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

In fall 2012 Peter Sondergaard, Senior vice president at Gartner, a world-wide IT investigation and research firm, projected that by 2014 there’ll be more internet browsing from mobile devices than on traditional desktops or laptops. We’ve seen our own customers’ site 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 is not any doubt that mobile cannot be ignored.

With mobile devices ranging from Handhelds to tablets, knowing how your site will display on the selection of formats is crucial. When terms like mobile friendly, mobile optimized, and responsive design come up in development discussions, you will know the difference.
MOBILE FRIENDLY WEBSITE
Mobile friendly refers to a site That displays accurately 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 phone and may not work perfectly on a touchscreen tabletcomputer, a mobile friendly site will be perfectly functional. Many developers view mobile friendly as a”best practice” for all website developments.
Ensuring your website is mobile Friendly is crucial. As we discussed above, the proportion of mobile users is rapidly rising. What are the vital qualities of a mobile friendly website?

Text-based phone numbers, physical addresses, or email Addresses that could activate a call, directions, or email message from your mobile device
Slideshows or image rotators that operate without Flash support (Adobe Flash is not supported by Apple and some other mobile devices)

Small picture sizes to allow for fast loading over Mobile connections–do not count on even a 3G connection

Here are some examples of mobile friendly websites:

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

Give users the option to view the desktop version of your site
Here are some portable optimized Sites worth checking from your handheld:
RESPONSIVE DESIGN WEBSITE
As site design continues to Evolve, a fantastic type of development has come into play. Responsive design is a method of developing a site that is totally flexible irrespective of device. As opposed to detecting a specific browser type or device type, the site automatically orientates itself based on the screen size of the device. A blend of reformatting and re-optimizing the website as a whole provide a sensible flexibility beyond imagination.

Responsive design, while more Expensive to develop, is the wisest growth investment if you are dealing with a consumer or audience-base that is busy on mobile devices or need to make purchases on the go. Impulse purchases are evident, but this is every bit as critical for product content such as blogs or news outlets.

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

What about small business or a non-profit organization? Is cellular friendly good enough? Should an organization talk about a mobile optimized version? Will investing in a responsive design site bring a measurable return?
Exceptional questions with answers only you can provide. Every situation will be different, but give serious idea of what percent of your website visitors are on mobile devices? Google Analytics will tell 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 your device.
What is Mobile Optimization?

Every year people spend more and more time in their mobile Devices and tablets, but many websites still are not made to account for different screen sizes and load times. Mobile optimization takes a look at website design, site structure, page rate, and more to be sure you’re not inadvertently turning mobile visitors away.
Mobile SEO Best Practices

If your site is already well optimized for search engines, there Are only a few additional things which you need to think about 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’ll want to minify code, leverage browser caching, and decrease redirects. More info on page speed can be seen on our SEO Best Practices for Page Speed page.
Don’t Block CSS, JavaScript, or graphics
In the old days, some portable devices couldn’t support all of These elements, so webmasters of mobile sites blocked one or all three. However, for the most part that’s no longer true, and the Smartphone GoogleBot would like to have the ability to see and categorize the same content that users do. So don’t hide it. These elements are also critical to helping Google understand if you have a responsive site or a different 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 on your user’s telephone, which Means they will miss out on all of the fun. If you wish to make special effects, use HTML5 instead.
Don’t use pop-ups either

It can be difficult and frustrating to attempt to 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’s trying to get the page to scroll.
Optimize titles and meta descriptions

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

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

If your business 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 info on local SEO can be found here.
Mobile site configuration
Probably the most important decision you will make when setting up A site is deciding whether you would like 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 sites use CSS3 media queries to serve the Same content to mobile and desktop users using a fluid grid and a flexible design to automatically adapt to the size of a user’s display.
Responsive designs utilize media queries to target the layout based on screen width, orientation, and resolution. For example, you may use the following CSS to teach browsers how to display content to get a screen that’s 420 or fewer pixels wide:
Code Sample

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

And to link to a separate stylesheet instead, put the following HTML in between your tags:

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

Responsive designs Let You have a Number of these media Queries so that users on tiny mobile screens, larger-than-average mobile displays, and even tablets can all see a website that looks designed for their apparatus.

Use a Google’s Mobile Testing Tool to confirm that your website is optimized for cellular.
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 alternative would be to use one URL to display different sets of HTML and CSS based on which kind of device your visitor is using (also called discovering user representatives ). This can be useful, as an instance, if you are a restaurant that needs a mobile visitor (who may be wandering your neighborhood) to see a sampling of reviews and a map to your place rather than your whole website.

Displaying different content based on the user agent is called Dynamic serving and it is 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 all HTTP request headers…)

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

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

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

Another option is to create a second, parallel site for mobile users. This lets you create totally custom content for mobile visitors. To prevent 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 favorite experience.
You will also want to make sure Your site redirects are all in place and as Lean as possible to decrease page speed. And to avoid duplicate content issues, you will have to install 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 must improve the performance of your site, plus you have to be certain it offers users an excellent mobile experience. In this SEO basics article, you’ll 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 manner, 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 best 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 isn’t, or not properly, available for mobile users, you are going to lose out on a good ranking in the search engines and so miss income. Therefore, you should do everything in your power to make the mobile version of your site as good as possible. In actuality, it ought to be excellent!
Since the beginning of This year, Google uses the mobile version of the site to ascertain its rankings. If your site is not up to scratch, or if you present less content on your mobile site, you’ll have a tough time getting a good ranking. If you do not have an adequate cellular version of your site however, you best make a fully functioning one, preferably as a responsive design. Google has a great getting started guide to get you going.
How to Increase your mobile website
To improve your Mobile SEO, you want to focus on a couple of things:
Ensure Your site is responsive

Improve your site speed

Don’t 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 site available for mobile users. The most important one is responsive design, and this is the technology Google advocates. With a responsive design, your website resides on a single URL, making it easier for Google to understand and index it.

If you use WordPress, Chances are your theme is already responsive and can adapt to all screens. Be sure to check how your site scales in Google Chrome’s Developer Tools. If it doesn’t scale correctly, you should speak with 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 mobile SEO of your website is to enhance the loading speed of the site. Time and time again, studies indicate that people leave sites that load slowly, often never to return again. Speed has been a ranking factor for years, and Google is increasingly focusing on fixing this frequent issue.
Optimize images
If there is one quick Win to increase your site speed, it is this: optimize your images. Do not load these 3000 x 2000 pixel HD images on your site. Scale them to the correct size and make them smaller using a tool such as ImageOptim or WordPress plugins such as WP Smush.
Minify code
Every request your Site has to make has an impact on site speed. You have to work on reducing these requests. One way of doing this is by minifying code. This means that your group and concatenate resources such as JavaScript and CSS, and as a result, the browser needs to load fewer documents, leading to a faster site. This sounds hard to execute, but a plugin such as WP Rocketcan look after all your caching requirements.
Browser caching
By using browser Caching, you’re telling the browser that page elements that don’t change often can be saved 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 can also do it yourself if you like.
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 contributes to a good user experience if done well, the more redirects you use, the slower your site will be. Do not make endless redirects. Additionally, try not to keep links around that point to deleted articles which are redirected to new ones. Always make direct links.
Do not block resources like JavaScript, HTML and CSS
We’ve said it before, And we are going to keep saying it: Don’t block resources like JavaScript, HTML and CSS. Doing this makes it harder for Google to get your site and that could result in bad rankings. Check your Google Search Console to determine 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 changes. Typography can make or break the user experience of your site.

Improve tap target sizes
People hate it when Their finger can’t hit a button, link or menu item without any fault. Sometimes designers haven’t given sufficient thought about the dimensions of the buttons. Mobile users get frustrated when navigation is unnatural or hard. Fix it.
Choose the Right viewport
The viewport Determines the width of the page for the device used to see it. By specifying a suitable viewport, you make sure that visitors with specific devices get the ideal version of your site. Fail to do this, and you may just reveal your desktop site to a small-screen smartphone user — a big no-no.
Don’t use interstitials or pop-ups
Starting this year, Google will penalize sites that use big pop-ups or interstitials to promote newsletters, sign-up forms or ads. These often get in the way of the consumer quickly accessing the content they requested. Do not use them, but if you have to, be sure that you abide by Google’s rules.
Test your site and inform Google about it
Before you start Working on your mobile SEO, you need to run a Mobile-Friendly Test on Google to see where you should start. During your job, you should keep testing to find out if you make progress. If your website is optimized, you want to inform Google about it so that it can be assessed and indexed. Use Search Console to remain on top of the operation of your site.
Investigate Google AMP
Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) is a new initiative by Google and others to get web pages to load super fast on mobile devices. By wrap your content in particular HTML code, you can optimize the pages in ways that Google can use to give them special treatment. Pages are cached by Google and introduced using a stripped down presentation to make certain it gets delivered at moderate speed.
AMP is still Relatively new, but growing quickly. Nearly every site can benefit from integrating this technique. For those who have a WordPress site, it’s not hard to get started; just install the official plugin. This takes care of most of the installation. You can find more information on Google’s guidelines.
Conclusion

Mobile is the future, but that future is now. Do everything you can to fix your mobile site and make it perfect, not only in Google’s eyes, but, more importantly, your visitor’s. Mobile SEO isn’t only about great content and a flawless technical presentation, but more about creating a user experience to expire. Once you’ve achieved that, you are on your way to the top!
In 2016, the inevitable happened, and mobile overtook desktop as the primary device used to access websites. This didn’t come as a massive surprise since, as far back as 2015, Google reported that more searches were conducted on mobile than on any other device category.
In many industries, this may be conservative and, At the agency I head up in the UK, Bowler Hat, our B2C clients are seeing around 85 percent of all website sessions conducted on mobile devices.
Suffice it to say, cellular has well and truly arrived. However, while responsive design has existed for a while now and is fairly well-established, nearly all sites tend to fall back on usability. That is, nearly all sites continue to be built for desktop and then dialed back for cellular. This form-fill that has been mildly annoying on desktop is a complete pig on mobile. Even if it’s responsive.
This is not good enough at the mobile-first world We are rushing toward in 2017.
In this article, I am going to look at how you Can make certain you are truly optimizing for mobile users. We’ll consider the essentials of responsive design and page speed, but we’ll also look beyond this at user experience tailored to mobile devices. We will then wrap this up with a mobile optimization checklist that you can use to identify optimization opportunities.
Our aim here is to go the extra distance to Create fully mobile-focused sites; to delight our customers and drive conversions; to use cellular optimization to develop a strategic edge 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 improved 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 an SEO best practices post for 2017, Google’s Gary Illyes complimented those who
The following are three key Stats I have lifted from Google’s promotional materials that clearly illustrate the value of cellular optimization:

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

Because more people search on mobile than on Computers, mobile 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 complete nail in the coffin for a Desktop-first approach to websites and search is the mobile-first index. Adopting this philosophy makes sense as more searches happen on mobile than desktop. Yet, at the present time, ranking is still primarily based on the desktop version of a website .
When this happens, the content and links of your Mobile website, along with any other factors — rate, 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, folks — mobile Has been significant for a good while now, but 2017 is the year that it will become the key component in your search for improved positions and conversion rates from website 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 barrier is the way ahead, and doing so before your rivals will put your website in better stead.
Mobile-friendly approach
Our primary 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 website design is Google’s recommended Way to tackle mobile-friendly websites and, as such, is the approach you should take unless you have very strong reasons not to.

Responsive design has been around for a while, so This is not a new concept. However, we still see sites which are technically responsive while not providing a strong experience for mobile users.
Finally, responsive design is just a small Part of creating truly mobile-friendly websites.
Mobile optimization

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

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

Viewport not configured — The viewport metatag aids browsers in scaling a page to match a particular 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 Doesn’t fit the window, and a User must scroll. This can be fixed with relative instead of fixed widths.

Small font size — This Is a scaling issue and requires users to pinch the display to zoom in.
Touch elements too close — This is a frequent usability issue where it is 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 that Google is looking to crack down on in 2017.

These are the key technical elements that Google Is searching for and reporting on to webmasters.
Optimizing your Website to eliminate these issues may Have positive effects on how the usability of your website 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 Test — search.google.com/search-console/mobile-friendly

Mobile Usability Report — support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6101188?hl=en
Page speed
Page speed is important 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 policy (in the UK, at least) is not something that can be relied upon.
There are, however, a range 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 easily assess how fast our pages load and get some pointers on what we can do to improve.

Page rate 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’ll 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 obvious 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 majority of this without any costly development time.

We can also see an overview of page loading times Within Google Analytics in the Behavior > Website Speed report.
Here We can see that average page load is almost four seconds, which is above the perfect two- to three-second loading time. We can also see that almost 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 which 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 campaign.
We also can’t talk about cellular page speed without considering Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP). AMP was designed to allow the often slow, clunky and annoying mobile internet to load immediately anywhere.
Be fast. It makes your customers 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/