How to Increase Your Mobile Rankings in 2016
Like millions of others, you have probably realized by now that mobile can’t be ignored. More consumers now search on their mobiles than desktops and businesses are starting to realize this. If you ignore their mobile rankings, you’re ignoring a large chunk of your customers.
The benefits of improving your mobile website rankings cannot be underestimated.
- 4 out of 5 consumers use smartphones to shop
- 70% of mobile searches lead to online action within an hour.
- Google Says More Searches Now On Mobile Than On Desktop
These are just some of the many reasons for spending time and attention on your mobile rankings.
Looking for some tips to increase your mobile search position? Read on…
Increase your mobile rankings in 2016
Be Mobile Friendly – At very least
If your website isn’t mobile friendly, you risk losing out to your competitors in the search results.
Google and Bing want all websites to be mobile friendly, is yours?
Following Google’s mobile friendly update in 2015, websites without a mobile friendly design dropped an average of 5 places in the search results. How much is that worth to your business?
At very least your website should pass these tests, if Google or Bing don’t deem your website to be mobile friendly, you’re off to a bad start already!
What action should you take?
The best advice is to optimize your whole website for every device, whether that’s desktops, laptops or mobiles, this is called responsive web design.
Speak to your web developer about making your website responsive.
Alternatively you can make a mobile friendly version of your website, though this is more of a quick fix.
Already gone Mobile Friendly? What else can you do?
If you’re one of the thousands of businesses who have gone mobile friendly already, you might be wondering what else you can do to compete in the mobile search rankings.
After all, if everyone’s going to be mobile friendly, what else is there to set them apart?
For now at least, there’s not a huge amount of difference from desktop. That said, there are gains to be had if you focus on optimizing your mobile presence. Here are some changes you can make to give your website the edge in the search results:
Reduce Page Speed
Have you ever waited patiently for a mobile site to load, only to give up after painfully slow speeds? Load time is extremely important on mobile, so much so that a 1 second delay can result in a 7% drop in conversions.
In the interest of promoting the best results possible, Google wants all websites to load as fast as possible.
Is your website running slow?
The best way to answer this question is with a speed test. Remember it might load fast for you, but not for everyone else. Google’s Page Speed Insights will grade your load speed and make suggestions as to how you can improve it.
There are hundreds of ways to speed up a website, here’s a few:
- Reduce the size and number of images
- Limit the number of interactive elements
- Enable compression
- Reduce the number of requests for resources outside your own server
Increase Font Size
Believe it or not, font size is pretty important on mobile. What good is a website if you can’t read the text? Big, readable text (within reason), is advisable on mobile pages. (Google’s mobile friendly test will let you know if it thinks your font is too small).
Add Space Between Elements
If elements are too close together it can make it difficult for people to interact with your website. Adding more space between buttons, links and other interactive elements is a simple change that can have a small impact on your rankings.
Google Page Speed Insights will let you know if elements are too close to one another.
Optimize For Local Searches
Local results are more likely to appear on mobile, so it makes sense to optimize your local presence.
If you want to reach more mobile users, an effective way to achieve this is by optimizing for local SEO.
How can you improve your local search position?
- Complete your Google My Business profile & make sure that all information is accurate
- Submit your business to local directories such as Yelp, Google+, Trip Advisor and Yahoo local
- Encourage online reviews of your business
- Use location & call extensions in your Google Ads
- Integrate local keywords in your website, including: URLS, headings, titles, descriptions & page content
- Ensure your NAP (Name Address, Phone Number) is consistent across your website, ads & all social channels
- Include valuable local information on your website such as: opening hours, directions to your store, testimonials (This is the type of local information searchers are looking for).
Focus on User Experiencing
As a general rule Google & Bing are looking for usability on mobile, this is often referred to as UX (user experience). If your website offers a good user experience then you will be rewarded with better search positions. This trend is only going to increase this year as search engines start to hone their mobile ranking algorithms.
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