Last week Google announced that as of April 21st, they’ll use mobile-friendliness as a ranking factor in their mobile search results.
This is no surprise when you consider mobile statistics like these:
- Among U.S. adults, 22.9% of all media time in 2014 was spent on mobile
- Mobile searches (roughly 85.9 billion) will surpass desktop searches in 2015
- 57% of the United States owns a smartphone
- 81% of conversions from mobile search happen within five hours of the search
If your website isn’t mobile-friendly already, you’re likely losing traffic, leads, and new business. If it’s not mobile-friendly after April 21st, those losses will grow exponentially.
A lot of tactical elements of optimizing mobile experience falls in the hands of developers—they’re the ones responsible for making your content responsive. But optimizing content for mobile, which falls in the hands of marketers like you, is just as important.
Here are some key things all marketers should keep in mind as you tailor your content for mobile sites.
Use Your (Limited) Space Well
On mobile, you have a lot less space to work with. How do you communicate a consistent message on smaller real estate? While you may be tempted to slash and burn most of your copy, Kapost’s SEO expert Chris Boulas recommends keeping as much content as possible.
“Keep as much of the copy that was on the desktop version of the site, on your mobile version,” Boulas says. “A lot of times marketers will swap out copy for bigger CTA buttons instead, but what happens when you do that is you’re not offering anything unique of value on the page anymore, which hurts your SEO ranking.”
Retain your core structural content elements, including h1-h4 tags. And retain as much of your key messaging as you can.
Pay Attention to the Hierarchy of Information
While your messaging should largely remain consistent across your desktop and mobile sites, the way that messaging is organized should be very different.
Google Is Ranking for Mobile Optimization. Here’s What You Need to Know (and Do).
On mobile, it’s important to serve visitors your main message right away. If they have to scroll too far down to understand who you are, and what you offer, they’ll leave.
Your mobile layout should display your key message in one or two sentences at the very top of the page. Then, figure out what messages can fall under and in what order.
Write with Mobile in Mind
The reality is, whether your creating a landing page or a blog post, you should always write with your mobile readers in mind. Buyers today expect a consistent experience across all channels and devices. If your brand isn’t providing that experience it will suffer.
Want to streamline your marketing content more effectively across all your channels and devices? Learn how with the “Multi-Channel Distribution Guide.”
This article was syndicated from Business 2 Community: Google Is Ranking for Mobile Optimization. Here’s What You Need to Know (and Do).
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