Mobile Parity 101: How to Optimize the Mobile Version of Your Website

Mobile parity is the idea of comparing the desktop version of your website to your mobile version to ensure that the two are equally optimized.

You also have to ask yourself if the mobile version of your site has the exact same look and feel as the desktop version. When you analyze your mobile website from your target audience’s perspective, you can identify what is helping and hurting users’ mobile experience.

This article will help you optimize your site for mobile so you can close just as many deals with targets using their smart phones and tablets as you can with desktop users.

Consistency

A consumer should not see two different messages on the mobile and desktop versions of your website. The message on both devices should be the same. Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) are projects designed to make swift mobile pages. Simply, they are a stripped-down form of HTML.

It is okay to remove the clutter from your website site when planning your mobile site. But, the “look and feel” on both of the websites should stay consistent and focus on your primary objectives.

Your website must also have consistency throughout. This means the titles on your site should be aligned with one another. Check that not just the content structures align with your desktop site, but everything else aligns as well.

Content

Content is always the most important part of your website. It doesn’t matter if an individual’s visiting your mobile website or desktop website.

People visit your site in the hopes of receiving specific information. Whether this person is a new visitor to your site or a frequent visitor, you should make sure you have the same information on both sources.

To speed up the loading of content on your mobile website, hide larger images or put them behind tabs. However, the result of your mobile optimization should not obstruct with the end result of your desktop site.

Mobile First Index

This term is the starting point for what Google includes in their index as the mobile version of websites. It is merely the baseline for how they determine rankings. Note that it’s mobile-first, not mobile-only. Thankfully, desktop sites are still indexed even if they don’t have a mobile-friendly version.

Smart Insights found that Google drives 96% of today’s mobile search traffic. Google assesses specific factors of a website. They encourage web users to utilize switchboard tags which simply indicate the existence of a mobile URL version. Google also mentioned that if your site is responsive or the mobile and desktop version are identical, you may not have to make as many changes.

Mobile Parity Audits

A mobile parity audit occurs in the case that there is two or more version of a website that both have the same URL. A “parity audit” will then search each of the URL and compare the two in the search for errors. If you ever add, remove, or change any of your content, you should do a parity audit amongst devices without transferring the user to a new URL.

Mobile parity audits tell you a lot of details about your website that may be hidden from you. They will tell you whether your site is optimized, whether all of your header response codes are set up correctly, or if any textual content is missing or hidden on the mobile version.

There are 4 simple steps to conduct a mobile parity audit to improve your rankings and check if there are any errors.

1) Crawl your site as a desktop user

2) Crawl your site as a mobile user

3) Combine the outputs from both of the mobile and desktop websites

4) Review and analyze the differences between the two websites and make sure there aren’t any errors

Internal Links

When you’re trying to create mobile parity, we try to remove information, change sections, and hide things just to make our website reactive. You might not even realize it, but these minor changes effect on the number of internal links on your page.

When deciding your internal links, you must step into Google shoes and think about what they already believe is relevant for your targeted keyword or keyword phrases.

The easiest way to do this is by doing a site search in Google which will tell you what Google thinks are the related keywords. You should then go into each of those pages, that are found on your site, and then link within the content.

It is more valuable to link within your content then to link within your menu or sidebars. Internal links play an important part when organizing your cornerstone content and other content strategies.

To Wrap It Up…

When you achieve mobile parity, you will allow your users to have the same experience with your business online on their laptops and their iPhones.

Mobile has become the most used device, and it is growing exponentially. Remember to always think about the goals of your website and that your mobile site and your desktop website are consistent.

If you follow these tips for mobile parity, your mobile website will gain traffic and become more valuable in website searches.

Here Are Some Key Takeaways…

1) The result of your mobile optimization should not hinder the objectives that are on your desktop website

2) Make sure that your desktop website and your mobile website are consistent with your goals and content

3) Perform a mobile parity audit to ensure that there aren’t any errors between your websites or there are no duplicates on your mobile site

4) Utilize internal links to improve your website’s responsiveness

As mobile SEO experts, Chainlink Relationship Marketing can help you make sure you’re implementing strategies that produce tangible results and the highest ROI possible when it comes to your mobile marketing strategy.

Reach out to us below to learn more about how we can help your business grow online. We’d love to give you a free consultation.

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