What Mistakes SEOs Make When Optimizing Sites For Mobiles?
Websites should be serious in their approach towards mobile searches that are increasing day by day. Focusing more on desktop results and joining mobile SEO with desktop SEO could be a mistake. Here I’m listing 5 biggest SEO mistakes website owners make while optimizing their sites for mobile searches. Website owners should be careful with their mobile customers as sites are searched more on mobiles than desktop.
1# Responsive design
A website that fits into every screen size from large desktop monitors to mobile displays is called responsive. Users find no difference in viewing responsive sites on desktops, laptops, tables and mobiles. Today it has become mandatory to make mobile friendly websites. It is so because more and more people are using handheld devices for Internet surfing.
Not having responsive website would mean losing business to competitors that are present on mobile searches. Google has also started including responsive design as a ranking factor since 2010 and it wants sites to use single URL for desktop and mobile searches. Making separate sites for mobiles won’t be of much help as you will use different URLs for the sites.
2# Loading speed of mobile pages
Having a mobile friendly site is a plus point but the site should also download at a high speed otherwise it would be good for nothing. Ideally a mobile page should take no more than 5 seconds in downloading. Quick downloading will increase your ad revenue twice. Also quick downloading will increase visibility by 25% and the length of sessions by 70%.
Slow loading sites annoy visitors that click back from the sites and also Google punishes the slow downloading sites with decrease in mobile search ranking. Websites should look at factors like server response time, browser caching, Google AMP and optimized images to boost their downloading speed.
3# Technical SEO
In the enthusiasm of taking your site to mobile platform and climbing the mobile search ladder with your SEO knowledge and experience, you could avoid technical factors that are equally important as our on-page and off-page optimization is. Like a seasoned SEO, you would be familiar with the terms robots.txt, XML sitemaps, microformats and meta robot tags. These are important technical factors in SEO and missing even a single factor could tank your mobile site.
4# Rich snippets
If you can spend some time in improving your website content, you can get your site figure with rich snippets displayed as star ratings, images and author information. Google loves content that is authentic and interesting and it throws its weight behind sites with rich snippets. With Google recommending your site, you will get more views and clicks. What you can do to bring your site on rich snippets is to give answers to the FAQs regarding your business. Writing snippets is a tedious job but it pays rich dividends.
5# Multimedia content
Adding virtual content including videos and GIFs to your site will increase user experience to a considerable level but wait before you start uploading videos on your mobile site. Make sure that your viewers are able to view the multimedia content in a hassle free manner. There could be technical problems with the content but these problems could slow your website downloading speed and reduce user experience. Google has an answer to this question. It is using HTML5.
Conclusion
Mobile Internet seems to be the future of Internet. Desktop searches are decreasing day by day as the searchers are turning to mobile devices that work like computers. In the changed scenario, websites have to take cater to needs of desktop as well as mobile searches.
