How to Optimize Your WordPress Website for Mobile Users

Optimized website on mobile phone.

Mobile phones now account for more than half of global website traffic. This has made it impossible to ignore the importance of making websites mobile-friendly. As the name suggests, a mobile-friendly website features optimized web content that is easy to browse using tablets, smartphones, and other mobile devices.

As a business, you should optimize your website for mobile users to boost user experience. Mobile optimization also increases your website’s visibility on Google’s search engine results. Therefore, investing in mobile optimization increases site impressions, dwell time, and boosts voice search. Use these tips to improve your business website for mobile users.

1. Improve user experience

User experience is an important determiner of mobile-friendly websites. Therefore, begin by working on several crucial features that determine user experience. These include:

  • Website design – a common mistake 84.6% of website designers make is designing a crowded website. Mobile users prefer simple and minimalistic web designs that ease content accessibility.
  • Navigation – poorly designed navigation features are the other leading cause of high bounce rates. Optimizing your website for mobile users requires the use of easy navigation elements. As such, consider buttons and menus that correspond to screen size. You should also consider hamburger menus as they don’t clutter the home page.
  • Website responsiveness – a responsive website should automatically adjust to different screen sizes, orientations, and resolutions. This includes website fonts, photos, videos, and other dynamic web design elements. You should choose a responsive WordPress theme to avoid this problem.
  • Pop-ups – you should also make your pop-ups mobile-friendly. Unlike desktops, mobile devices have small screens. Therefore, include pop-ups sparingly to minimize distracting site visitors.

2. Optimize website content for mobile

Optimizing your website content for mobile devices also makes your site mobile-friendly. Fortunately, this doesn’t involve a lot. Start by following these simple SEO practices.

  • Writing clickable content headlines and descriptions
  • Writing insightful and educational content
  • Including editorial links and backlinks to boost domain authority
  • Ranking for popular long-tail keywords
  • Including social media buttons to encourage site visitors to share your content

Using title tags and meta descriptions to optimize site content makes it easy for website visitors to find relevant content. Note that mobile searches will display less information. Therefore, you should prioritize important keywords and information. You should also note that mobile keywords differ from desktop keywords. Therefore, you should conduct keyword searches for mobile and desktop content separately.

3. Optimize your website for mobile search

You can only reach mobile users if your website is optimized for mobile search. Therefore, you should make sure to optimize your site for local and voice searches.

Local searches

Local search is among the main factors driving the mobile search revolution. Many people currently search for local businesses online. Google search results also prioritize local results. Improve local SEO by:

  • Updating your Google My Business profile – fill out important details, such as contact info and site URL.
  • Ask customers to review your website. Businesses rated 4 or 5 stars rank four places higher than 3 or 4-star-rated businesses.
  • List your website or business in local directories
  • Create a content strategy specific to the local market

Voice searches

Voice search is undoubtedly the fastest-growing search method in modern marketing. To enjoy the benefits of voice searches optimize your website by:

  • Using long-tail keywords and phrases in your web content
  • Writing answers to common questions
  • Using question keywords
  • Ensuring your answers are at least 29 words long – this is the average count for voice search results

The Bottom Line

Optimizing your website for mobile users boosts website traffic and significantly improves search engine rankings. This is important for businesses, especially for eCommerce stores, content creators, and sites looking to monetize traffic.