With technology now so versatile and expansive in our daily lives, it can be easy to become quite spoiled when it comes to what we expect from brands, businesses, blogs and more. After all, if someone is not providing the level of quality that we expect, we can most likely find a solution elsewhere. One major accommodation that webmasters, bloggers and others have had to make over the past few years relates to mobile browsing, as it now encompasses more than a quarter of all internet traffic and within a decade is expected to comprise a majority. The future of SEO – regardless of the nuanced changes that cannot be predicted – ultimately will lead us down a mobile path. Balancing the needs of readers and customers with SEO has always been an issue, but the following considerations can give you the best of both worlds!

Adopt a Mobile Design

The first and most obvious consideration for mobile SEO is to have a version of your website that serves these sorts of users. There are three main types of designs available: responsive design sites, dedicated mobile sites and dynamic serving sites. Responsive design sites use the same coding for all browsers but can utilize CSS to display a uniform yet functional look for all devices. Dynamic serving actually presents a different version of the website for mobile and desktop users. Dedicated mobile sites exist separately from your main site and mobile users will be redirected to it when they type in your URL or click on a link. The easiest method for anyone who is currently pinging for SEO and well-established is the responsive design route.

Optimize Your Mobile Keywords

If you think about it, you will probably realize that you do not conduct mobile searches in the same way that you conduct searches from a desktop computer. In many cases, mobile users are seeking information about places, products and other elements in their vicinity, but even if they are not, they still often use succinct queries to find information. Long-tail keywords are not ideal for mobile SEO, so you want to consider a completely different set of keywords for targeting mobile search. A variety of keyword research tools are available for those who may not have instant ideas for variations of their currently targeted keywords and phrases.

Minimize Pop-ups

Many websites now utilize lead-capturing prompts and other forms of pop-ups to encourage people to sign up for email updates, like their social media pages or otherwise perform an action. On many mobile devices, this is just outright annoying. Smaller screens can wind up causing users to be frustrated when they try to close a pop-up, only to have it register as a click. Before you know it, their app store has launched and you’ve caused a world of inconvenience for the user. This type of interference can be the biggest reason for elevated bounce rates and is a webmaster’s worst nightmare when it comes to pinging for SEO. While these efforts work well on traditional browsers, it is best to abandon them entirely on mobile devices, particularly if your bounce rate is high.