Content Writing for The Small Screens

Your website should be responsive, mobile friendly and it should load fast.

If any article would start from the three advice, I would never read that.

Yet, I took the risk and started this article with the same line.

Irony.

Anyhow, the point is; people would always advise you about what should be done but how you do it, it depends on you. Well, this article is specifically about the content strategies that you should follow while writing the content for the mobile readers. Yes, the website content and the mobile content cannot be the same.

The readers engage with mobile and the web differently. While the web is about getting to the depth of the information and exposing to all the aspects of it, the mobile is all about getting the essence only. The majority of people who read content on mobile; skim it. Skimming is not a bad thing for your content; provided you have prepared for it.

Top SEO Firms use different techniques to develop ‘made for mobile’ content. They are modest enough to lend us some of their secret tactics. So, let us go ahead and get benefitted with these techniques.

#1. F pattern is for the web, mobile audiences read the center of the screen

If you think the mobile readers read the content in the same way as they read the web content, you cannot be more wrong. The center of the mobile screen gets the maximum attention. This is the area where you have to place your most important content. The powerful headlines, the summaries, the CTA etc. all should be placed at this part of the screen.

#2. Above the fold, below the fold: It does not matter

The fact of the mobile use is that we love scrolling. Even when we are not finished reading the content above the fold, we cannot stop our thumb from scrolling. As such, the concept of above the fold and below the fold is pretty much useless. The experts of the SEO still recommend writing the most valuable content above the fold because this content is what makes the readers scroll down. We would just suggest you that you write the good content below the fold too; when user scroll down and they read your content below the fold, they would scroll up again to read from the start.

It just appears like a long short but this suggestion comes from my personal habit of reading on the mobile phone. I would read the first paragraph and then scroll down. If the following content is good, I would scroll up again to read from the start. So if you are confused about placing the CTA for your content, make sure that you repeat it two-three times, so that the scrollers will not miss them.

#3. Short and concise; you already know it

This is not some new advice that we are giving you. The mobile screens are small and so should be the texts and images. The headlines should be short, the paragraphs, the intro, and the summary; all should be trimmed for better mobile reading. Write a content which is easy to scan. Use correct fonts and font size. You can read our article about writing the skimmable content for more information.

#4. How much scrolling is too much scrolling

We are talking about the pagination. If you are investing in the infinite scrolling, think twice. These tactics may work for the e-commerce sites but it generally does not for every website. Readers would scroll down and see the length of the content, and there are fewer chances that they read the long content instantly. They would either bounce off, skim or mark the content to read later. There are very few talented writers who can make their 3000-4000 word content read by the readers on mobile. If your content is not powerful enough, use pagination and write the most important content on the first page.

#5. Shift from ‘Mobile First’ to ‘Mobile Only’

If you are considering the mobile strategy as a complementary one or you are writing for both mobile and the web, it is time to take sides. This is no more a mobile-first world, we have entered into the mobile-only world. The mobile CTA should not only be limited to the calls, your all the CTA that brings the traffic should be placed on the mobile content. The local searches on mobile are rising but it is also the device that the audience reaches to when they want to get the information about anything.

One additional tip at the last. The voice search is growing fast and with the use of the voice assistants, the need of the direct answers is also increasing. The best practice to follow for the mobile content is to write the content in answer format. SEO Companies suggest writing a short summary at the end of the article and the intro should give the direct definitions which can appear for voice searches.

So, are you ready to write a content for the mobile audiences? If you are using any specific strategy that is working for you, please comment below.