A Simple Strategy To Get More Mobile Traffic

If you’ve been paying attention for the past 3 years or so, everyone has been talking about how important mobile is for search traffic...and really, any traffic, paid, social traffic from email campaigns and so on and so on.

When it comes to your website and “getting traffic” you need to be making sure that you’re thinking mobile first. Having pages that are responsive is such a high priority that Google have even moved to what they refer to as “Mobile-first indexing”...so what does this mean exactly?

In Google’s own words “Mobile-first indexing means that we'll use the mobile version of the page for indexing and ranking, to better help our – primarily mobile – users find what they're looking for.”

With more and more people using Google whilst on the go it’s no surprise that mobile has become the focus for Google, SEO professionals and really anyone that wants to see an increase in traffic and as a result, conversions.

What Does This Mean For You?

It means that however you slice it, mobile is extremely important regardless of your product or service, making sure that your pages look great for mobile is extremely important.

So what can you do to increase your traffic in a mobile first world? Let me introduce you to AMP technology, or Accelerated Mobile Pages.

Understanding Accelerated Mobile Pages

First off, AMP is a Google backed initiative. So you know straight away that this is something that you should be implementing if you want to get on the good side of Google.  

AMP essentially strips out the heavier design that comes with a desktop page (for the more techy folks out there, this essentially means that the CSS code - the stuff that makes your site look good - is cut right back to the bare essentials with just minimal styling left in). This looks fine on a mobile screen (albeit more basic) and as a result you have a much “lighter” page left, delivering an improved user experience due to the fact this page will load much faster.

The Downside of AMP

First off, there are some limitations with AMP.

Because it’s more stripped down you have less features available, so for example if you use JavaScript forms to collect lead data this won’t work with AMP. Also The pages technically are served up on Google's cache, so you need to make sure that you set up tracking with Google Analytics correctly to ensure that stats aren’t missed.

You will need to index the page twice, once with the standard URL, the second time with the prefix of /amp at the end.

For example, a blog we published recently on our agency website looks like this in normal mode: https://digitalbang.co.uk/google-search-operators/

And when indexed for AMP it looks like this: https://digitalbang.co.uk/google-search-operators/amp/

Not a major difference but one will be served on mobile devices and included in the Google content newsfeed and rank higher in search results.  

How To Use AMP

Whilst a lot of people spot the negatives of AMP (content served on Google’s Cache, lack of features in terms of JS, etc), it’s relatively easy to set up, especially if you use WordPress and for companies that are trying to build a brand and increase traffic organically, AMP is key.

Here's how I recommend you use it for the best results. AMP is a great tool for top of funnel content so from an organic point of view, build articles around search terms answering peoples questions. Maximise your mobile and organic reach by utilising AMP technology on those posts as a way to bring in traffic.

Whilst you may not be able to use pop-ups and fancy forms to capture leads due to the lack of JavaScript integration, you can use a smart internal linking strategy (important for good SEO) which will guide the user to the relevant next step in your funnel i.e. leads them to a product page or enquiry form away from the AMP page. As long as you still have good mobile pages with good UX you'll be able to take advantage of this Google backed feature and increase your conversion rate.

Now, you'll still need great content otherwise this won't work but that's the same for anything. You'll also want to do the necessary keyword research to find the right opportunities for your brand.

You can read more about AMP here if you want to understand it more: https://www.ampproject.org

Let me know if you are using AMP on your site and what the results have been like for you.