Smartphones and devices have changed how people search for information and mobile-friendly content has become an important metrics for overall digital marketing strategy.
When you’re a local business, the traffic is even more skewed to mobile users because more mobile searches are location-based. If optimizing content got you even 10% more engagement with content – and the associated lift in sales – would that mobile-first content optimization pay for itself? Maybe even be beneficial?
Let’s get started about these attractive solutions. You might dismiss the tactics as “too hard”, but consider this: Mobile has more device traffic than any other online website thru desktops.
It might be worth figuring that out.
1. Be 100% ensure the website is mobile responsive
Ensure your website is “responsive.” It must respond to every device wherever it is read through. Most of the latest WordPress themes and DIY site platforms such as WIX are made to react quickly. But whether you have an older site, this might be the single best reason to update it.
Check the location on the mobile device. Thoroughly go through every page, try to submit every form, try sharing pages to social media on every platform, purchase from an online platform to place an order, give a review – test everything available on the site to ensure:
• it can be done on a mobile device
• it is as easy as possible to do on a mobile device
After that, ask some teenager or a millennial friend or even eight-year-old child to repeat everything once.
2. Collect detailed, candid feedback about what they think of the site’s usability.
The younger set often is savvier – and more judgmental – about what they consider to be a good or a bad site. Make essential information on your site easy for mobile users to access.
3. Format the content for scanning as well as smaller screens.
Here are some practices to be availed for text:
• Keep paragraphs short.
• Practice bullet points
• Write sub-headers
• Break up text with images after 300-400 words
• Practice lot of whitespaces
• Apply a highly-legible typeface
• Designate dark type on a white background to help readers get the words and letters without any pain in the eye
• Write with a font size of at least 12 points
• Alternate content formats.
4. Keep it brief
Mobile users get more distracted, therefore shorter “snackable” content more effective and better for all those checking mobile content. Although the “short is better” rule is not comprehensively valid.
Mobile readers typically appreciate brevity which can offer the long-form content Google loves, is to abstract. Summaries can appear either as a first or even as the last paragraph. On websites such as Search Engine Land, summaries are often given the sub-header “TL;DR”, as in “too long; didn’t read.”
5. Go for a bite, snack, and meal approach.
The mobile traffic, just like desktop traffic, is made up of various kinds of readers, who skim or read word-for-word or alternate. The bite, snack, and meal approach drives to these readers. In the bite, snack, and meal writing procedure, you offer your content in 3 distinct components: bite, snack, and meal.
- Bite: headline
- The “bite” in your content is the title. Its job is to pique most impatient readers’ attention and get them to read the content.
- Snack: the summary or conclusion
- The “snack” in content is your content’s summary or gist.
- This summary gives the reader what the post is about. If a reader learns nothing but content’s outline, they should still get a view about what’s incorporated in your content. A post’s first para could be an episode or a stimulating hook called the content’s “snack “.
- Again, while you are looking at the column, the snack would be the opening line where I talk about mobile-friendly content, the significance of optimizing content for people who read on mobile devices, and the tools to make content for a mobile device.
- Meal: full post
- Finally, the “meal” is content in its original, full form.
The job of headline and summary or opening line is to draw the browser into the content. The bite, snack, and meal procedure to writing provide you do entirely this.
6. Chunk content for easy reading
Thanks to small screen size, reading massive text walls can be a nightmare on a mobile device. For making browsing easy for a mobile user, the first thing must be under work on is content’s structure. The more optimized post-construction is, the better it will read.
Chunking is an effective tactic to improve content construction and make it more mobile-friendly. Chunking is the best way to make content more snackable. Put slightly, and chunking is the practice of presenting related content together in small chunks. In practice, chunking is about creating meaningful, visually distinguished content units that make knowledge in the larger whole context.
- Use various tools to chunk content for mobile devices (and desktop reading):
- Short paragraphs
- Whitespace
- Subheads
- Summary
- Images
- Lists / bullets
- Styling (bold, italics)
7. Make it snappy. Go for short, quick paragraphs
Speed matters online. But on mobile, it matters even more. Because if you can fasten up the website enough to get it to load for mobile users in 3 seconds or less, smoke most of the competition leading to more website traffic, more leads, and more sales. Short paragraphs are easy to follow as they tend to focus on one point, rendering them appealing for those viewing on a mobile site.
- Concise does not mean: –
- Short, the text should be as long as necessary as a piece of string.
- Robot speaks, as in “push button” instead of “push the button”.
- Concise:
- Enough to meet the audience’s needs and accomplish the purpose. No more, no less.
- The lesser (and simpler) words you use, the softer the reading experience will get.
- Here are primary words to simplify content:
- terminate – end
- utilize – use
- leverage – use
- commence — begin, start
- inception — start
- implement — follow, carry out
- obtain/acquire – get
- requires – needs
- purchase – buy
- request – ask for
- subsequent – next
- accordingly – so
- discontinue – stop
- eliminate – drop
- validate – confirm
- witnessed – saw
- erroneous — wrong
- expeditious — fast
- regarding — about
- subsequently — after or later
8. Replace wordy phrases with simple words
Wordy phrases are more complicated than confusing words because they don’t just necessitate more time for reading but often induce long, convoluted sentences.
Here are the most commonly used phrases and one-word fill-ins:
- in order to – to
- a number of – some
- by means of – by
- until such time as – until
- prior to – before
- at this point in time – now
- due to the fact that – because
- with reference to / pertaining to/in regard to – about
- with the exception of – except
- in the event that – if
- in the near future – shortly, soon
- as a means of – to
- reach out – contact
9. Use images
As we observed in the chunked content, images are the best means to chunk content and heighten reading on an online device. Relevant pictures (screenshots/graphics/stock) append a visual charm to the range and break it up for easy task… the whole key to being ‘mobile-friendly.’
10. Use whitespace for motivated scanning
Whitespace is the best form of formatting content for the web. More so, for the mobile web. People can be motivated to read long content with appreciable, detailed headings and content separated into apparent chunks.
You can not only create chunk data but also guide users to the most significant points in range. Nearly, whitespace is just hitting the enter key more often and using sentence fragments to create an effect. Subheads, bulleted and numbered lists, and shorter content are elements that make whitespace.
11. Preview on a mobile device
Before publishing, preview the content on the mobile device and look at it as a reader would. See whether eyes can ‘breathe’ through several paragraphs. If you notice that sections are looking too long, either re-edit them to get them shorter or use styling components to stimulate reading. Begin with breaks white space.
12. Optimizing Video Content
Video is the new favorite of mobile content. 35% of viewers viewed more video last year than they did the preceding year. And 36% said they viewed videos that last five minutes or longer every day. Use assistance that automatically optimizes content. Don’t work on bitrates and compression on own.
Go third-party with YouTube or any other video medium for a seamless user experience. If you wish to host video, utilize Apple’s HTTP Live Streaming. It can adjust video quality on the fly to balance bandwidth capability, just like Netflix does. Ensure the text is readable. Mobile screens are small. Even the big ones are small. Don’t make viewer squint to see the fine print. 85% of the video on Facebook is played without sound. And even if your viewer has headphones in, odds are they’re in an environment that makes listening difficult. Try to observe the video on mute to ensure it still gets points beyond.
Get Started
When you try to make site mobile-friendly, don’t settle for a responsive site alone because a responsive site is not necessarily reader-friendly. Audience wishes to read mobile-friendly content what you’ve got to provide. With simple tweaks to writing and formatting, you can improve the website to become more engaging for today’s contemporary mobile user with mobile-friendly content.
Mobile phones aren’t reserved for kids with time-stopping capabilities anymore. Marketers must catch up with this reality. Over a year ago—an eternity in Internet time—Google announced that more searches take place on mobile devices than computers. That fact has led Google to create mobile-friendly content for the ranking algorithm. They know more people are on mobile nowadays. Therefore, they invested in implementing better expertise for mobile users. Ensure your text is snackable, traversable, and skimmable to make it more mobile-friendly content.
