Mobile SEO starts with a site that works in one hand.

Mobile usability is how easily a person on a phone can read your page, find what they need and act on it, which for a service company usually means calling or sending a request. Mobile SEO means keeping the phone version of the site complete and usable, because that is the version Google reads and the one many of your customers see first.

What Google reads on the phone version

The first check is that nothing is missing, because Google indexes the phone version. I compare the desktop and phone versions of each main page for the same text, headings, links and schema. Text placed in an expandable section still counts, because it’s still in the page. Text the phone layout removes entirely doesn’t.

A mobile menu that leaves out the service pages is the same problem in another form.

Whether a customer can call

The phone number is the most important element on a service company’s mobile page, and it has to work as a button. That means a number coded as a tap-to-call link, visible without scrolling, large enough to hit with a thumb and not crowded by other links. A number that is really part of an image, or one with a chat bubble sitting on top of it, looks fine in a desktop preview. With call tracking in place, the calls that come from that button can be counted.

Forms a person will finish on a phone

A name, a phone number, a line about the problem and a ZIP code are enough for a first contact. The phone field should bring up the number keypad, and fields should be labeled so the phone can fill in saved details. Each extra required field is one more reason to give up, and the search results, with your competitors in them, are one tap back.

What gets in the way

Most obstacles are either laid over the page or sized for a bigger screen. A coupon or newsletter pop-up that covers the screen on arrival is the first kind, and Google treats intrusive pop-ups as a mark against a page. Stacked widgets do the same job: a chat bubble, a cookie notice and a sticky bar together can cover much of a small screen.

The second kind is small text and wide tables, anything that forces pinching to zoom or scrolling sideways. Footer links packed so closely that a thumb hits the wrong one belong with them.

How I test on real phones

A resized desktop browser window hides the problems that matter, so I test by hand. Google used to offer a mobile-friendly test and a mobile usability report for site owners. It has retired both, so there’s no official pass mark to point at.

I go through each main page on an iPhone and an Android phone, on mobile data, doing what a customer would do: read, tap the number, fill out the form. I fix each problem on its own and recheck it on the same phones, then check rankings about two weeks later.

Where mobile usability stops

Usability covers the page once it’s on screen, and how fast it gets there is measured separately. Many phone customers never reach your site at all: they call straight from your Google Business Profile in the map pack, and a well-built mobile site does nothing for those calls. For the ones who do tap through, usability and speed are both part of technical SEO.