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Mobile SEO

If you want to preserve your spot in the search engine results pages (SERPs), increase site traffic, and keep current customers satisfied, you need to avoid making these 10 mobile SEO blunders.

Since "mobilegeddon" in 2015, Google has been sending a clear message: they are moving to mobile-first indexing, and you need to, too.
When your site is optimized for mobile users first, search engines like Google will prioritize it in their crawling and indexing efforts.

Google will not give you high rankings even if your desktop site is the finest if it does not provide a great mobile experience.
Google has said they will convert to a Mobile-First indexing strategy in 2021 and are now merely cleaning up any remaining sites.

Mobile-friendly content is a must since Google will likely prioritize it while indexing your site.
Nowadays, SEO for mobile devices is crucial.

Focus on what matters for your website by paying close attention to Core Web Vitals, regularly analyzing mobile content for possibilities, and correcting mobile UX concerns.

If you want to preserve your place in the search engine results pages (SERPs), increase your mobile traffic, and keep your users satisfied, you need to avoid these 10 common mobile SEO blunders.

 

Website Loading Times: A Critical Issue

Speed in terms of loading and user interaction is of paramount importance for any site.
Google uses page load time as a ranking criterion, and the majority of the changes made in the recent Core Web Vitals update to focus on improving speed (Largest Contentful Paint and First Input Delay).
According to Google's study, if a website takes longer than three seconds to load, 53 percent of visitors will leave it altogether, regardless of its position in search results.

Your site's page load times should all be under one second; these optimizations may help you get there.
Lessen the number of queries and page reloads: It's best to stick to the bare minimum on websites. Reduce the number of 301 redirects, eliminate extraneous content, tighten up your HTML, and minify resources like CSS and JavaScript to increase your site's loading performance.
You may utilize WordPress's in-built capabilities to resize your photos automatically, and services like compressor.io can reduce the size of your uploaded files.
Make sure your hosting service is working: If you want your site to handle large amounts of traffic, more than the performance provided by cheap third-party hosting options is needed. This is particularly relevant to online shopping.
Check your progress: Check your website's speed using Google's PageSpeed Insights or Lighthouse.
Make use of modern, in-browser features like lazy-loading to put off downloading huge or needless files.

Interstitials, a Must-Have for Any Website

Websites that "may not score as highly" in mobile search results include those whose content is difficult to access on the mobile search results page, as stated by Google in 2017.
This update only affected rankings a little at the time. But now it's a different story.
Intrusive Popup advertising, newsletter sign-ups, and other banners are examples of interstitials since they prevent the user from reaching the site's intended content.

The Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) measure was modified to include a portion of this signal in 2021.
Part of the Core Web Vitals, Cumulative Layout Shift attempts to quantify the overarching changes to a page's layout throughout the loading process. This includes features like popups, interstitials, and other UI elements frustrating users.
A negative user experience may result in a poorer search engine ranking for that page. Included in this are:
They were blocking the main content of a website with a popup, either immediately after clicking through from Google search results or as the user scrolls down the page.
Hard to close interstitials that don't belong to a more extensive sequence of ads, particularly if clicking them by mistake takes you to a different page.
Layouts mislead viewers into believing they see an interstitial by placing important information above the fold.
Keep in mind there are a few outliers to this generalization. Some examples of interstitial adverts that will continue to rank well regardless of the new signal are:
Interstitials required by law, such as those asking for your age or informing you that we're using cookies.
Registration forms for inaccessible content (e.g., private content like emails and content behind paywalls).
Banners of a Reasonable Size (e.g., the app install banners provided by Safari and Chrome). They often are at most 20% screen real estate.

Inaccessible Material: Forbidden Documents

There may be gaps in your content strategy if your mobile site looks quite different from your regular site.
Restricting Googlebot's access to JavaScript, CSS, and image files on your site might harm your search engine results.
Make sure the robots.txt file blocks nothing crucial on your website.
You can check the functionality of your robots.txt file in the Google Search Console.
Using Fetch by Google and the mobile-friendly test, you can ensure no more indexing and mobile-specific problems, respectively.
The difference between your desktop and mobile URLs is something you should verify.

There was an expansion of this signal into the Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) measure in 2021.

As part of the Core Web Vitals, Cumulative Layout Shift aims to quantify the total number of layout changes that occur on a page throughout the loading process.
This includes features like pop-ups, interstitials, and other UI elements that are annoying to users.

A negative user experience may result in a poorer search engine ranking for that page.
Such examples are:

Covering the main content of a website with a popup, either immediately after clicking through from Google search results or as the user scrolls down the page.

Ads that pop up on their own and won't go away, particularly if clicking them by mistake takes you to a different website.

Layouts that mislead viewers into clicking on an interstitial by placing misleading information above the fold.

Keep in mind there are a few outliers to this generalization.
The following are examples of interstitial adverts that will continue to rank well regardless of the new ranking signal:

Interstitials required by law, such as those asking for your age or informing you that we're using cookies.

Authentication prompts for non-searchable material (e.g., private content like emails and content behind paywalls).

Banners of a Reasonable Size (e.g., the app install banners provided by Safari and Chrome).
Typically, they don't take up more than 20% of a display's real estate.

Data Not Found: Forbidden Documents

It's possible that some information will be missing if your mobile site is vastly different from your regular site.

Restricting Googlebot's access to JavaScript, CSS, and image files might have a negative impact on your results. Googlebot should be able to crawl your website like a normal user.

Make sure nothing crucial is blocked by the robots.txt file on your website.

Your robots.txt file may be tested in the Google Search Console.

Make sure there are no more indexing problems by using Fetch by Google, and fix mobile-specific errors by using the mobile-friendly test.

In addition to comparing mobile and desktop URLs, you should also compare the difference between the two.

Unplayable Content is Absent

It's important to think about things like site load time and device compatibility before adding video or other multimedia to a website.

Where feasible, a transcript should be sent as well.
Both users who rely on closed captioning and Google (for indexing) will benefit from this.

Google suggests utilizing HTML5 if you want to add animated content to your website.
Google Web Designer makes it simple to implement such animations, and they should work in all modern browsers.

If your site uses animations, check that they don't exceed a certain Cumulative Layout Shift threshold.

Broken or Inaccessible Media

Make sure your video embedding is compatible with all devices and that page load times will stay the same if you must incorporate video or other multimedia.
A transcript should be provided if at all feasible. This is a win-win for Google's indexing purposes and those who rely on closed captioning.
Google suggests adopting HTML5 for animations on the web. Google Web Designer makes it simple to implement such spirits, and they should work in all modern browsers.
If your site uses animations, check that they don't exceed a certain Cumulative Layout Shift threshold.

Bad redirects and cross-links cause content gaps.

Websites not optimized for mobile devices sometimes need fixing with broken redirection. This is particularly the case with mobile-optimized versions of desktop sites.
Familiar places to make enhancements include:
When a mobile visitor visits your desktop site in error, please send them to the mobile version of the page they were looking for. They should be sent out of the main page of your mobile site.
Make sure you have a mobile version of your site for those that access it by smartphone as soon as possible. Only send visitors to your mobile homepage after those pages have gone live.
When a mobile user requests a dynamically created URL, they should be sent to a mobile-friendly version of the same page.
All mobile users, regardless of device, need to have the same experience.
Make sure that your mobile-friendly URLs lead users to something other than the non-mobile-friendly desktop versions of your sites.
Making your site responsive, as opposed to using a subdomain, is the simplest method to prevent these problems. Because of this, many of the typical mislinking issues are prevented.
To ensure Google accepts your mobile site, you must verify it. By doing so, you may pinpoint mapping difficulties and find crawling mistakes in Google Search Console.

Empty pages: 404 errors that only appear on mobile devices

 

To reiterate, your site's desktop and mobile versions must provide the same information. If material is not accessible to Google on mobile devices, it will not be indexed.
Whenever a mobile user tries to visit a viewable website on a desktop, they should not get a 404 error.
Linking to missing or broken content may lead a visitor to a 404 error page. Thus it's essential to check for these errors by crawling your site using a mobile user agent.

Structured data is absent.

Google's ultimate goal is to provide users with comprehensive, instantaneous responses to their inquiries.
Your mobile search rankings will improve if you use schema.org to supply such answers.
You need to classify your content using Schema or Structured Data markup to avoid losing out on a significant factor in organic click-through rate. Rich snippets that provide samples of the information people are looking for tend to do well with Google.
Several reasons your rich snippets could not appear in search engine results. One of the causes is bad mobile implementation.

Rich Snippets and the Structured Data checking tool can help you make sure your site's structured data is up to par.

Negative User Experience: Failing to Define Mobile Viewport

There is a wide variety of mobile screen sizes. Thus it's essential to employ the viewport meta tag to ensure that each user's experience is optimized for their device.
Some typical errors are:
I am using viewports with a defined width designed for a subset of devices.
Subpar minimum viewport requirements that exclude mobile users.
There are simple solutions to these issues, fortunately:

Mobile SEO

Facilitate user scalability.
The meta viewport element allows you to adjust the width and height of your website according to the user's device.
Width = device-width ensures that the display width equals the physical width of the user's device.
Ensure that initial-scale=1 is present. That way, CSS and device-independent pixels will always correspond one to one.

These changes are crucial for accessibility and not only for the benefit of mobile users and bots.
CSS media queries also allow you to tailor your page's presentation to various screen sizes. For more details, please see the Google Developers blog post on Responsive Web Design Fundamentals.

Poor User Experience, Mobile Design

The terms "mobile-first" and "mobile-friendly" are often used interchangeably, leading to confusion.
With a mobile-first strategy, Google will prioritize the mobile version of your site above the desktop version when crawling your site.
When a website is "mobile-friendly," it's optimized for mobile devices.
Being mobile-friendly isn't required to be mobile-first, but it is necessary to thrive in today's mobile-first environment.
Instead of focusing on the desktop, design for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.
Only use tiny fonts or lots of clutter on the screen.
Create breathing room between the various components on your website, so mobile visitors don't accidentally tap the incorrect link or button.

To implement a responsive strategy, you should not double-check the data you've been using.

Learn the inner workings of the software you depend on often and how it arrives at the numbers you use.
Use a top-notch site auditing tool to determine where your mobile and desktop sites differ.
Make sure you've double-checked anything that might affect your website's performance, including the text, links, title, meta tags, schema markup, etc. And be careful to check your work on both a desktop and a mobile device.
Keep in mind that even though many solutions claim to do the same tasks (such as conducting a site audit), they may provide notably different outcomes. Compare your findings to those of another tool; you might be shocked at the discrepancy.
Learn the methodology behind each tool's stats to ensure you can trust them. You'll be able to zero down on the critical KPIs for your company with this information at your disposal.

Optimized for Mobile Search Engines

Usability is the foundation of both traditional SEO and SEO for mobile devices.
To succeed with search engine optimization (SEO), you need to know your target demographic inside and out. Your efforts, including search engine optimization, content creation, website architecture, etc., should be founded on this study. Knowing how people act while shopping online might help you better connect with them.
Many typical SEO blunders stem from a need for more client awareness, such as selecting the incorrect keywords, writing ineffective headlines, and marketing via the wrong channels.
If your content appeals to something other than your target audience, avoiding these blunders and having staff work diligently to improve your mobile SEO won't matter.
You should utilize the resources you already have at your disposal to listen in on the discussions people are having about your brand (and the brands of your rivals). Understand who you're selling to and what you're selling before you try to sell anything else. You'll be ready to create a fantastic, mobile-friendly website after that.

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