Google is currently the leading search engine for mobile sites, with more than 90% of the market share. Their decision to concentrate upon mobile accessibility sometimes works to the detriment of their traditional PC-based market.
Until recently, many Google website owners had sites which were focused upon the PC user, rather than upon mobile devices, but with Google’s decision to require mobile-friendly websites from its users, websites owners are now facing a choice: ignore the new directive, and risk sliding down the search engine rankings, or obey the directive, and try to make your site more mobile friendly.
If you are not sure how to convert your website, there are a few simple steps that you need to follow in order to make sure that your site is ready for mobile searches.
The first steps towards changing your site
You need to start your changes by reading the advice offered by Google on its Webmaster’s pages. This can offer you tools designed to help you learn how mobile friendly your website is, develop your third party software to ensure that it is suitable for mobile users, and will also supply you with advice such as mobile SEO, or more information about the technology you will need. There is also advice about how to work with a developer to improve the mobile-friendly benefits of the site.
Secondly, you should also learn the five ways to improve your mobile technology. These include: creating defined viewing areas to allow the website to sync with the screen size of the device; creating content that is confined within the viewport, so that there is no need to scroll across the screen; introducing fonts that are scalable so your content can be viewed by mobile users; touch-friendly elements that allow users to easy access the buttons they want, and mobile-friendly visual elements and movement between pages.
Advanced steps for improving your website
Once you have implemented Google’s current guidelines for your website, there are still other steps that you can take to ensure that the site is attuned towards mobile users.
The first thing to do is to check the CMS recommendations provided by Google. Make sure your CMS integrations match with Google’s advice. You should also make sure that the load time for your website is still working at a high speed.
Page loading speeds should be a focal point of any website design, and are considered pivotal to good search engine rankings. You can check Google’s page speed rankings, or simply visit your site using a mobile phone or tablet. Thirdly, you should look at the content of your site, including optimizing images so that they don’t slow down your page, and ensure that nothing on the site uses Flash, which isn’t suitable for mobiles.
You should also ensure that your site hasn’t blocked retrieval of JavaScript, Image Files or CSS by Googlebots. Lastly, make sure that your 404 messages are able to take in mobile searches, so that you don’t simply display an error signal to your mobile users.
The post How To Design A Stylish Google Mobile Friendly Website appeared first on SEO Chat.
