Search Engine Optimization All-in-One For Dummies, 3rd Edition

Chapter 3

Building a Mobile-Friendly Site

In This Chapter

• Choosing the right mobile approach
• Designing for a mobile user
• Optimizing a mobile site for search engines
• Testing for mobile-friendliness

A mobile-friendly website is a site that functions and displays equally well on a mobile device — such as a smartphone or a tablet — and a desktop computer.

In this chapter, you learn how to build mobile-friendly websites that are optimized for search and optimal user experience. If you’re still not convinced of the importance of mobile, consider these 2014 comScore statistics:

• The U.S. alone has 172 million smartphone owners and 93 million tablet owners.
• On average, 34 percent of monthly visitors come to top leading brands like Amazon.com, Google, Facebook, and CBS Interactive exclusively from mobile devices. That means that about 34 percent of all traffic to Amazon.com comes from users who use only a mobile device to access the site.
• As of June 2014, consumers say they spend 60 percent of their time interacting with digital media using mobile devices and 40 percent of the time interacting through desktop computers. These numbers represent a 13 percent decrease in desktop engagement with media over a 15-month period, and a 13 percent increase in media engagement via mobile devices.
• Approximately 60 percent of all Internet traffic comes from mobile devices and 40 percent comes from desktop computers. In other words: To access the Internet, people are using mobile devices — through ...