Google’s indexing strategies are always evolving so it is important for Waterloo, IL businesses to stay proactive with their website and online presence. In recent times, Google has shifted it priorities to giving websites optimized for mobile viewing higher rankings in searches. The big reason Google is doing this is due to the larger number of people who use their phone to search for services or products rather than a computer. Ranking low in local searches will hurt your website’s performance and will negatively affect your business’ ability to bring in new or repeating customers overall. This is why it is important to make sure your website is optimized for mobile viewing. In this blog post we would like to go into detail on how to optimize your site for Google’s new mobile-first approach.
Ensuring Your Website is Mobile Responsive
The most obvious thing to start off with is ensuring that your website is mobile responsive and can be viewed correctly on a variety of different types of displays. You want to make sure that your website will be able to adjust enough for people to be able to see all of the content and navigate without any issues. Not only will doing this help Google prioritize your website on searches by also improve the user experience enough that they my become a new or repeating customer.
Optimizing Website Speed
You always want to make sure that your website loads fast enough. Most people visiting websites with slow loading speeds are more likely to leave than to stick around. There are many tools out there that can assist you in monitoring your website’s projected speed. You may need to make minor tweaks to your website’s content, photos, or videos in order to fully optimize your website’s speed. Google will be more likely to give you a better ranking if your website loads at a reasonable speed.
Ensure Accessibility
Accessibility is important for any website. Ensuring that all users are able to navigate your website and understand the content without issues should always be a high priority. Make sure that your website has options to allow users to change the font size or contrast for easier viewing if needed. Also be sure to include relevant alt tags on all your images and videos. Also be sure that your website has a easy to understand font and good color scheme.
Simplify Content & Design
Mobile screens are small, so it is important to make sure that the content on your website is able to be viewed correctly. Make sure that your content flows and that everything is organized, including any images or videos. Google actually looks at how the mobile version of your website is structured to determine your ranking. Buttons and other links should be easy for users to use on smaller screens.
Local SEO Optimization
While you are working on optimizing your website for Google’s mobile-first approach you should aim to also work on improving performance in local service areas. Whether it’s by creating blogs targeting local areas, landing pages, or city pages, make sure they stay consistent with the rest of your website’s mobile optimization. Ensuring that the areas of your website where you target your local service areas are mobile friendly will help you rank higher in those areas in comparison to your competition who may not be.
Regularly Check Analytics
Having a successful website is a time investment. You want to make sure you regularly set aside time to check your website’s performance. Google Analytics is such a platform that allows users to check up on their website’s performance. There you will be able to check traffic among many other things to know exactly how your website is performing and what you need to change.
Looking to get a new website that will perform well with Google’s mobile-first approach? Contact our team of professionals at Hometown Marketing Group today. We have built many websites for businesses in Waterloo, IL and the surrounding communities. Not only that, but we also offer a variety of other services including digital marketing, social media marketing, text marketing, and more. If any of our services interest you, give our team a call today for more information.
