Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Impact of Mobile Optimization on Google Search Rankings

Google relies on a multitude of factors to determine search engine results. Typically, these factors are related to on-page content (such as site URL, the text, headers and titles, etc.) or on metrics that determine the authenticity of the website in question (quality and number of inbound links, age of domain). However, in 2010, Google started using one more factor to compute search results – the speed with which users can view the content. And with the growth of the number of mobile devices being used to access the internet, Google also wants its users to experience the full richness of the web by rewarding websites with fast, mobile-friendly designs.


In, August 2013, Google's head of Search Spam and Quality, Matt Cutts, announced that poor mobile site performance had also been added to the demotion factors for search rankings. This is because Google’s mobile queries were projected to surpass the desktop/PC counterparts by the end of 2014. 
Google’s page speed tool has been updated to help analyze mobile site speed, and a few guidelines have been provided on how to make a website mobile fast. On their official blog, apart from slow page speed Google mentioned a few other common problems users experience when accessing sites from mobile platforms. These include: smartphone only errors (404 for smartphones); irrelevant cross linking; and unplayable videos.

How to Make Your Mobile Website Fast
As may well know, 80 percent of the time it takes to display a webpage is shared between performing client side processing and downloading and loading resources like script file, images and style sheets. To improve performance, the three main web speed optimization strategies that can be used to improve performance are:

1. Reducing the volume of HTTP requests needed to fetch resources for each page – To avoid a dramatic increase in latency, it is a good idea to reduce the number of times your website or application must make a round-trip request to your server. Due to socket and TCP behavior, single large objects tend to load faster that many smaller ones.

2. Reduce the size of the payload required to fulfill each HTTP request – reduce image dimensions and consider using compression and minification. Compression technologies such as Gzip can reduce text based responses such as XML, HTML, CSS, JSON, and JavaScript by over 80 percent.

3. Optimize client side script execution and processing priorities - minimize your use of JavaScript and implement smart preloading that adapts to the type of network connect used.

But mobile web optimization does not mean that you have to design a website dedicated to mobile devices rather, design a website that performs well when accessed from all devices – from tiny phones to huge living room screens. A responsive website is one that responds according to the screen resolution and processing capacity of the device used to access it by morphing the content into a mobile-friendly format. Ideally, a responsive website should be designed using the “mobile first” rule, with the mobile layout designed first and the PC/desktop layout coming second.

As you aspire to increase the number of users visiting your website, put responsive web design high on your list so as to be able to reach consumer via the tablets, cell phones, PCs, and TVS. Once you get your technology right, turn your effort to creating great website content for your new users.

Contact Website Optimization to learn more about optimizing your website for mobile devices.


Website Optimization
3134 SUNNYWOOD DR
ANN ARBOR, MI 48103
Phone: (877) 748-3678
Fax: (734) 661-1331
http://www.websiteoptimization.com/
https://plus.google.com/108123505155721216764/

No comments:

Post a Comment