Mobile Friendly.Find out all about it.Mobile Friendly vs Mobile Optimized vs Responsive Design: What You Will Need To Know About The Mobile Version of Your Website
Making a website mobile prepared is Pretty high on the request list for businesses and organizations creating a new site. However, there are a flurry of terms surrounding cellular. Mobile friendly, portable optimized, and a newer term: reactive design. What is the difference between these? Why is it significant?

In fall 2012 Peter Sondergaard, Senior vice president at Gartner, a world-wide IT investigation and research company, estimated that by 2014 there’ll be more web browsing from mobile devices than on traditional desktops or laptops. We have seen our own customers’ website analytics for mobile users jump from an average of 5-8% in 2010 to 16-20% in 2011. 2012 is showing a similar increase. There’s absolutely no doubt that mobile cannot be ignored.

With mobile devices ranging from Handhelds to tablets, knowing how your website will display on the selection of formats is crucial. When terms like mobile friendly, mobile optimized, and responsive design appear in development talks, you will know the difference.
MOBILE FRIENDLY WEBSITE
Mobile friendly describes a Website That displays right between your desktop/laptop computer and a mobile device like a handheld phone (iPhone, Android, Blackberry) or tablets (iPad, Kindle, Galaxy, etc.). While it will appear smaller on a telephone and may not work perfectly on a touchscreen tabletcomputer, a mobile friendly website will be perfectly functional. Many developers view mobile friendly as a”best practice” for all website developments.
Ensuring Your Site is mobile Friendly is crucial. As we discussed above, the percentage of mobile users is rapidly increasing. What are the vital features of a mobile friendly website?

Text-based telephone numbers, physical addresses, or email Addresses that can trigger a call, directions, or email message from your mobile device
Slideshows or image rotators that function without Flash support (Adobe Flash is not supported by Apple and a few other mobile devices)

Small picture sizes to allow for fast loading over Mobile connections–don’t count on even a 3G connection

Here are some examples of mobile friendly websites:

MOBILE OPTIMIZED WEBSITE
A mobile optimized site is a far more advanced website. Mobile optimized means that the website will reformat itself for a list of handheld or tablet devices. Larger navigation buttons, reformatted content, and differently optimized images appear if the user is on an iPhone or other device.
Why reformat? Reformatting allows The website to readily engage a large cellular audience when key buying decisions come up. A growing number of consumers are turning to their mobile devices right in the store. Having a site developed that enables the user to easily navigate and participate from the small screens of the handheld means reaching a decision faster.
What are some Great formatting Elements that go to a mobile optimized website?
Simplified navigation that is”thumb” friendly with Massive touchpoints, especially for critical contact info
Reduced images that don’t interrupt the quest for Critical information such as product listings or commoditized content
Avoid making users type unless absolutely necessary

Give users the option to view the desktop version of your site
Here are some portable optimized Websites worth checking out of your handheld:
RESPONSIVE DESIGN WEBSITE
As site design continues to Evolve, a fantastic form of development has come into play. Responsive design is a method of developing a site that’s completely flexible regardless of device. Rather than detecting a specific browser type or device type, the website automatically orientates itself based on the screen size of the device. A combination of reformatting and re-optimizing the website as a whole give a sensible flexibility beyond imagination.

Responsive design, while more Expensive to develop, is the wisest development investment if you are managing a consumer or audience-base that’s active on mobile devices or need to make purchases on the move. Impulse purchases are evident, but this is every bit as critical for commodity content such as blogs or news outlets.

WHAT ABOUT SMALL BUSINESS AND MOBILE WEB?
Mobile surfing –from tablets to Smartphones–is growing at an unprecedented rate. The customer’s passion for immediate gratification of the informational needs requires effectively delivering your product (physical or intellectual) via the mobile web.

What about small business or a non-profit organization? Is mobile friendly good enough? Should an organization talk about a mobile optimized version? Will investing in a responsive design website bring a measurable return?
Excellent questions with answers only you can provide. Every situation will be different, but give serious idea of what percentage of your website visitors are on mobile devices? Google Analytics will inform you. What does your current site look like? Pull out your smart phone and find out.
If your eyes only flickered over To your smartphone and you don’t know the answer…that may already be your solution.
Mobile Optimization

Mobile optimization is the process of ensuring that visitors who Access your site from mobile devices have an experience optimized for the device.
What is Mobile Optimization?

Every year people spend more and more time on their mobile Tablets and devices, but many websites still aren’t designed to account for different screen sizes and load times. Mobile optimization requires a look at website design, site structure, page rate, and more to make sure that you’re not inadvertently turning mobile visitors away.
Mobile SEO Best Practices

If your site is already well optimized for search engines, there Are just a few additional things which you need to consider when optimizing for mobile devices and Google’s move to mobile-first indexing.
Page speed
Due to hardware and connectivity issues, page speed is even More important for mobile users than desktop users. Beyond optimizing images, you will want to minify code, leverage browser caching, and reduce redirects. More info on page speed is seen on our SEO Best Practices for Page Speed page.
Don’t Block CSS, JavaScript, or graphics
In the old days, some mobile devices couldn’t support all of These elements, so webmasters of cellular sites blocked one or all three. However, for the most part that’s no longer true, and the Smartphone GoogleBot wants to be able to see and categorize the identical content which users do. So don’t hide it. These elements are also critical to helping Google understand whether you’ve got a responsive website or a unique mobile solution.
Site design for mobile

Mobile devices are simplifying and revolutionizing the ways sites are designed. “Above the fold” no longer has meaning in a world where we scroll endlessly

Don’t use Flash
The plugin may not be available in your user’s telephone, which Means they’ll miss out on all the fun. If you wish to create special effects, use HTML5 instead.
Don’t use pop-ups either

It can be difficult and frustrating to try and close these on a mobile device. This might lead to a high bounce rate.
Design For the fat finger
Touch screen navigation May Lead to accidental clicks if your Buttons are too big, too little, or in the path of a finger that is trying to get the page to scroll.
Optimize titles and meta descriptions

Remember that you’re working with less display space when a user Searches with a mobile device. To show off your very best work in SERPS, be as succinct as possible (without sacrificing the quality of the data ) when generating titles, URLs, and meta descriptions.
Use Schema.org structured data

Because of the limited screen space, a search result with rich Snippets is even more likely to stand out than on a desktop. Read more about Schema.org structured data.
Optimize for local search

If your company has a local element, remember to optimize your Mobile content for local search. This includes standardizing your name, address, and phone number and including your city and state name in your site’s metadata. More information on local SEO are available here.
Mobile site configuration
Probably the most important decision you’ll make when setting up A website is deciding whether you want to use a responsive, dynamic serving, or different website configuration. Each has its benefits and drawbacks. Google prefers responsive layout but supports all three options as long as you have set them up properly.
Responsive web design

Responsively-designed websites use CSS3 media queries to serve the Same content to mobile and desktop users having a fluid grid and a flexible design to automatically adapt to the size of a user’s display.
Responsive designs use media queries to target the layout based on screen width, orientation, and resolution. For example, you could use the following CSS to teach browsers how to display content to get a screen that is 420 or fewer pixels wide:
Code Sample

@media screen and (max-width: 420px)
.class
[styles for This class here]

And to link to another stylesheet instead, place the next HTML in between your tags:

Code Sample
=”” type=”text/css” media=”screen and (max-device-width: 480px)” rel=”stylesheet”>

Responsive designs allow you to have a variety of these media Queries so that users on tiny mobile displays, larger-than-average mobile screens, and even tablets can all see a site that seems designed for their devices.

Use a Google’s Mobile Testing Tool to verify that your website is optimized for mobile.
Dynamic serving
If you don’t have the tools for a complete site redesign or Want to show different content for mobile visitors than you do for desktop ones, one solution would be to use 1 URL to display different sets of HTML and CSS depending on what kind of device your visitor is using (also called discovering user representatives ). This may be useful, as an instance, if you’re a restaurant who needs a mobile visitor (who might be drifting your neighborhood) to see a sampling of testimonials and a map to your place instead of your whole website.

Displaying different content based on the user agent is known as Dynamic serving and it’s done with the Vary HTTP header, which looks like this:
Vary HTTP Header

GET /page-1 HTTP/1.1
Host: http://www.example.com
(. . .rest of HTTP request headers…)

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: text/html
Vary: User-Agent
Content-Length: 5710
(… rest of HTTP response headers…)
Example from the Google Developers Blog.

Simply put, this means that the content displayed will vary Depending on the user agent requesting the page.

Dynamic serving is not the perfect compromise that it might look to be. For one, it relies on having an updated list of user agents, meaning every time a new mobile device comes to market that record needs to be updated. And it’s not unusual for desktops and mobile devices to be wrongly served with the HTML for the other device. Read more about common pitfalls.
Separate mobile URL

Another option is to create a second, parallel site for mobile users. This allows you to create totally custom content for mobile visitors. To avoid URL confusion, most parallel mobile sites utilize an”m” subdomain.
Parallel mobile sites can be as imperfect as lively serving Sites at sending visitors to the right version, so be sure to make it simple for visitors who wind up in the wrong place to click over to their preferred experience.
You’ll also want to make sure that your site redirects are all in place and as Lean as possible to reduce page speed. And to avoid duplicate content problems, you’ll need to set up rel=”canonical”.
SEO Basics: How to Increase your mobile site
Here is the thing: your Website should be mobile-friendly. In fact, this could just be your number one priority. If you want to improve your mobile SEO, you have to improve the performance of your site, plus you need to be sure that it offers users an excellent mobile experience. In this SEO basics article, you will find a summary of what you need to do to boost your mobile website.
When is a site mobile-friendly?
A Website is mobile-friendly when it:

loads properly on a mobile device like a Smartphone or tablet,

loads lightning fast,
Presents content in a readable fashion, without Users needing to pinch and zoom,

Offers ample room to navigate by touch,
Offers additional value for mobile users,

is instantly understandable for search engines.
Why is mobile SEO important?

Mobile SEO makes sure Your mobile site gives the finest possible presentation of your content to a mobile device user. Since our world is increasingly mobile-oriented, it is now imperative that your site is mobile-friendly. If your site is not, or not properly, available for mobile users, you’re likely to lose out on a decent ranking in the search engines and so miss income. Therefore, you ought to do everything in your power to make the mobile version of your site as good as possible. In fact, it should be excellent!
Since the start of This year, Google uses the mobile version of the site to determine its rankings. If your site isn’t up to scratch, or if you present less content on your mobile website, you will have a difficult time getting a good ranking. If you do not have an adequate cellular version of your site yet, you best make a fully working one, preferably as a responsive design. Google has a excellent getting started manual to get you going.
How to improve your mobile website
To improve your Mobile SEO, you want to focus on a couple of things:
Ensure Your Website is responsive

Improve your site speed

Do not block JavaScript, HTML and CSS code
Do not use interstitials or pop-ups
Do not use too many redirects
Choose the correct viewport
Verify mobile-friendliness
Tell Google about your site
Responsive design
There are multiple Strategies to make your website available for mobile users. The most significant one is responsive design, and this is the tech Google advocates. With a responsive design, your site lives on a single URL, which makes it easier for Google to understand and index it.

If you use WordPress, Chances are that your motif is already responsive and can adapt to all screens. Make certain to check how your website scales in Google Chrome’s Developer Tools. If it does not scale properly, you should talk to your web developer about fixing it — or choose a different theme.

Improve your site speed
Among the most Important things you can do to improve the cellular SEO of your site is to improve the loading speed of the website. Again and again, studies indicate that people leave sites that load slowly, often never to return again. Speed has been a ranking factor for many years, and Google is increasingly focusing on fixing this frequent issue.
Optimize images
If There’s one quick Win to improve your site speed, it is this: Boost your images. Don’t load these 3000 x 2000 pixel HD pictures on your site. Scale them to the proper size and make them smaller using a tool like ImageOptim or WordPress plugins like WP Smush.
Minify code
Every request your Site has to make has an effect on site speed. You have to work on reducing these orders. One way of accomplishing this is by minifying code. This means that your group and concatenate assets such as JavaScript and CSS, and because of this, the browser has to load fewer files, resulting in a faster site. This sounds hard to implement, but a plugin like WP Rocketcan take care of all your caching needs.
Browser caching
By using browser Caching, you are telling the browser which page elements that don’t change frequently can be stored inside its cache. This way, the browser only has to download fresh and dynamic content whenever it visits again. Again, this is something a plugin such as WP Rocket can help you with. Or you could also do it yourself if you prefer .
Reduce redirects
A redirect contributes A visitor from one page that is requested to another, because the requested page was moved or deleted. While this leads to a good user experience if done well, the more redirects you use, the slower your site will be. Don’t make endless redirects. Also, try not to keep links around that point to deleted posts that are redirected to new ones. Always make direct links.
Do not block assets like JavaScript, HTML and CSS
We’ve said it before, And we’re going to keep saying it: Don’t block assets such as JavaScript, HTML and CSS. Doing so makes it harder for Google to get your site and that could lead to bad rankings. Assess your Google Search Console to see if you’re blocking resources.
Improve legibility
Make sure that your mobile site is perfectly readable on mobile devices. Use different devices to check if your typography is in order and, when necessary, make adjustments . Typography can make or break the user experience of your site.

Improve tap target sizes
People hate it when Their finger can not hit a button, link or menu item without fault. Sometimes designers have not given enough thought about the size of the buttons. Mobile users get frustrated when navigation is hard or unnatural. Repair it.
Choose the correct viewport
The viewport Determines the width of this webpage for the device used to view it. By specifying a correct viewport, you make sure that visitors with specific devices get the ideal version of your site. Fail to do so, and you might just reveal your desktop website to a small-screen smartphone user — a significant no-no.
Don’t use interstitials or pop-ups
Starting this year, Google will penalize sites that use large pop-ups or interstitials to market newsletters, sign-up forms or advertisements. These often get in the way of the user quickly accessing the content they requested. Do not use them, but if you must, make sure you abide by Google’s rules.
Test your site and tell Google about it
Before you start Working on your own mobile SEO, you should run a Mobile-Friendly Test on Google to determine where you should start. Throughout your job, you should keep testing to find out if you make progress. If your site is optimized, you want to tell Google about it so that it can be checked and indexed. Use Search Console to stay on top of the operation of your site.
Investigate Google AMP
Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) is a new initiative by Google and others to find web pages to load super fast on mobile devices. By wrapping your content in special HTML code, you can optimize the pages in a way that Google can use to give them special treatment. Pages are cached by Google and presented using a stripped down presentation to make certain it gets delivered at light speed.
AMP is still Relatively new, but growing rapidly. Nearly every site can benefit from incorporating this technique. If you have a WordPress site, it’s not hard to get started; simply put in the official plugin. This takes care of most of the setup. You may find more information on Google’s guidelines.
Conclusion

Mobile is the future, but that future is now. Do whatever you can to repair your mobile site and make it perfect, not just in Google’s eyes, but, more importantly, your visitor. Mobile SEO isn’t only about great content and a flawless technical demonstration, but more about creating a user experience to expire. As soon as you’ve achieved that, you’re on your way to the top!
In 2016, the inevitable happened, and mobile overtook desktop as the primary device used to access sites . This didn’t come as a huge surprise because, as far back as 2015, Google reported that more searches were conducted on mobile than on any other device category.
In many businesses, this may be conservative and, At the agency I head up in the UK, Bowler Hat, our B2C customers are seeing up to 85 percent of all website sessions conducted on mobile devices.
Suffice it to say, cellular has well and truly arrived. Yet, while responsive design has been around for some time now and is quite well-established, the majority of sites tend to fall down on usability. That is, the majority of sites are still built for desktop and then dialed back for mobile. That form-fill that has been mildly annoying on desktop is a complete pig on mobile. Even if it is responsive.
This is not good enough in the mobile-first world We are racing toward in 2017.
In this article, I am going to look at how you Can make certain you’re truly optimizing for mobile users. We will look at the essentials of responsive design and page speed, but we’ll also look beyond this at user experience tailored to mobile devices. We’ll then wrap up this with a mobile optimization checklist that you can use to identify optimization opportunities.
Our goal here is to go the extra space to Create fully mobile-focused sites; to delight our users and drive conversions; to use mobile optimization to develop a strategic advantage over the competition. And, of course, Google wants to delight mobile users so we can improve engagement and on-page ranking factors and also benefit from enhanced SEO. Better for users. Better for search engines. Win-win.
What Google wants

At this time of year, many SEOs are looking Forward, and, referring to a SEO best practices article for 2017, Google’s Gary Illyes complimented those who
Listed below are three key Stats I have lifted from Google’s promotional materials that clearly illustrate the value of mobile optimization:

Today, more people search on mobile phones than computers.
Individuals are five times more likely to Leave a website if it isn’t mobile-friendly.
More than half of mobile users will leave a Website if it takes longer than three seconds to load.

Because more people search on mobile than on Computers, cellular creates more page views. If your site is not mobile-friendly, users are less likely to stick around. And if your site is slow, they may not even wait for the page to load.
Add from the unreliability of mobile data networks Here and your site needs to be a mean, lean mobile-friendly machine, or you might not even get a shot at that customer.
The mobile-first index

The absolute nail in the coffin for a Desktop-first approach to sites and search is your mobile-first index. Adopting this philosophy makes sense as more searches happen on mobile compared to desktop. Yet, at the moment, ranking is still primarily based on the desktop version of a site.
When this happens, the links and content of your Mobile website, along with any other variables — speed, user experience and so on — are the key drivers of your search engine visibility. Desktop will likely still be a factor, but it will be in a secondary capacity. Mobile first.
The writing’s on the wall here, people — mobile Has been important for a good while now, but 2017 is the year that it will become the key component in your quest for improved rankings and conversion rates from site visitors.

The good news is that this represents a Opportunity For people who really put in the work to develop an advantage over their competition. It will take work, but climbing over this obstacle is the way ahead, and doing so before your rivals will put your site in better stead.
Mobile-friendly approach
Our first focus in gaining this advantage is to Look at just how we provide mobile-friendly content. There are three possible approaches::

Responsive web design
Dynamic content
Separate URLs (mobile site)
Responsive Site design is Google’s recommended Way to tackle mobile-friendly sites and, as such, is the approach you should take if you don’t have very strong reasons not to.

Responsive design has been around for a while, so This isn’t a new concept. However, we still see sites which are technically responsive while not providing a solid experience for mobile users.
Ultimately, responsive design is Only a small Part of producing truly mobile-friendly sites.
Mobile optimization

Google has a number of tools for testing for mobile usability and, beyond that, Search Console has A cell usability report that details problems on a page-by-page level.
You should use these tools while developing Your new site and use Search Console to keep tabs on issues throughout the life span of the site.
Search Console looks at the next mobile usability issues:

Flash use — Most Mobile browsers do not render Flash and, as such, you will want to use more modern technologies.

Viewport not configured — The viewport metatag helps browsers in scaling a page to match a specific device.

Fixed-width viewport — This Difficulty attempts to circumvent mobile design with fixed width pages and is best shelved when a responsive design is adopted.

Content not sized to viewport — Here the page content does not fit the window, and a User must scroll. This can be fixed with relative rather than fixed widths.

Small font size — This Is a scaling issue and requires users to pinch the screen to zoom in.
Touch elements too close — This is a frequent usability issue where it’s too tough to tap a given element without also hitting the neighboring element.

Interstitial usage — A Full-screen pop-up often represents poor user experience on a mobile device and is something which Google is seeking to crack down on in 2017.

These are the key technical elements that Google Is looking for and reporting on to webmasters.
Optimizing your Website to remove these issues may Have positive effects on how the usability of your site is rated by Google and certainly has positive consequences for users. Again, win-win.

Mobile optimization resources:

Mobile-Friendly Websites — developers.google.com/webmasters/mobile-sites/
Mobile-Friendly Evaluation — search.google.com/search-console/mobile-friendly

Mobile Usability Report — support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6101188?hl=en
Page speed
Page rate is significant on all devices, but it Can be critically important on mobile when users are out and about looking for quick answers. A page which may load relatively quickly on a WiFi network might not be quite so snappy on a mobile data network. 4G has delivered some fantastic speed improvements, but coverage (in the UK, at least) is not something that may be relied upon.
There are, however, a Selection of best practices for Improving page speed and, once again, Google has come to our aid with the PageSpeed insights tool. This enables us to readily assess how fast our pages load and get some pointers on what we can do to improve.

Page speed insights is now built into the Mobile-Friendly test:

search.google.com/search-console/mobile-friendly

testmysite.withgoogle.com/ — the more attractive front end

To show how this works, I will share Details below for a small local B2C business named Vinyl to Digital, which consented for me to use them as a case study.
Here is the output from Google’s testmysite.withgoogle.com tool:

We Can see some clear recommendations for technical improvements here:

Eliminate render-blocking JavaScript and CSS in above-the-fold content.
Enable compression.
Optimize images.
Minify CSS.

Leverage browser caching.

This is a WordPress site and, as such, most of All these are rather simple tasks. There exist plugins that will tackle the vast majority of this with no costly development time.

We can also see an overview of page loading times Within Google Analytics in the Behavior > Site Speed report.
Here We can see that average page load is almost four minutes, which is above the perfect two- to three-second loading period. We can also see that nearly half of that is attributed to the average server response time.
Making the basic improvements in the PageSpeed Insights instrument and finding a quicker hosting partner could probably get the loading time down to about two seconds.

The main takeaway here is that you can get Accurate metrics on loading time and clear insights on what you can do to improve things. You will need to customize this to your own CMS or approach, but you can often get 80 percent of the results with just 20 percent of the effort.
We also can not talk about cellular page speed without considering Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP). AMP has been designed to allow the often slow, clunky and frustrating mobile web to load instantly anywhere.
Be fast. It makes your users and search engines happy.

Page speed resources:
Mobile-Friendly Evaluation — search.google.com/search-console/mobile-friendly
Website Test — testmysite.withgoogle.com/

Google Analytics — support.google.com/analytics/answer/1205784?hl=en
Make the Web Faster — developers.google.com/speed/

AMP Pages — http://www.ampproject.org/