your mobile
usability and make your site faster for mobile users. Run your site through
Google's Mobile Friendly Test Tool to confirm if you support mobile users,
use Google's "Test Your Mobile Speed and Performance" tool for actionable
steps to speed up your mobile site, and review the Mobile Usability report in
Google Search Console and check for any errors worth fixing—and if you're
lazy like me, delegate. Send the reports and errors over to your web
developer and get them fixed. Who doesn't like a competitive advantage?
Work through these tools, make your mobile support better than competitors,
and you will crush it in the search results.
Mobile Friendly Test Tool
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/
Test Your Mobile Speed and Performance – Think With Google
https://testmysite.thinkwithgoogle.com/
Mobile Usability – Google Search Console
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-usability
The technical details of building a responsive site are beyond the scope of
this book and could fill an entire book. In fact, it does, I counted close to 17
responsive web design books on Amazon as I wrote this paragraph… That
said, mobile SEO can be ridiculously simple.
If you have a responsive site that delivers the same content to mobile and
desktop users, automatically resizes content to the screen, is fast and is userfriendly,
all you have to do is follow the SEO recommendations in this book,
and your mobile results will be top notch from an SEO perspective.
Alternatively, follow one of the recommended implementations discussed
earlier in this section.
For guidelines, direct from the horse’s mouth so to speak, you can read
Google’s mobile support documentation for webmasters and web developers.
Mobile Friendly Sites – Google Developers
https://developers.google.com/webmasters/mobile-sites/
simple terms.
On April, 2015, Google released a game changing update for the SEO
industry. Sites with solid mobile support started ranking higher in the Google
mobile search results. Sites with no mobile support generally started ranking
lower in mobile search results.
Whether we like it or not, mobile users are here to stay and Google are
driving the mobile revolution. With the largest mobile app store in the world,
the largest mobile operating system in the world, and the largest amount of
mobile search users, it’s safe to say mobile users are a priority for Google.
If you are not supporting mobile users, it’s important to implement mobile
support, not just for better search engine results, but for better sales and
conversions—quite simply, the majority of your traffic is coming from
mobile users.
How to best support mobile users.
If you want to increase support for mobile devices and be more search engine
friendly, you have three options:
1. Create a responsive site.
Responsive sites are the cream of the crop when it comes to sites that support
both desktop and mobile devices. With responsive sites, both mobile and
desktop users see the same pages and same content, and everything is
automatically sized to fit the screen. It’s also becoming more common for
WordPress templates and new sites to feature a responsive layout.
2. Dynamically serve different content to mobile and desktop users.
You can ask your web developer to detect which devices are accessing your
site and automatically deliver a different version of your site catered to the
device. This is a complicated setup, better suited for large sites with
thousands of pages, with complicated infrastructure, when a responsive
approach is not possible.
3. Host your mobile content on a separate subdomain, e.g.
m.yoursite.com
While Google stated they support this implementation, I recommend against
it. You need a lot of redirects in place, and must jump through giant hoops to
ensure search engines recognize your special mobile subdomain as a copy of
your main site. Responsive sites are popular for good reason: it’s easier and
cheaper to maintain one site rather than both maintaining a desktop copy of
your site and maintaining a separate mobile copy of your site, on a mobile
subdomain.
Improving performance in the mobile search results.
Google stated mobile support is straightforward, either your site supports
mobile devices or it doesn’t... Well it’s not straightforward. You can get an
edge over competitors by using a handful of tools to improve your mobile
usability and make your site faster for mobile users. Run your site through
Google's Mobile Friendly Test Tool to confirm if you support mobile users,
use Google's "Test Your Mobile Speed and Performance" tool for actionable
steps to speed up your mobile site, and review the Mobile Usability report in
Google Search Console and check for any errors worth fixing—and if you're
lazy like me, delegate. Send the reports and errors over to your web
developer and get them fixed. Who doesn't like a competitive advantage?
Work through these tools, make your mobile support better than competitors,
and you will crush it in the search results.
Mobile Friendly Test Tool
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/
Test Your Mobile Speed and Performance – Think With Google
https://testmysite.thinkwithgoogle.com/
Mobile Usability – Google Search Console
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-usability
The technical details of building a responsive site are beyond the scope of
this book and could fill an entire book. In fact, it does, I counted close to 17
responsive web design books on Amazon as I wrote this paragraph… That
said, mobile SEO can be ridiculously simple.
If you have a responsive site that delivers the same content to mobile and
desktop users, automatically resizes content to the screen, is fast and is userfriendly,
all you have to do is follow the SEO recommendations in this book,
and your mobile results will be top notch from an SEO perspective.
Alternatively, follow one of the recommended implementations discussed
earlier in this section.
For guidelines, direct from the horse’s mouth so to speak, you can read
Google’s mobile support documentation for webmasters and web developers.
Mobile Friendly Sites – Google Developers
https://developers.google.com/webmasters/mobile-sites/
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