Is my WordPress site mobile friendly?
Writing about introduction of Core Web Vitals as a new parameter (since June 2021) in webpage positioning criteria (see Core Web Vitals optimization for WordPress website) we listed all the elementary factors which Google takes into consideration while ranking a page, that fall under an umbrella term of ‘page experience’. Next topic is how to make mobile friendly WordPress site.
Since most of the web traffic goes via handheld devices since way back, actually since the beginning of 2017 (see ‘Statista‘ data), everybody knows that any webpage needs to be ‘responsive’ (a word taken from ‘Responsive Web Design (RWD)’ phrase coined by Ethan Marcotte in 2010.
The main idea behind RWD is that the content of the website is like water that fills displays of different sizes and proportions (different ‘viewports’) adapting its shape fluently to the vessel it fills.
But ‘Mobile-friendly’ in our current context, as defined by Google for purpose of making user experience of webpages more comfortable, means something more. Already since July 1st, 2019 Google uses ‘Mobile-first indexing’, which means that ‘Almost all indexing on your site comes from the mobile site.’ (cit. from ‘Mobile-first indexing best practices‘). For search ranking positioning Google uses only one index, so if your mobile site is indexed poorly, then even if the desktop version is excellent, it will not help you to get better position.
Make sure your site is mobile friendly by paying attention to the following guidelines:
- make sure that Googlebot can access and render your content (meta robots tags on both mobile and desktop versions of the site need to be the same and when you use different URLs for mobile content make sure they are not blocked from crawling by Google; also do not lazy-load significant content upon user interaction, so the bots can see the content)
- keep the content of both versions the same, with the same headings
- use font size large enough to be readable without zooming
- adapt the content size to the screen so it fits horizontally and users do not have to scroll left-right or zoom out to see it in full
- keep clickable elements, like links and buttons, apart enough to enable a user to choose the correct one easily with a fingertip
Check how a selected page from your site performs with ‘Mobile-friendly test‘.
And look for any errors reported by your Google Search Console in ‘Open site-wide mobile usability report‘.
Similarly to your careful work-out with Core Web Vitals, the ‘Mobile-friendly’ factors need to be adapted to Google requirements before you start spending money on other SEO activities. Without good ‘page experience’ evaluation from Google your other efforts will be wasted, so make your WordPress site mobile friendly first.
Learn more about ‘Core Web Vitals optimization for WordPress website‘.
