Lately, I became more interested in mobile web and creating sites for phones. All kind of stats and trends tell us that it is already a huge market and is growing like crazy. Lots of people in the US own a smartphone with full-browser capabilities, but mobile networks are still slow to support larger, desktop versions of sites. Many website owners hurry to develop a “mobile strategy.”
If you’re one of them, I recommend watching “Mobile First” presentation by Luke Wroblewski (55 mins).
The key points are:
- People come to your site with a particular task in mind.
- Mobile limitations (small screen size, slow download speeds) allow us to FOCUS on what matters to users (instead of blasting site with pretty graphics, promotions, and banners).
- Know what your site visitors are there for, design your mobile site to complete those tasks, and then carry over the same structure to a desktop site.
I agree with Luke’s approach 100%. It makes you focus, makes your website super-fast, and helps your visitors accomplish their tasks.
Now, what’s mobile strategy has to do with the SEO?
If you follow SEO news, you’ve heard about Google’s Panda updates which algorithmically give higher rankings to “quality sites.” “Quality” is a vague term and many site owners are wondering what it means to Google.
In my opinion, any site or page which accomplished user’s task or solves her problem is a quality site. Search engines are likely to agree with this — lower bounce rates & users are not coming back to click on another listing / refine their search.
From this point of view:
- Does design matter? Your site needs to look professional, but overall — not really.
- Do fancy jQuery transitions help users get their task accomplished? Nope.
- Do custom fonts justify decrease in site’s load speed? Absolutely not. If you use Arial instead of Futura, I will still buy from you as long as you have what I need.
- Do big banners help your users find what they need? They might, but is there a better approach? You bet.
All the things above should never make a cut for the mobile site. They shouldn’t even make a cut for a full-sized site, but asking “Would it be good for mobile site?” might give you a good indicator on importance of the elements.
Furthermore, do things above matter for search engines? Nope. They are actually ignored by search engines.
So by focusing your time & efforts on creating a site which best serves your users and accomplishes their tasks as part of your mobile strategy is a great SEO strategy as well.
Things which help complete visitor’s task are important.
If you have an e-commerce store, what will be good for a mobile site?
| Site element / feature | Mobile site | SEO |
| Fast load time | crucial | small signal for search engines |
| Easy navigation | crucial | good structure helps crawl the site |
| All text is plain text (not in an image) | helps with a load time | keywords on a page |
| jQuery transitions | slows down the site | ignored by search engines |
| Good product info | Helps make a purchasing decision | more keywords on a page |
What’s good for mobile is good for SEO. What’s bad for mobile doesn’t help SEO. Focus on the user and rankings will follow (along with the happy users).
You have certain goals for your website, whether it is to sell products or generate leads. You need to focus. With monitors going up in sizes every year you have a lot of real estate on a homepage, but how much of stuff really matters? I’ve seen homepage banners actually detracting from site’s value — after doing A/B test, results showed that clicking on a banner distracted visitors and made them LESS likely to convert.
Look at your website from prospect’s point of view.
Is is helpful? Contains necessary information? Finally, for each element ask: “Would I have this on a mobile site?”
Slavik blogs about online marketing, user experience, search engine optimization, and mobile. Co-founder of Volinsky Consulting — web design & user experience company in Albany, NY. He's on Google+ and on twitter:
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