Mobile SEO Mistakes: From different algorithms such as “mobilegeddon” in 2015 to mobile-first indexing in last 2016,Google has been always delivering a message i.e. your website should be mobile-first.
It means mobile SEO is now more pivotal than ever.
Here are the top 10 mobile SEO mistakes you have to avoid if you want to get better positions in search engine results pages, drive more traffic to your mobile website.
1. Slow Site Speed
Page load speed is one of the main Google ranking factors. According to Google research, 53 percent will abandon a page if it takes longer than 3 sec to load.
Your website goal should be to get a mobile page to render in under 1 sec.
How will you get a mobile page to render in under 1 sec?
Here are a few immediate tips to help speed up your mobile website (Mobile SEO):
- Minimize requests and redirects: Always try to keep pages clean and simple. Avoid using the 301 redirects as much as possible, optimize your HTML code, remove unnecessary elements from your page, and also minify the CSS and Javascript code.
- Compress Images: You can use built-in tools in WordPress to automatically resize images for you , and tools like compresspng.com to compress the file size.
- Check your hosting solution: Cheap hosting provider wouldn’t give you the site speed you need to host huge volumes of traffic. This is especially true for e-commerce.
- Check your progress: Using Google PageSpeed insights is a quick and easy tool to check the website’s performance.
You can also create AMP optimized pages. These pages load multiple times faster than regular.
2. Blocked Files
Googlebot crawls the website like an average user, which means restricting access to JavaScript, CSS, and image files on the website can harm the ranking. Check your website’s robots.txt file to see if any important elements are disallowed. Go to the Google Search Console and text the robots.txt file.
Remember to test all the URLs, especially if your site uses separate mobile and desktop URLs.
3. Interstitials Ads
If your website displays any pop-up ads that cover the full screen, then you might rethink your mobile design- especially when it is your most compelling CTA.
Any website page that provides a poor user experience could rank lower in organic search. This includes:
- Pop-ups that cover a page’s main compelling con.
- Pop-ups that cover a website’s page main content
- It is difficult to dismiss the standalone interstitials, especially when clicking on these
- interstitials redirects you to a new page.
- Misleading layouts, where the above the fold portion tricks users to think they are viewing an interstitial.
But there are some exceptions to this interstitial rule. Interstitial ads that are not adversely affected by the ranking signal include:
- The interstitials that are legally necessary includes the age verification and cookie usage.
- Login dialogs for unindexable content.
- Reasonably sized banners that take upto 20% of a screen.
4. Unplayable Content
Before including the video on your page, consider how it will affect the website speed and whether the video-embedded is working on all the different devices.|
Try to include the transcript whenever possible. This will help Google for indexing.
If you want to include the animated content on your website, use HTML5.
5. Bad redirect or cross links
Wrong redirects are a major error that haven’t been optimized for mobile. This is more pivotal for those who have separate mobile and desktop URLs.
You can improve in the given area:
- If mobile users by mistake land on the desktop version of your website, redirect them to the mobile version of the page they are looking for. They should not be redirected to the mobile website’s homepage.
- If you don’t have the mobile version equivalent of your desktop pages, remedy that as soon as possible. Until those smartphone pages are live, you should land users to the desktop page as opposed to redirect them to the mobile home page.
- Mobile users who request for the dynamically generated URLs should be taken to an equivalent mobile URL that properly displays the information they are looking for.
- Mobile users should be served the same content across all devices.
- Avoid linking to desktop-optimized versions of your website pages from the mobile URLs.
If you want to be automatically alerted to wrong redirects, verify your mobile website with Google. This will help you detect crawling errors that you can later correct in Search Console.
Cannibalization: How to Identify & Fix Keyword Cannibalization to Boost SEO
6. Mobile-Only 404s
Users on the desktop and mobile versions of your website should be able to access the same content of your website. You need to remedy any instance in which mobile users receive a 404 error while trying to access a page that desktop users can see.
Generally, you should eliminate all 404 and soft 404 pages- these could help improve the search engine ranking of your website. Website auditing software such as ahref will help you easily find and fix the broken links and 404 errors.
7. No Rich Snippets
You can give extra information about your website by using the schema.org. It provides the answers to queries that will give your website a lift up in mobile search results.
If you are not using the Schema or Structure Data markup yet to categorize your content, then you are missing one of the keys that drive organic CTR. The users tend to respond more to rich snippets that trump your CTR.
You can test the website’s structure data, and be sure that both the mobile and desktop versions are equivalent, by using the Structure Data Testing Tool.
8. Not specify the Mobile Viewport
Different mobile models have multiple shapes and sizes, so if you don’t specify the correct viewports using the viewport meta tag, then the users may experience pages improperly fitted to their device.
Common mistakes include:
- Fixed-width viewports only work on certain devices.
- Poor mobile viewport parameters leave the users with smaller devices.
Luckily, these problems are very easy to fix:
- Enable user scaling.
- Use the meta viewport to control the page’s basic dimensions and scaling.
- Match the mobile screen’s width in pixel with width =device-width.
- Include initial-scale=1 which ensures 1:1 relationship between device-independent pixels and CSS pixels.
CSS media queries are also used to style the page differently for small and large screens. Visit the Google developers blog for Responsive web design,
9. Poor mobile design
Your design should be mobile-friendly. Avoid the small font sizes, illegible fonts, and on-screen clutter.
Give space between the elements so that mobile users aren’t at risk of clicking the wrong link or button.
10. Not Cross-Checking Metrics You Rely On
Learn how the tools work which you are using on the regular basis. And also hoe the metrics you rely on are calculated. When you are optimizing whether for mobile or desktop make sure that you are using the best site auditing tool to find the website bug. Check your content, your backlinks, your title/meta tags, your schema markup etc that will play a key role in your website success.
Meantime, whether different tools boast similar functions or different results. Cross-check your results in another auditing tool, you might be surprised by how much they differ.
Desktop & Mobile SEO
The key of any successful SEO strategy is to understand your audience. The research is the backbone of everything you do- SEO, content, site design, etc. If you know about the customers and how they are behaving online, you will better appeal to your audience.
Not understanding the customers is a wrong signal to the most common SEO mistakes, whether it is choosing the wrong keywords, using headlines that address the wrong points, or promoting on the wrong channels.
Conclusion:
Try to avoid all these mobile SEO mistakes and work to optimize the mobile SEO, but all these efforts have no use if your content doesn’t appeal to your target audience. Get to know the audience intimately. Then you will be ready to optimize your mobile website.
