SEO Tips: Mobile-Friendly Websites Rank Better In Mobile Search

Mobile is the new desktop. Well, sort of.

More and more people are using their mobiles to view websites. Having a mobile-friendly website gives a better user experience, which is important for converting prospects on your website.

But perhaps more importantly, Google prefers mobile-friendly websites and will rank them higher in mobile search results. Here’s what you need to know about Google’s mobile-friendly algorithm:

The algorithm assesses on a page-by-page basis

The algorithm analyses mobile compatibility on a page-by-page basis, rather than a website-wide basis. If your site has some pages that are optimized for mobile and some that are not, Google will assess them separately and promote the pages that are optimized.

There are over 200 different factors that determine ranking including: small font sizes, whether your buttons are too close together, readability of content and whether the browser adjusts the page dimensions to suit the device accessing the website.

Your page is either mobile-friendly or not

The algorithm is an on-or-off algorithm, this means that it does not assess how mobile-friendly your pages are, you cannot be 50% or 70% mobile-friendly, you are either mobile-friendly or you are not.

The algorithm operates in real-time

The algorithm runs in real-time, this means that as soon as your site becomes mobile-friendly, Google will pick up on the change, and you should start to benefit from the new algorithm fairly quickly.

How do you know if your website is mobile-friendly?

You can assess whether your site is mobile friendly by using Google’s mobile friendly test. This test is not without its flaws, but is a useful gauge of a site’s mobile performance.

Mobile Friendly Test

Also, the mobile usability reports in Google Webmasters Tools will show you common usability issues with your mobile site.

If 73% of Australians using their mobile phones to access the Internet wasn’t incentive enough to go mobile-friendly, this algorithm makes the change a necessity.

So if your site is not mobile-friendly, you better get to work now, because your mobile traffic is at risk.

Want more SEO Tips?

Check out our other articles about SEO:

SEO Tips: Are you ranking for the right Google keywords?

One of the first things our clients say when we broach the topic of Google Search is: “I’m ranking on the first page for [insert keyword here]”. The keyword, or keyword phrase, is usually a fairly specific description of the service or product our client provides – for example, a keyword phrase for us could be “website analytics Melbourne”.

Now you might think, “job done” right? They’re ranking highly for the perfect keyword phrase to describe their business. We can pack up and move on to something else…

Well, the story is not quite over yet.

Check your Google keywords properly

Now, the first question we ask our clients is: did they check their ranking using their own browser? Whenever you visit a website, it’s saved in your browser history. Google uses this to tailor your search results. Most likely you visit your own website fairly regularly, and because of this, Google will think your website is relevant to you and will bump it up in the rankings.

So how do you check your ranking properly? Chrome Incognito or Firefox Private don’t save the sites you’ve visited, so they’re much better ways to check your ranking.

And the second, most important question: is anyone actually searching using the Google keywords you rank well for? Is anyone actually typing in “website analytics Melbourne”?

You may be ranking well for a certain keyword but perhaps only 10 people are searching using that keyword each month. That limits your organic reach to 10 potential customers.

So how do we find out what people are actually searching? We use the Google Keywords Planner

How many people are searching Google using your keyword?

Type in your keywords and click the blue button. You can also target to specific locations, search engines and exclude negative keywords. We’ve chosen to look at searches in Victoria, Australia.

This table shows each keyword phrase and their corresponding average monthly searches. We can see that “website design Melbourne” is searched on average 1,000 times each month, but “website analytics Melbourne” isn’t getting any searches at all.

We would be much better off focusing our SEO efforts on ranking well in “website design Melbourne” where the pool of potential customers is much greater.

So you may be ahead of the pack, but are you running the right race? Wouldn’t you rather be winning races with a $1,000 prize than a $10 one? I know which one I’d choose.

What are your ideal Google keywords?

Want to find out your business’s ideal paid and organic google keywords and how to rank well for them? Check out our SEO and Social Media Landscape Analysis!

Want more SEO Tips?

Check out our other articles about SEO:

SEO Tips: What does your website look like to Google?

So you think your website looks great, but you’re not ranking well in Google, why is that? To understand this, you need to dig a little deeper than what initially meets the eye.

You and Google have very different ways of judging your website, so let’s take a moment to change perspectives from what you see, to what Google sees.

For a typical search query, there are thousands, even millions, of webpages with potentially helpful information. However, most people don’t look beyond the first results page. In order to give you the most relevant results first, Google uses a special algorithm.

Today, Google’s algorithm uses more than 200 unique signals in order to take your questions and turn them into answers. Google doesn’t release exactly what these signals are, but they include things like the terms used on your website, the freshness of the content and your region.

These word clouds are certainly an oversimplification of such a complex algorithm, but they do give you a bit of an idea of what your website looks like to Google. They represent how Google interprets the content of your website.

Both word clouds were created from the real websites of two different dental clinics. The bigger the word, the more frequently this word appears on the website, and the more frequently Google’s algorithm detects it.

The first cloud you could probably guess straight away is a dentist in Melbourne, as it is full of relevant words such as ‘dental’, ‘dentistry’ and ‘Melbourne’. From just a quick glance you can get a good idea of the services they offer.

However, the second word cloud is full of mostly website code, making it far more difficult for Google to gauge the search queries to which your website is relevant.

Your website is the core of your online marketing machine, your content and coding is important, make sure get that right before you invest in your marketing strategies.

Want more SEO Tips?

Check out our other articles about SEO: