How Effective is Your Mobile Content?

Smartphone surfing is immensely popular, and according to Google, mobile searches now account for the majority of all search inquiries. If your content isn't optimized for mobile, you'll be left in the dust. Read below to find out how you can make your mobile content work in your favor.

Things to Consider When Using Mobile Content

Smartphone surfing is immensely popular, and according to Google, mobile searches now account for the majority of all search inquiries. As a result, Google now plans to upgrade its mobile search index to become its primary search index. This means that users engaged in commercial internet ventures will have to give even more prominence to mobile-friendly optimization in the future. Furthermore, mobile-optimized internet sites not only favorably influence search engine rankings, but they also provide users with a positive browsing experience which translates into higher conversion rates.

Now that mobile access has become such an important prerequisite for online marketing success, here is a quick tutorial on how to create mobile-friendly web content.

Plan for Effective Mobile Access

Making an existing website mobile-friendly, or creating a new website that is optimized for all kinds of users, is a task that requires very careful planning. In addition to understanding Google’s attitude toward mobile-friendly websites, one must address the following questions at the planning stage:

• Would this page be relevant for mobile search queries?
• Is a responsive design practical?
• Would a mobile version be more suitable?

As we all know, search-engine-optimized content will bring visitors to the site anyway. So perhaps it might make more sense to consider keywords that are especially relevant to a mobile search. And finally, it’s important to remember that smartphone users don’t search in the same way as desktop users. Mobile searchers have much more specific search requirements and are often looking for help. For instance, when someone is on vacation and relying on their smartphone browser, they are less likely to input general search queries and more likely to ask specific questions about leisure activities, restaurants and hotels.

Responsive Design Versus a Mobile Website

Many webmasters prefer to create just one version of a website. That is why they design their sites to function properly on any device. The advantage of this arrangement is that only one version of the website has to be maintained. However, this approach is not quite so easy to implement because it’s often necessary to make compromises in order to achieve a good standard of content presentation on desktop PCs as well as mobile devices. However, there are many examples, which demonstrate that a cleverly implemented responsive design can satisfy the needs of all users.

Although the responsive design approach is very popular, some webmasters prefer to create two separate versions of their website and direct users to the appropriate version. Even though the maintenance costs for this arrangement are much higher, this method also has its advantages. For example, significant changes to an existing desktop version will not be necessary, which is particularly helpful if this version is already successful and has been well-executed. In addition, the creation of a separate mobile format presents an ideal opportunity to optimize the content for mobile devices. For example, the webmaster could incorporate important mobile search terms within the text.

Important Criteria to Consider When Creating Mobile Content

Because mobile devices have relatively small display areas and restricted data volumes, it’s important to note the following points when creating mobile web content:

• A simple, one-column design

Mobile devices don’t usually offer particularly large displays. So, mobile website designs have to be adapted to suit these smaller display screens in order to offer users the best possible presentation. With that in mind, a single-column design is the best choice for mobile devices. This makes it easier to avoid the annoyance of horizontal scrolling. In addition, it is also good practice to keep your pages simple by dispensing with unnecessary elements, thereby avoiding any page-loading delays caused by the transmission of unnecessary data.

• Optimize Your Headers

The header is usually the first thing a user will see. It’s often the quality of this header that determines whether or not a user will spend any more time on the website. Thus, it is very important to optimize it to suit mobile requirements. It should be very short, ideally occupying no more than one line of the screen display. It should also arouse the visitor’s curiosity and, if possible, contain at least one important search term. Instead of creating a heading like: “Discover 100 original gift ideas for your loved one,” it would be better to use the shorter title: “100 original gift ideas.”

• Make Your Mobile Texts Flow

Long texts divided into just a few paragraphs are hard to read on most mobile devices. So when creating good mobile content, it’s very important to keep your text as short as possible – and certainly no longer than it has to be. Organize your content well and divide your article into many short text blocks. Lists are a good way to keep your design clear and your topic well-focused. Good mobile content is invariably quite different from high-quality texts designed for desktop access. For this reason, site operators who rely on responsive design should always test the readability of their pages on as many different devices as possible.

• Make Your Page Elements Mobile-friendly

A good website will incorporate elements such as buttons, forms and text links – used, for example, to comment on blog contributions. These page elements are also used on mobile-friendly websites, though a user would tap them with a finger rather than clicking with a mouse. Therefore, such elements should have enough distance between them to allow for this. If web forms are necessary, it is important to allow the user full functional access while also eliminating any unnecessary text input.

• Minimize Data Volume Requirements

Lengthy page-loads are unacceptable and often lead to users leaving a page before the loading has been completed. Due to the slower data transmission speeds possible via the mobile internet, it has become increasingly important to minimize the data volumes when designing mobile-friendly pages. For instance, all images and scripts should be compressed, and it is also advisable to use tools like Google’s PageSpeed Insights to optimize loading times. And since short loading times are also a positive ranking factor, the effort is doubly worthwhile.

Is Elaborate Mobile Optimization Worthwhile?

Creating mobile-friendly content can be labor-intensive and sometimes costly, but the effort is always worthwhile, and it’s essential for companies to make the most of the mobile market in order to reach as many potential customers as possible, and in all locations. Any company active online should address this topic, and the reasons why become even clearer in the light of predictions about future developments. The number of internet users engaged in mobile web-surfing will continue to grow rapidly, and according to one forecast from Cisco, more than 70 percent of the world’s population is likely to use the internet by 2020.

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