How to improve your Google ranking based on the mobile friendliness of your website

Why do you need to care about Google and the mobile-friendliness of your website?

Here is some information you should consider:

1. 94% of all organic search traffic comes from Google. So, when people reach your website, it’s because they ran a Google search.
2. For a while now, during the indexing process, Google primarily considers the mobile version of your site.
3. Three out of every five searches happen on mobile devices. The majority of your customers will reach you through their smartphones.
4. Nine out of 10 mobile searches result in a visit or a purchase. You need to be ready for these mobile searches with a mobile-friendly website!

What Google rewards when indexing mobile-friendly websites…

1. Responsive design, meaning that your website changes depending on the size of the user’s screen;
2. Ease of use and navigation: your customers should be able to load all pieces of content on your page, read the text available without zooming, easily scroll and interact with any menu or buttons.
3. Fast loading of your website;
4. Non-intrusive ads that could negatively affect the user’s experience on your website.

How to make Google happy and get a better ranking…

1. Make your website responsive, which implicitly means it will be mobile-friendly. As the design changes to fit the size of any screen, a responsive website ranks well on both mobile and desktop versions.
2. Choose a website layout for mobile devices, focusing on vertical scrolling and easy-to-push buttons. Avoid horizontal scrolling, small check boxes or dropdown menus.
3. Optimize your content for mobile experience. As most people reach your website on their smartphones, it makes sense to produce your content with a mobile-first user in mind: use less text, shorten paragraphs, combine text with images or videos, or even audio content, etc.
4. Get the help of a web developer to work on details that improve your website speed: leverage browser caching, minify JavaScript and CSS, compress images to decrease file size, etc.
5. If you run ads or pop-ups on your page, make sure these do not ruin the users’ experience. Google has started a war against what it calls “intrusive interstitials” that negatively affect the navigation experience of your site’s visitors.