As the online world continues to become more and more mobile, it is necessary to ensure that your business is prepared to serve customers both at home and on the go. The world changed drastically in 2020, and the stats on mobile device use reflect that change. The global average time spent on mobile devices has grown to 4.2 hours per day, a 30% increase from two years prior. Additionally, Google’s algorithm uses your mobile responsiveness to rank your business on Maps. If you want to show up locally for customers looking for your goods and services, ensure that your site is loading quickly and works correctly.

On-Page Optimization

If you want your website to be noticed and prioritized by Google and other search engines, your on-page SEO must be up-to-par. 

• Ensure that your site’s loading speed is as fast as possible. To see how quickly your site loads, you can use a free tool called PageSpeed Insights. If your page isn’t loading quickly, an excellent first step is to leverage browser caching.
• Make sure your site is easy to navigate from a smartphone by using Google’s mobile-friendly test.
• Optimize your contact page. If you don’t have a contact page, create one! At a minimum, it should include an address and phone number. An additional helpful step for mobile users is to make your phone number clickable.
• Include schema markup to your site. This addition will enable users to see star ratings, pictures, and prices, among other “rich snippets,” which can drive more visitors to your site. 

It is also essential to take simple steps to make your site look good from a mobile device. You can do this by using a larger font (16-20px is standard), getting your message across quickly by limiting text and using bullet points when possible, making your CTA buttons stand out on the page, and simplifying drop-down menus.

Google’s 3-Pack

The 3-Pack is Google’s method of displaying the top three local SERP results. It takes into account the user’s location as well as the relevance and reputation of the business. Initially, local packs featured the top ten results, then seven, and now three. Google implemented these changes to help users find the best options near them as quickly as possible.

Let’s say you own a coffee shop in South Orange, New Jersey. When a potential customer searches for “coffee shops near me” on their mobile device, their results will look like this:

For most businesses, Google includes location, ratings and reviews, photos, phone numbers, hours, a website link, and directions. It is vital to ensure that your Google My Business account contains all of this information so that Google can recognize when your business will be a relevant result. Getting into Google’s 3-pack can be very profitable, as 76% of people who performed a mobile search visited one of the top three locations within 24 hours and 28% made a purchase.

Ranking in Google’s 3-pack is crucial because this group appears above the #1 organic search ranking. To view any other ranked businesses, customers must click “more places” on a mobile device instead of continuing to scroll through options. 

So how does Google determine which companies deserve to be in the three-pack? Google uses many local ranking signals. According to Moz, the eight most important ranking factors are:

• Google My Business Signals (Proximity, categories, keyword in business title, etc.) 25.12%
• Link Signals (Inbound anchor text, linking domain authority, linking domain quantity, etc.) 16.53%
• Review Signals (Review quantity, review velocity, review diversity, etc.) 15.44%
• On-Page Signals (Presence of NAP, keywords in titles, domain authority, etc.) 13.82%
• Citation Signals (IYP/aggregator NAP consistency, citation volume, etc.) 10.82%
• Behavioral Signals (Click-through rate, mobile clicks to call, check-ins, etc.) 9.56%
• Personalization 5.88%
• Social Signals (Google engagement, Facebook engagement, Twitter engagement, etc.) 2.82%

Core Web Vitals

Core Web Vitals, a benchmark for metrics that help quantify user experience, recently became ranking signals with Google’s June 2021 core update. So, the more optimized your Core Web Vitals are, the better chance Google will favor your site. These help measure load time, relevancy, interactivity, and page responsiveness and include the following:

• Largest Contentful Paint: the time it takes for the main content of a page to load (ideally less than 2.5 seconds)
• First Input Delay: the time it takes for a page to load and become interactive (ideally less than 100 milliseconds)
• Cumulative Layout Shift: quantifies the amount of unexpected layout shift that occurs in the page content (ideally less than 0.1)

As people continue spending more time on their mobile devices, it is increasingly important to focus on your company’s mobile SEO to reach customers. It may seem daunting at first, but by breaking this process down into manageable steps, you can rank highly on Google and gain more clients than ever before.

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Need help optimizing your site’s SEO? Don’t know where to start? Our team at Relevance Advisors would be happy to help. Schedule a call today.