This trend will most definitely continue as mobile web browsing continues to steadily overtake desktop’s share of web traffic. Therefore, if you want to make your website stand out from the crowd and beat competition, you must optimize your mobile design for SEO.

To that end, here are five tips to ensure your website’s mobile design is SEO-friendly.

5 Tips to Ensure Your Site’s Design is Mobile-Friendly

1. Eliminate Intrusive Pop-ups

Think of the times you’ve stumbled upon interesting content on the web, only to leave because of those annoying pop-ups which completely cover the contents of the web page.

Since the mobile-friendly algorithm update in 2015, Google has been devaluing websites with intrusive mobile pop-ups. And rightly so!

Below are a few examples of intrusive popups:

Image Credit: Google Webmaster Central Blog

According to Google, intrusive interstitials result in poor user experience due to the smaller size of mobile screens. As such, you should avoid having too many pop-ups on your website.

Not all popups are intrusive though. Check out this article by Search Engine Journal on how to use pop-ups without harming your SEO.

2. Speed Up Your Landing Pages

Site speed is a crucial search engine ranking factor. The quicker your landing pages load, the more engagement you’ll receive.

The speed at which the landing pages on your website load is even more important when they are being accessed via mobile devices.

Users won’t stay engaged for long if your web page takes a long time to load, no matter how valuable the content is.

So how do you go about decreasing the load time of your landing pages?

Start with these 3 simple steps:

• Identify larger images on your website and compress them using tools such as ShortPixel or TinyPNG.
• Next, analyze every piece of JavaScript and CSS and minify them when need. Here’s a useful guide on how to minify CSS and Javascript files in WordPress by WPBeginner.
• And lastly, minimize as many redirects as possible. These redirects create additional HTTP requests, which increase your page’s load time. Google recommends sending users with mobile user agents to the mobile equivalent URL without intermediate redirects.

Need more tips on how to improve your site’s speed and performance? Check out this article which highlights 8 simple to steps to boost your website’s speed. 

3. Use the Right Font Size

If the font size on your website is too small, you may force your visitors to “pinch to zoom” in order to read. You’d ideally like to avoid this mistake by using the right font size.

To do this, specify a viewport for your web pages, set your font sizes to scale properly within the viewport.

Read more about font size best practices here.

4. Resolve Unplayable Content Issues

Some types of videos or content are not playable on mobile devices, such as experiences that require Flash or other players that are not supported on mobile devices.

Unplayable content, when featured on a page of any website can be very frustrating for mobile users who may receive messages like these:

Image Credit: Google Developers

To provide a better mobile experience for users, follow these tips:

1. Use HTML5 standards for animations to provide a good experience to all your users.
2. Use video-embedding that’s playable on all devices.
3. Consider having the transcript of the video available. This will make your site accessible to people who use browsers that cannot play a proprietary video format.

Here are some more video best practices you can follow.

5. Keep Your Design Simple with Clear Calls to Action (CTAs)

Google recommends keeping the website design as simple as you can to provide a better user experience to mobile users.

To keep your website design smooth and simple, here are 3 recommended actions:

1. Keep your calls to action (CTAs) front and center while keeping secondary tasks on the menu or “below the fold”.
2. Keep your menus short and sweet. Mobile users don’t have the patience to scroll through a long list of options to find what they want. Reorganize your menu to use as few items as possible, without sacrificing usability.
3. And lastly, make sure all your contact forms are designed for mobile.

Conclusion

Having a mobile-first design approach is a must for all site owners as mobile continues to drive more web traffic than desktop. Start by implementing the above tips to improve the mobile design of your website and stay on top of the latest SEO trends to proactively make any future changes.

Related Articles

• 8 Best Keyword Research Tools to Boost Your SEO
• How to Rank in Google’s Featured Snippets (aka Position 0 on Google)
• 10 Technical SEO Tips To Instantly Boost Your Site’s Rankings

The post Mobile SEO Basics: 5 Tips to Improve Your Mobile Site’s Design appeared first on 99signals.

Mobile apps have made the process of content creation easier by turning our smartphones into all-in-one production studios, allowing marketers to create high-quality content.

Download Now: The Ultimate Blogging Toolkit – 75+ Tools to Grow Your Blog [Free eBook]

In this article, we’ll reveal a list of content creation apps that are must-use for marketers. We’ve focused only on iOS apps for this article, but rest assured, we’ll be publishing an article on Android apps for marketers very soon.

So without further ado, here’s a list of 19 amazingly useful iPhone apps for marketing professionals to create high-quality content.

19 iPhone Apps for Marketers to Create Epic Content

1. Clips by Apple

Clips is an iOS app for making and sharing fun social videos. With Clips, you can add text, effects, and graphics to your videos and share them on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter.

Price: Free

 Download Clips for iOS

2. Canva

Ever since its launch in 2014, Canva has been the go-to tool for designers and marketing professionals to create stunning graphics for social media. Last year, Canva launched its mobile app which makes it possible for users to create professionally-designed images from their smartphones.

Canva’s mobile app provides hundreds of free templates which you can use to create awesome graphics in a matter of seconds.

Price: Free

 Download Canva for iOS

3. Adobe Spark Post

If you’re bored with the templates offered by Canva and would like some variety, then you can try Adobe Spark Post.

Adobe Spark Post allows you to create stunning graphics from your phone using professionally designed, eye-catching templates you can easily tweak with just a few taps.

Just select your photos, add some text and apply design filters to instantly create beautiful graphics.

Price: Free

 Download Spark Post for iOS

4. Cameo by Vimeo

Cameo (by Vimeo) is a free video editor and movie maker for iPhone.

Cameo turns your video clips into gorgeous short films in just a few swipes. With Cameo, you can create gorgeous HD videos with powerful editing software. You can trim clips, adjust audio, and rapidly render files. You can even find the perfect soundtrack for your video in Cameo’s carefully curated music catalog.

Price: Free

 Download Cameo for iOS

5. Boomerang from Instagram

Boomerang enables you to create captivating mini videos that loop back and forth and then upload them or share them with your friends on Instagram or Facebook.

Boomerang shoots a burst of 10 photos and then turns them into a GIF-style 10-second video that loops back and forth.

Price: Free

Download Boomerang for iOS

Bonus: Check out 15 Best Instagram Apps for Marketers

6. Adobe Spark Video

Adobe Spark Video helps you create compelling animated videos in minutes.

With Spark Video, you can easily add and trim video clips to make your videos stand out on social media. You can pick from over 25,000 beautiful iconic images, add your own photos to highlight what you have to say, and select from a wide variety of free soundtracks.

Price: Free

 Download Adobe Spark Video for iOS

7. Hyperlapse from Instagram

Hyperlapse from Instagram allows you to shoot polished time lapse videos that were previously impossible without bulky tripods and expensive equipment.

When you shoot a time lapse video with Hyperlapse, your footage will be instantly stabilised to smooth out the bumps from the road and give it a cinematic feeling.

Price: Free

 Download Hyperlapse for iOS

8. Over

Over allows you to create visually appealing graphics from your iPhone.

With Over, you can design a range of images, create a graphic, caption a photo, and more. There’s also a built-in store with add-ons like font and graphic packs, enabling even more customization.

Price: Free

 Download Over for iOS

9. Halide

Halide is a premium camera app for iPhone for thoughtful photography. Halide allows you to use gestures to change exposure and manual focus. You can also customize controls to adapt the app to your needs.

Halide’s professional tools include focus peaking, a detailed histogram, adaptive level grid, and RAW support.

Price: $4.99

Download Halide for iOS

10. Spark Camera

Spark Camera lets you make memorable videos at a dizzying speed. Easily capture clips, apply one of 10 striking filters, add a song from your library, and then share your creation with friends and family though a variety of social-networking services.

Price: $0.99

 Download Spark Camera for iOS

11. Clippy

Clippy is the quickest and easiest way to create GIFs and short video clips from any video on the web. You can easily add text, emojis or stickers, on top of the gifs and clips.

Price: Free

 Download Clippy for iOS

12. Create

Create is a graphic design app for iOS that helps you develop sophisticated designs and graphics; communicate ideas easily using images, typography, shapes and icons; or draw lines.

Price: Free

 Download Create for iOS

13. Camera+

Camera+ helps you use your iPhone to shoot the best photos you possibly can. If you want total control over your photos and wish to attain the best possible quality in doing so, then you need to try Camera+. It’s packed with handy features and gives you advanced editing options.

Price: $2.99

Download Camera+ for iOS

14. MuseCam

MuseCam is a next generation image editor that makes it easier than ever to capture the perfect look for your photos. Shoot and edit your images using film emulating presets, professional grade tools, and advanced camera controls.

Price: Free

 Download MuseCam for iOS

15. Legend

Legend lets you craft text animations with just a few taps. Each template is created by professional motion designers and there are hundreds of combinations of typography, animations, backgrounds, and colors to play with.

Price: Free

 Download Legend for iOS

16. VidLab

VidLab is an all-in-one video editor that allows you to easily create professional videos and photo stories by adding text, artwork, music, video, sound effects, overlays, voice-overs and more to your videos.

Price: Free

 Download VidLab for iOS

17. Layout from Instagram

Layout creates collages by remixing your own photos (up to 9 photos) and instantly presents them in various combinations.

The app gives you complete creative control to tell a story and change the look of your regular photos to convey a mood or theme.

Price: Free

Download Layout for iOS

18. Manual

If you like to manually adjust camera settings, then you’ll love using the Manual app for iPhone. Manual is a powerful camera app that gives you complete control over your images. Quickly and simply adjust all parameters of your image, including Shutter, ISO, White Balance, Focus, Exposure, and Compensation.

Price: $3.99

 Download Manual for iOS

19. Priime

Priime is a photo editing app developed in collaboration with some of the world’s top photographers. Priime helps you quickly make your portraits, landscapes, sunsets, and other photos more beautiful with smart style recommendations based on subject, color palette, exposure, and more.

Price: Free

 Download Priime for iOS

Summary

So these are the apps you should use to create content on the go.

Did we miss out on any of your favorite iPhone apps? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below.

If you found this article useful, be sure to share it on Twitter using the link below:

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The post 19 Best iPhone Apps for Marketing Professionals to Create Epic Content appeared first on 99signals.

Successful email marketers make sure their emails are not just mobile-optimized, but also optimized for different email clients (Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo!, etc.).

In this article, we’ll examine ways in which you can optimize your email campaigns for different email clients.

But before we get into that, let’s take a quick look at the most popular email clients.

The Top 10 Most Popular Email Clients

Naturally, some email clients are way more popular than others.

According to Litmus’ research of 1.06 billion email opens, these are the 10 most popular email clients.

1. Apple iPhone’s Mail app (28% of users)
2. Gmail (16% of users)
3. Apple iPad’s Mail app (11% of users)
4. Google Android’s Mail app (9% of users)
5. Outlook (9% of users)
6. Apple Mail desktop app (8% of users)
7. Outlook.com (6% of users)
8. Yahoo! Mail (4% of users)
9. Windows Live Mail (2% of users)
10. AOL Mail (1% of users)

Now that you know which are the most popular email clients and ones you should prioritize for your email campaigns, let’s dive deeper into what you can do to ensure your emails are optimized for these email clients.

How to Optimize Your Emails for Different Email Clients

1. Create a Plain-Text Version of Your Email

An easy way to help ensure your emails make it into your subscribers’ inboxes is by creating a plain-text version of all your emails.

Most email clients expect trustworthy emails to have both rich and plain-text email versions.

Most email marketing service providers (ESPs) let you create plain-text version of your email within their email editor. ESPs such as AWeber and ConvertKit automatically create a plain-text version of your email.

2. Add Alt Text to Your Images

Most email clients will block images by default. This means that when someone opens your email, the images won’t load unless they opt to do so by clicking a button or changing their default settings.

Adding alt text to your images helps your subscribers understand your message even if they don’t see the images.

Here’s a chart from Campaign Monitor showing which email clients block images, render alt text, and render styled alt text.

Pro Tip: Optimizing the images on your site will not just get you more organic traffic, but it will also provide a better user experience for your readers. Here are 7 actionable Image SEO tips you can implement on your site right away.

3. Set Your Preview Text

Email clients like Gmail, Outlook, and the iPhone Mail app display the first few lines of text from the body of your email alongside the subject line. 

As a result, the first few lines of text could be the deciding factor in whether the recipient opens your email or ignores it.

4. Set a Specific Height and Width for Your Images

Setting a specific height and width for your images will help ensure your email design maintains its structure even when images are blocked by email clients.

It also sets a container for your alt text in email clients that block images by default.

Most ESPs allow you to resize your images. Resize your images to the specific size you want them to be before sending the email.

5. Include a Link to the Web Version of Your Email

Some email clients don’t support HTML, so it’s important to include a link to an online/web version of your email.

Check out this list of what’s supported across different email clients, including link elements, style elements, texts, etc.

Here’s an email from Buffer which has an option to view the email in your browser.

By including a link to the web version of your email, your subscribers whose email client or device doesn’t support HTML can still see your email the way it was meant to be seen.

6. Make Sure Your Links Have Absolute Paths

People will access your emails from different environments, so it’s important that your links have absolute paths. If recipients are outside your company network, the relative links (when the link isn’t a full website address) can break and make your content unavailable to view.

So, instead of a link like this:

<a href=”index.html”>Click here</a>

You can code the link like this:

<a href=”http://www.mysite.com/index.html”>Click here</a>

7. Make Sure Your Image URLs Have Absolute Paths

Similarly, make sure all your images have absolute URLs as well. Your subscribers won’t be able to see the images in your email if they have relative paths.

So, instead of coding an image like this:

<img src=”/images/photo.gif”>

You would code it like this:

<img src=”http://www.mysite.com/email/images/photo.gif”>

8. Preview and Test Your Emails

Even if you think you’ve optimized your email for different email clients, it’s always a good practice to preview and test your email before sending it.

Send out a test version of your email to different email clients, just to make sure they’re working properly.

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