Why mobile optimisation is important for local business

A reminder of why local SEO is important to local business

Recent years, post covid, have seen widespread changes in consumer buying habits. One of the most notable is that today’s consumers increasingly prioritise local businesses when it comes to buying.

56% of consumers say that they purposefully give their custom to local stores and actively seek out locally sourced products, and this figure is set to rise. 

One of the core benefits of local SEO is it puts you in front of local consumers exactly when they need your products or services, with high intent to purchase. And as the vast majority of local searches result in conversions, local SEO has become one of the most powerful ways to market your local business in the past decade.

What is mobile optimisation?

Mobile optimisation is making sure that users who access your site from a mobile, have the best user experience possible on their mobile device. Mobile optimisation is a crucial part of your local SEO strategy. Having a mobile friendly website that is optimised for local search helps businesses to not only improve their visibility in search results, but gives customers a better user experience overall. 

Did you know?

• 92.1% of internet users access the internet through a mobile phone?

• 64% of the combined data traffic worldwide comes from mobile devices?

Every day, more and more people search for local businesses on their mobile devices. Consumers are conducting “near me” searches on Google more than ever, with a 500% growth in "near me" mobile searches which have a variant of "can I buy" or "to buy" over the last two years [Hubspot].

To back this point up:

• 76% of consumers who look for anything local on their smartphone visit the shop within one day. 

• Mobile results have 85% more click-through rate than desktop results.

As the majority of potential customers have access to smartphones, it’s more important than ever for local businesses to optimise their websites for mobile. 

Mobile optimisation offers a better user experience

Everything revolves around providing the best user experience possible. On top of the mobile-first indexing, Google has now also placed emphasis on Page Experience, which is now a ranking factor. If your page is not optimised for mobile, and does not create a good experience for your user, you will not gain the exposure you need via Google.

Therefore this is a huge factor in mobile optimisation. Google wants to make sure that they’re delivering  a great user experience by making it easy to  find what they need.

One main priority is that your website is accessible, which means people with disabilities can use it without any restrictions. The design of the website should be thumb-friendly, as most people use their thumbs to control their phones.

Read our Guide to Mobile Optimisation below for a comprehensive list on how to optimise your mobile site.

Google penalises websites that aren’t mobile-friendly.

We’ve already established that nearly everyone is using their mobile device to search for local companies. Therefore optimising your site for mobile provides a better user experience for all of these potential customers. 

Mobile-first indexing is the default for new websites (after July 2019), and is a pivotal step in the importance of mobile use and mobile SEO strategy. Google now indexes websites depending on the mobile version, which means Google primarily uses the mobile version of the webpage for ranking and indexing purposes. 

Yes, your local business needs to be mobile optimised

A mobile optimised website is one that is easy to use on mobile devices, and provides the user with the best experience possible. It needs to load quickly, on a mobile connection. Content must be accessible, meaning easy to read, or with the relevant alt tags for people with disabilities, and easy to navigate on smaller screens. 

By optimising your business website for mobile you will improve your search engine rankings, but most importantly, people will actually use the site when they find it, if it is easy to use and contains the relevant information the customer is looking for. 

In short, If you’re not optimising your website for mobile, you may be losing out on potential customers.

Who are you and what is this?

This post is one of many aimed at helping to support owners, managers and franchisees with growing their local business. It's been lovingly researched and written by the expert team behind LocalMark, a London UK-based local SEO service that helps connect UK trade, service & retail businesses with nearby customers. If you found this helpful and could benefit from more of the same, be sure to share, follow us on social and sign up for our newsletter (links below).which is a great way to get more visibility in front of the right local customers.