Mobile website design and SEO: why is it vital?
The vast majority of website designers will tell you that any business has to pay attention to SEO when designing a new mobile website. Have you ever wondered why? Well, the answer is pretty simple. Mobile is big business and will only continue to increase its grip on e-commerce, so it’s vital that any new mobile website is future-proofed.
The latest available figures indicate that there are roughly 2.6 billion local product and service searches carried out every month. That figure alone may surprise you; but what will come as a bigger surprise is that this figure is expected to grow by at least 50% in 2013 alone. The latest government figures go as far as to suggest that over the course of the next 18 years, the use of the mobile web is expected to increase 80 fold. That’s
Why it’s currently considering relaxing the planning restrictions on the siting of mobile phone masts.
Why is should this be of interest to local businesses? Well, 80% of customers search online before they buy goods. Of that figure, 98% will only choose to do business with a company that has a page one listing on the search engines. 41% automatically choose the website that listed number 1, 12% choose the second listing, 8.5% choose the third listing and so on. As the numbers of vacancies on page 1 search engine listings are limited, a business will have to pull out all the stops and use whatever resources and tricks it has at its disposal to make sure it is one of these. What’s the best way to achieve the rate of organic growth a business needs to take itself to a first page listing on Google? The answer is to have a properly and carefully-optimised website.
Any business looking to invest in either a new mobile website design or in a revamp of an existing site is spoilt for choice these days. Website design companies are all competing for the same business throughout the UK and can offer varying levels of skill and creative ability. But given this wide choice, how do you really know which website design company will offer the service that’s right for your business? What should a website design company be able to offer your business? The answer obviously is a user-friendly and functional website, but there needs to be more than this. The best website design companies will also be able to build an SEO- friendly site.
Why is it so important to optimise a website design for search engine functionality?
It’s an incontrovertible fact that when websites are developed with search engine optimisation in mind, they are built to achieve greater success within the major search engines. Successful SEO helps websites achieve higher SERPs for their most relevant and therefore profitable keywords. This in turn maximises the return on the initial investment and drives more traffic to the website in question.
Moreover, optimising sites from their inception ensures that they are easy to navigate, which, in turn has a huge bearing on consumer perception. Clear sitemaps act as the foundation for a customer-friendly site and support the user if they’re looking for information and guidance. Even the finer details such as shorter titles, accurate Meta descriptions and appropriate header tags will make all the difference in the long run and will communicate your relevancy to both the human user and the search engine algorithms.
