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In late 2016, Google announced the combining of both desktop and mobile indexes together, meaning that a single index will represent the listings for both desktop and mobile search queries. As a result, if your website is not optimized for mobile devices, there will be a negative impact on your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) score, leading to poorer search result rankings.
So what are some steps that should be taken in order to create a website optimized for mobile users?
1. Choosing a mobile responsive template
The first and most important step is to choose a website template that is mobile responsive. These templates should be able to adjust and adapt to the size of the screen, whether it be on desktop or mobile.
A good website builder which offers a variety of easy to use, mobile optimized templates is Jemi. Whether you are an aspiring artist or entrepreneur, Jemi has a template that is carefully hand-crafted for your purpose.
2. Optimizing your videos and images
Have you ever tried to access a website on your mobile device only for it to take a painfully long time to load? A major factor to slow loading times on mobile devices can be associated with the images and videos on a website.
Google itself also places a heavy emphasis on the loading speed of a website, meaning slower websites will rank lower in search results. Here are some methods to reduce the “weight” of a website by making changes to your videos and images.
2a. Compressing Images
It is absolutely necessary to compress any image you plan on uploading to your website. With lossless compression being the primary mode of compression today, you are able to significantly reduce the file size of your images without sacrificing quality. Compressing images can be done via an online website such as image compressor.
If you are using Windows, compressing images can also be done using the Microsoft Photos App. To do so, first open the image you want to compress. Next, click on the three dots located on the upper center of your screen and click resize.
You will then be prompted with on-screen instructions which will present you with options to resize.
2B. Hosting videos on another site
By uploading your videos to a third party such as YouTube and then embedding them on your website, you are largely keeping the "weight" of the videos on that site rather than on your own. It is important to remember disabling the autoplay feature so that videos from other creators don't play after yours. To demonstrate the simplicity of embedding videos to your website, we will be using Jemi, a free, easy to use, website builder.
- To embed a video, click on “Add section” and the “Editor” panel will appear. Scroll down until you see “videos”.
- Under videos you will have the options of displaying one or two videos in the section. Click on one of these layouts and the videos will appear on the main panel.
- To change a video, click the video thumbnail on the main panel and an option to change the video link will appear under the editor panel to your right. Make sure to save all your changes.
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3. Test if your website is mobile friendly
Now that you have taken the aforementioned steps, how can you test to see if your site is mobile-friendly? The best way is to utilize Google Search Console’s “fetch and render” tool. This function simulates Google’s standard crawl and render procedures, which is done by its web crawler. It allows you to verify that the crawlers may access all of your pages without any hindrance and troubleshoot any problems it may find. For a more advanced guide on the fetch and render tool check out this guide here.
ConclusionChoosing a website builder can be difficult and confusing for most people. However, if you are looking to build a website that is instantly optimized for both desktop and mobile, choose Jemi. Not only does Jemi offer an easy to use drag and drop system, but there are a variety of mobile adaptive templates to choose from. Sign up for free today here!