📝 Tips for Optimizing Your Blog for Mobile Devices
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Did you know that there are over 3.8 billion smartphone users globally? That’s roughly 50% of the population. The figure is expected above climb above 4.3 billion, or about 60% of the population, by 2023. On top of that, many smartphone users also own I-Pads and other tablets.
What this means is that more and more people are accessing the internet and its services via one mobile device or the other, instead of using desktop. The ongoing pandemic has further accelerated mobile use. In fact, recent data suggests that 80% of the time spent online in 2020 was via mobile devices.
And when it comes on to reading blogs, there is evidence to suggest that most people are consuming this type of content on mobile as well. You should, therefore, ensure your blog is optimized for mobile devices. This is especially true if you have an accompanying web shop or are monetizing your blog. Studies show that having a blogsite can lead to increased user engagement by as much as 85%, so that’s another reason to make it mobile-friendly. Here are some tips to help you out in that regard.
1. Implement responsive design
You have probably encountered how annoying it can be to go on a website on your smartphone and can’t see some of the content on the page you are viewing. This is often a case of the website not having a responsive design. Responsive web design simply means optimizing your website so that each page is able to properly fit the screen and match the orientation of any device you are using.
This is extremely important because people will quickly exit your blog if the pages aren’t showing properly on their tiny smartphone screens. Furthermore, Google’s search algorithm has prioritized responsive mobile design in recent years. If your blog is not mobile responsive, your SEO could be affected as a result.
Implementing responsive web design is a simple process if you are using WordPress or a similar content management system (CMS) for your blog, as the platform does offer a number of responsive themes. On the other hand, if your website is manually designed, you will either have to do manual changes to your website or create a different mobile blogsite.
2. Streamline and structure your content
How your website content appears also affects how mobile-friendly your blog can be. Things like hard-to-press buttons, jumbled text, and forms that are difficult to navigate can easily turn off users and send them to your competition.
A big part of optimizing your blog is spending time to ensure the content looks good and is easy to navigate. Some of the things to pay attention to where this is concerned include:
Lengthy posts: There is nothing wrong with having lengthy blog posts on your blog. In fact, you should have a few evergreen blog posts exceeding 1,500 or even 2,000 words for SEO purposes. But you have to ensure these posts are broken up into short, easily-scanned paragraphs. Ensure you use bold headings for each section as well. These tweaks will make lengthy blog posts easier on the eyes and more appealing to someone using a smartphone to browse your content on-the-go.
Image size: Speed is everything when using smartphones to peruse content. One of the things that can have a significant impact on how quickly pages load is using large, high resolution images for your blog posts. To prevent having a high bounce rate on your mobile site, it is best to remove all large images. Visual content is highly important, of course, so you will want to replace the ones removed with images that are optimized for the web. These will still be good quality, but compressed to take up less space.
Ads: Placing advertisements on your blog is a popular monetization strategy. But if there are ads strewn all over each page, this can lead to a bad browsing experience on mobile due to the smaller screens. If you have to have ads, ensure you structure the mobile version of your blog so that it remains clutter-free.
3. Use schema structuring
This is more about optimizing your blog for SEO, but it is totally worth it. Schema markup allows your webpages to deliver more detailed results in response to search queries. It involves adding a schema markup code on your blog, which creates a rich snippet of the page content. These snippets are very prominent in search results, especially for mobile device users.
If the schema for your blog posts are helpful in answering questions asked by your target audience, this can lead to increased traffic and engagement. Implementing schema might sound like highly technical stuff. However, users of WordPress can easily get it done using the Schema App Structured Data plugin.
4. Get rid of flash and java
As Flash is being phased out, less and less devices and browsers are supporting it. Users with iPhones, for instance, will not be able to make use of Flash content. Java is also being avoided by many smartphone carriers. With that said, leaving out these two types of content from the mobile version of your blog will lead to a better browsing experience for smartphone users.
5. Implement AMP
AMP stands for Accelerated Mobile Pages, and that’s exactly what it is meant to do – speed up the mobile experience. Google has been placing emphasis on AMP in recent years as a way to simplify the browsing experience on mobile and significantly improve page load speed, as well as SEO.
AMP pages are served directly into Google search and social media, making these mobile pages easier to find and navigate. This can result in increased readership and engagement, especially if you have landing pages and other marketing content you want to direct users to. Implementing AMP involves a re-design of your website’s HTML to create a separate content layer optimized specifically for mobile. This duplicate ensures only the necessary content of a webpage is displayed to users on smartphones and tablets, compared to viewing on desktop.
If you don’t have the necessary knowledge, you will need to contact a web developer to implement AMP for you. Finally, please note that AMP may not be necessary if your blog is utilizing a content delivery network (CDN) and already loads quickly on mobile.
From accessing social media networks to buying stuff online, hand-held devices have pretty much taken over. To remain competitive as a blogger, it means getting with the program and optimizing your blog for mobile devices.
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