Mobile isn’t just the way of the future. It’s the way of the now.
Google is working on splitting desktop and mobile into separate indexes. And mobile will be primary.
SEOs like myself have been pushing mobile for the better part of five years now.
It’s no longer a new idea.
Research shows mobile users outpaced desktop as of 2014. That was a long time ago.
Did you know mobile devices are our primary connection to the Internet?
In fact, mobile accounts for 71% of total online time in the U.S.
It’s not just mobile, but smartphones specifically. We love our smartphones!
They’re used more than desktops, laptops, and tablets.
Knowing all this, it only makes sense to optimize your website for mobile devices, right?
But how exactly do we do that?
Mobile search is different than desktop search in a few ways.
People are increasingly using apps, voice assistants, and IoT devices for online searches.
We also use mobile devices on the go. The context of mobile search can be different than on desktop devices.
So making sure your website shows up in mobile search is now mandatory.
To get you started, I put together my list of the best ways to make sure your website shows up on mobile SERPs.
Let’s get right into it.
1. Use Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) markup
As of February 2016, AMP has been officially integrated into Google’s mobile search results.
This means you’ll reap some very important benefits by implementing AMP markup into your web page.
First, you’ll be included in Google’s SERPs above search results and even paid results for certain searches.
In addition, you can implement the AMP content carousel into your own web page like I did with mine.
Users can now scroll down through the search results and across on some sites for more content from my web page.
Each blog I post creates another carousel entry.
This technique allows you to pack a ton of content into one search result, greatly amplifying your reach.
It’s how you make the most of your search rankings. Twitter is using this technique to display a user’s recent tweets.
Now I have two horizontal content feeds in the vertical search results.
Are you starting to see why AMP is important?
It’s meant to strip mobile pages of all the bells and whistles to focus only on the necessary components.
Google and other search providers are making this push to force web developers to create simpler designs with fewer load times.
There are three components to successfully implementing AMP into your website’s structure.
- AMP HTML – This redesigned HTML uses custom AMP-related commands for more dynamic mobile content.
- AMP JS – Asynchronous loading is the goal of the AMP Javascript structure.
- AMP CDN – A Google-hosted content delivery network with cached content.
By optimizing for AMP, you create a duplicate layer of your content optimized for mobile devices.
Both are served to search engines and social media platforms, literally amplifying your content.
Killing two birds with one stone is a dream scenario for marketers.
AMP isn’t the only trick to get you more visual mobile content.
Google also relies heavily on schema for mobile searches.
Click below to read 2-10.
