Hello again my beloved audience. If you follow my work, you might be aware of my second article titled “What’s changed in SEO in 2020?”. In that article, we talked about the importance of mobile devices in 2020 regarding SEO. However, it is even more imperative to mention mobile devices as the new reality of 2020 which is going to be the discussion of this article.
In this article, you’ll be refreshed about the importance of mobile devices in SEO while we get into other areas that you can focus on to increase the traffic on your website and ultimately increase your Bottom Line. So without any delay, let’s get right into it.
What’s changed since 2019?
In the last few years, you might have observed notable changes that have completely redefined how you do business online. The first change was initiated in 2015, when Google started to notify existing businesses to fix their mobile usability issues. They even launched a Mobile Friendly test for business owners like you to improve their services. These were only the first few indications of how Google was considering Mobile Friendliness of a website as an assessment factor.
Now, being a mobile friendly website is ranked as the third most important factor when deciding how your website will be ranked. This means that if your website’s not accurately optimized for Mobile usage, it’s already game, set, match for you.
But it’s not only SEO that you should worry about while developing your Mobile Friendly websites.
Mobile vs Laptop interactions
Statistics show that the chances of interacting with customers on mobile devices is quite high in the present and upcoming years. If we take the US market, the share of desktop searches has decreased by around 8% while the mobile searches’ share has increased by 10%.
If you have a business model that is targeting millennials, then you should know that millennials are spending around 3 hours and 45 mins on their cell phones.
So, by these statistics we can establish that mobile based searches will have a strong impact on your business model but we still haven’t discussed what exactly we can do to tackle it.
The first thing is to have a mobile first approach while creating your website. You need to make sure that you atleast have a mobile friendly website if you can’t manage both. Since first impressions are everything and, in your case, that impression is through mobile devices, you would want to appear the best on your platform. Either develop your website or let us do it for you at Dxm and then we can get your website tested from Google’s services and get you going.
Accelerated Mobile Pages
Another thing that you should know about are AMPs or Accelerated Mobile Pages. To simplify AMPs are stripped down HTML files of your existing website. The real benefit lies in the impact of having AMPs in your Mobile device. By having AMPs, you will be able to offer customers faster loading time than before. This is important as those few crucial seconds might define whether you make a customer or lose it.
According to the articlery, 47% of consumers expect a webpage in only 2 seconds while 40% of consumers won’t even stick around after the third second. Therefore, you can imagine that the standard set is already quite high. But, AMPs is an easy way for you to achieve those standards specially on Mobile Devices, where it matters the most.
So, while having a mobile device can boost your SEO, having AMPs can help you boost the response time on the said mobile devices. Which takes us to an important question.
Is there a difference between responsive sites and mobile friendly sites?
Let’s first have a better understanding and then you can decide whether there is a difference or not. Responsive sites change according to the device of the user. It depends on the device operating system based on which it changes the alignment, text distance and other such features. Hence, if you have a responsive site, it will quickly align itself according to the customer’s device and increase the usability.
On the contrary, a mobile friendly website only changes in scale while keeping its features intact. In other words, if a responsive website adjusts all or most of its features according to the device being used, mobile friendly websites only adjust their size. Other than that, the functionality remains completely the same.
So, now that you know what the difference is, lets help you decide which of the above you should choose. The answer is, depends. If your target market varies greatly in the usage of devices, then you should definitely go for responsive websites. On the other hand, if the devices your consumer use are relatively similar then a mobile friendly website will do the job. In either case, the idea is to at least have one or the other so you can maximize usability for your consumers.
Buyer Journey and Mobile Websites
Here, let’s have a quick recap on exactly what we’ve learned so we can apply them on the buyer journey which will be the ultimate step. The first thing that we learned was that SEO has made its worth in 2020 and for Google to recognize you as a top search, you need to have a mobile friendly website in place that passes their test. Then we discussed that it wasn’t only SEO benefits but also the rising demand of the consumers.
After discussing the importance of Mobile friendly websites we discussed exactly how you can work on creating efficient web pages for Mobile devices such as having a Mobile First approach and AMPs and giving the final tip on having a mobile friendly site or responsive site.
Let’s go back to our discussion on Buyer Journey and discuss exactly how Mobile Friendly pages fit in the picture.
On a broader level, having a mobile friendly website will create an impact on all stages of buyer journey.
Since, by having a Mobile friendly website you can position yourself in the top searches it will help you in the Awareness Stage of buyer’s journey.
Next, the efficiency of your Mobile Web pages will determine the consideration stage of your consumer. Since consumers will bounce only in three seconds, AMPs will help establish the Consideration Stage of the buyer’s journey. Finally, the same efficiency will have an impact on the Decision Stage of the buyer’s journey too as your website is your only Salesman in the world of the Internet.
Goodluck getting those customers!
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