This short post is part of my "Grains of SEO Gold" series covering basic SEO topics and how to apply them.
Today's SEO Topic: Mobile Websites
There's no way around it any more. Your customers want a mobile website and Google is practically demanding that you give it to them.
Back in May 2014, I reported that 40% of users to jewelry websites are using mobile devices, 28% of which are using smartphones.
Then two weeks ago, I reported on Google's new policy on mobile websites and the potential pitfalls of using a simple mobile website builder.
Google wants the web to be an extremely user-friendly place. Every one of their policies is an attempt to guide (or force, depending on your view) website developers toward that end.
Google's view, which I wholeheartedly believe in myself, is that you need a mobile website to make your users happy. They recommend a responsive website, but you can also have a standalone website if it's configured correctly.
My recommendation is to start your website design process to fit a tablet first. Make sure it fits the iPad and Android tablets. Then test out how it looks on a desktop computer. The tablet and desktop versions of the site should be the same, or very similar. Just make sure all the controls, like dropdown menus and JavaScripts, work correctly on the tablets.
The last step is to reformat the site for the smartphones. With responsive designs this is simply adding another set of CSS code to detect and redisplay your content. Standalone mobile websites provide greater control of the content, but they are usually more difficult to maintain.
Google's mobile policy for standalone sites also dictates that you give the user the ability to switch back and forth between the smartphone and desktop versions of the site without forcing them to choose only one for their entire visit. That policy would require the creative use of cookies on your site.
You can't run away from mobile users, especially since you are probably one of them yourself. As a new SEO requirement, you need to have a mobile version of your site in order to rank well in mobile search results.
Remember, at least 40% of your users are using mobile. That's a large portion of your customer base to lose if you continue to ignore mobile.
