It’s almost two years since Google brought its first-ever mobile algorithm. Dubbed Mobilegeddon, the algorithm was meant to ensure two things- One, force desktop websites to go mobile, and two, deliver an uncluttered user experience on mobile. Google had an undeniable reason behind the move. In three years or so, mobile devices toppled desktop websites in terms of visitor traffic.
The mobile web is now in the advanced stage of its evolution and very soon will be the moderator of online businesses over the Internet. Whatever the business model an organization follows, Search engine optimization and especially Mobile SEO are going to get a definite momentum during the play.
Players in SEO services visualize the entire spectrum in a new light and elaborate the whole process according to their understanding of this theme. The article is a comprehensive minute of the thought process that SEO people communicate about Mobile SEO.
Mobile SEO Best Practices for Better Rankings
That’s exactly why Google decided to switch to mobile-first indexing. Google compelled business owners to take the mobile route and deliver a user experience in sync with the latest Google mobile-friendly algorithm guidelines. Mobile-friendliness is now a norm and an important ranking signal for websites running online.
At times, when Google is ruthlessly monitoring websites over its mobile-friendly guidelines, you need to relook at your mobile SEO strategy. Despite having a mobile website in place, if your business isn’t receiving the expected traction, you have to tweak your mobile SEO elements.
The following are the most important mobile ranking factors for your reference. Fix them out to boost mobile website ranking.
1. Targeting the Right Audience
Mobile web looks for quite a different genre of the audience. Being a Mobile SEO India professional, you should get focused on your task to recognize the target audience. Here you have to understand that your task is to attract mobile users and not desktop users.
Devote most of your precious time to position your SEO service strategies to escape any potential waste of effort. All you have to do here is to offer them an elegant web experience that they are looking forward to. Needless to say, the browser compatibility difference between mobile and desktop creates a big distinction between them.
2. Improve Website Load Time
The website’s loading speed is an important ranking factor and comes atop in mobile SEO best practices. Studies say that websites appearing in the top 10 positions of SERP have an average loading time of 1.10 seconds or less. A fraction of the increase in loading time could drop your search rankings drastically. No one likes to wait for centuries to see information loaded. If your website doesn’t load in 3-4 seconds, users will abandon your site. Website speed is mainly responsible for the sudden upswing in bounce rate.
3. AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) Compatibility
Though equally rewarding for a niche website, AMP ensures great benefits for news websites and blogs. AMP is designed using a stripped-down form of HTML and CSS. No use of JavaScript at all. The code cuts short the clutter and delivers a super lightweight and uncluttered version of a web page to the user. AMP makes webpages easily searchable, and thus, pages load many times faster than regular pages. This is why AMP has an incredible impact both on rankings and Click-through-Rates.
4. Check The User Intent
Before finalizing the structure of a mobile website you should try to understand the overall intent of the website. You must ask your visitors about the experience they are having with a desktop website and whether or not they are willing to change the trend. And if yes, what will be the terms? To check the user behavior and user traffic to your website you can use web analytics solutions available in the market.
5. Fix On Page SEO Elements
This is the functional part of the mobile site optimization that you need to work on during the process. Keep in mind certain primary factors that play a significant role during the optimization. Since a mobile screen is smaller in size, there are fewer characters displayed in the SERPs. You should therefore format your meta tags in a mobile-friendly style. It is becoming increasingly vital to target your keywords specifically to target mobile traffic. Remember that a user of the desktop version of our website has a different perspective to pursue than the user of a mobile version of the website.
6. Work on Redirects
It is very important to understand that you must serve your mobile website visitors a correct version of the website. What I will suggest you use redirects based on the user agent. When you set redirects based on user-agent detection, when someone visits your desktop website on a mobile he is redirected to the mobile version of the same.
From the SEO services perspective, use server-side redirects (301s or 302s) rather than Javascript redirects. Javascript causes a cliff in the load time. You need to make sure that make sure that if a user clicks on the mobile link, he will be redirected to the desktop version of the same website. Remember these quick tips on redirecting.
7. Optimize Images
Expressive images help readers understand the content, and context well. They are aesthetically pleasing and tenders sound impact on viewers than the text-only content. Persuasive images make websites a place worth visiting. However, an abundance of heavy images affects the site’s loading speed. To keep the website speed fast and uninterrupted, optimize image dimensions and file size. In addition, avoid using too many images within the content unless necessary.
8. Keep Away From Intrusive Interstitials
Using intrusive interstitial ads will drop your site rankings. Annoying ads, kill users’ interest in consuming your content, regardless of the device being used. When it’s mobile, tricking users with intrusive interstitials is a sin. Mobile devices have a much smaller screen to display content, so even a single pop-up can obstruct content from being browsed and read.
Google sniffed the nuisance, thus introducing an intrusive interstitial update sometime back. The update listed guidelines for showing up interstitial ads on mobile websites. Flouting these guidelines could result in a considerable ranking drop.
9. Don’t Use Small Fonts
Your website fonts are integral to the user experience, especially when it’s a mobile website. When a user opens a desktop website on a handheld device, fonts shrink due to space crunch. It creates trouble in reading site content. This happens as a page made for a standard PC display is shrunk to a size compatible with a mobile display. Keep the size of heads and associated paragraphs up to a size that’s readable on mobile devices.
10. Avoid Excessive Interlinking
Again, space crunch on mobile display limits the number of links a content page may have. A webpage on mobile should have 75% fewer links than desktop pages. This increasingly helps in improving UX. It’s recommended not to place the links too close to each other, as it creates hurdles in tapping desired links.
11. Over Keyword Optimization
Though keywords remain important for search rankings, over-optimization may kill the content flow. Desktop websites have longer text where keywords may be placed in a natural order. However mobile sites have shorter texts due to space scarcity, so it would be better to include limited keywords and phrases. Don’t intrude into the natural content flow by over-optimizing your keywords.
12. Word Count:
When it comes to the word count, longer is better. Lengthy content, if written wisely, gains traction and improves rankings. This is true for both Desktop and mobile websites. There is no standard limit on how many words should a content page have, yet, it should be long enough to make the page context clear. However, while publishing content for mobile sites, make your content rich by the mobile screen’s standards. Usually, a content page with a word count between 700 to 1000 words is enough.
13. Focus on Mobile Specific Predictive Search Terms
Experts believe that since most of the mobile searches by the users are location and task-based, primary search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing explore the search criterion in a slightly different manner. The search engines present their mobile content in a new and unique way to make mobile phones more accessible and device-oriented.
14. Utilize Social Signals
Social signals are an absolute advantage for your website. Engaging people over different social media platforms gives a visible mobile website. Social networks are equally important for mobile sites also as users spend a good amount of their time browsing social networks. Sharing your mobile content with your online communities on Facebook, Twitter, and other social network will be a rank booster.
Tarun Gupta, CEO of Brainpulse Technologies, is a prolific author and digital marketing specialist. His insightful writings span SEO, content marketing, social media strategy, and email campaigns, offering invaluable expertise to businesses worldwide. Tarun’s contributions continue to shape the digital marketing landscape, guiding success in multiple niches.