As mobile phones and tablets are gaining popularity among people, it has become mandatory to design websites that are flexible across devices and keep a keen eye on mobile SEO. However, many websites are still not designed to accommodate varying screen sizes and load speeds. Mobile optimization examines your site’s design, structure, page speed, and other factors to ensure that mobile users aren’t turned away unwittingly from your website.

When it comes to optimizing for mobile devices and Google’s transition to mobile-first indexing, there are a few mistakes that you need to avoid. However, before that you need to have a clear idea about mobile SEO. Let’s get into it.

What is Mobile SEO?

Mobile SEO is the process of optimizing a website for search engines while also ensuring that it can be seen flawlessly on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. Due to the extreme popularity of mobile devices, SEO professionals should pay close attention to their mobile SEO strategy. To do a proper Mobile SEO Optimization, you need to invest in hiring dedicated SEO experts to optimize your business websites. After all, more than half of all Internet users now say they use their mobile devices to access websites on a regular basis.

Why is Mobile SEO Important?

Mobile optimization guarantees that mobile visitors enjoy an experience tailored to their device, taking into account site design, structure, page speed, and other factors to create a positive mobile user experience. If your website is already well-optimized for search engines, all you need to do now is make a few tweaks to make it mobile-friendly. If you want your website to be as mobile friendly as preferred by Google, then hire dedicated web developers to develop your site in the proper way.

In the build-up to the algorithm Mobile Speed Update, it became clear that site performance and usability would be deciding factors in whether or not your website was mobile-friendly. These Google tools can help you test your page performance and mobile friendliness:

• For mobile SEO, your website loading speed must be fast. You may check your website speed on desktop or mobile by using the Insight into Page Speed.
  
• You should also check if the website is compatible with other internet enabled devices. To have a proper understanding, you can check your website with the Mobile Compatibility Test.
  
• To check your mobile usability you may check the report in Google Webmaster Tool for accurate understanding.

As the algorithm changes and grows more adept at determining the quality of a mobile user experience, get your website development done by a reputed company to remain updated with the changing scenario.

What are the Differences Between Mobile SEO and Desktop SEO?

There are a few key differences between desktop SEO and mobile SEO. Let’s have a look:

• The quantity of text on a web page is one of the most significant variances. According to SEO best practices, each web page should have at least 300 words of content. However, you need to avoid using heavy size or high quality image or video for the mobile version of the website for better optimization and increase loading speed
  
• The keywords utilized are the second important distinction. People who use a desktop must often input a query into the search engine. However, on a mobile phone, the users will search for different keywords on their device, and they may not even have to write in a keyword if they utilize voice-activated search tools. It is important to remember this while developing content for your site and to investigate mobile keywords in addition to desktop keywords.
  
• Since the algorithms used for mobile searches differ from those used for desktop searches, selecting mobile keywords is critical. As the display screen on a mobile device is so much smaller than that on a desktop, if you’re not in the top four search results, you could not even appear on the screen.

The distinctions between desktop and mobile SEO may become even more evident as technology improves and evolves. Experts are always studying the best methods to optimize online content for both desktop and mobile devices in this field.

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What Are the Mobile SEO Mistakes to Avoid?

• Block Javascript, CSS, and Image Files: It’s typical for some website developers to disable some Javascripts, CSS, and image files, which goes against Google’s standards. The ideal strategy is to keep all files exposed to the crawlers of the search engine.
  
• Don’t Avoid to Optimize Unplayable Content: Video content that is available in a desktop version may not run properly on mobile devices, resulting in a poor user experience. To increase your website’s usability on all platforms, it’s recommended that you utilize HTML5 for video embedding for all animations. Furthermore, you should avoid using flash in order to keep your content simple for search engines to interpret.
  
• Never Overlook the Faulty Redirects and Cross-links: Carefully remove any crawl issues identified in the Google webmaster tool, just like you would for your conventional desktop version. To ensure that your mobile-friendly design is constantly working properly, schedule a regular website health check. When it comes to competing for slots on Google’s search engine result page, well-maintained websites usually perform well.
  
• Avoid 404s Only Available on Mobile Devices: Desktop or mobile both versions of website content should load properly. If the content on the mobile version page is not loaded but is not the case with desktop, then Google will avoid the mobile version of the website. In such cases, when the content fails to load on the mobile version page, the 404 page should load properly. It is also recommended to avoid linking any broken or missing content and allow this mobile version page to crawl by mobile user-agent to find any 404 error.
  
• Don’t Ignore Conversion Optimization for Mobile: All companies want to gain customers, and in order to do so, you must first generate traffic to get relevant website visitor and then convert them as lead. Many organizations, on the other hand, overlook conversion optimization for Mobile version of the website and focus solely on the top of the funnel. Instead, you must provide whatever your leads require in order for them to become paying clients. By disregarding conversion optimization, you risk losing a large number of consumers and, as a result, money.
  
• Never Fail to Use ‘Rel=Alternate Media’: You can quickly map your desktop and mobile URLs if you use the ‘Rel=Alternate Media’ feature. To define the mobile version of your website, you’ll need to add this to the desktop version, but doing the contrary is never a good idea.
  
• Do Not Forget the “Vary: User-Agent” HTTP Header: It’s recommended that you set your server to return the ‘Vary:User-Agent’ HTTP Header whether your website redirects based on mobile device type or just shows different content from dynamic serving. This will assist in maintaining everything mobile SEO-friendly and performing smoothly, even if your redirects are working well.
  
• Don’t Fail Using ‘Rel-Canonical’: Canonical tags are used to avoid duplicate content concerns. By using the ‘Rel-Canonical’ tag in the mobile version of your website, Google will be able to correctly index all pages and prevent detecting any unoriginal content. Consolidating indexing and ranking signals, such as external links, will also help to avoid misunderstanding.
  
• Never Avoid Optimizing Titles and Meta Descriptions: Given the smaller screen sizes of mobile devices, it’s critical to make your website’s content as brief and informative as possible. For the greatest SEO results, make sure you follow all on-page variables like titles and meta-descriptions with keyword-rich content.
  
• Do Not Avoid Using Structured Data: Google always wants to display rich, accurate instant answers to queries. Using Schema Markup data can be helpful for Google to understand and find out the best answers of particular queries in SERP.
  
  You must use relevant schema or structured data for each landing page to categorize your content. Google and its users always show interest on each snippet that showcases exact information they are looking for.
  
  Sometimes rich snippet may not show up in search engine result page for many reasons. Inaccurate mobile optimization is one of the reasons. Use the Rich Snippet Tool and Structured Data testing tool to make sure your structured data is well configured in the entire site.

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Final Words:

Now that you’re aware of all the deadly Mobile SEO mistakes, make a deliberate effort to avoid them. Your business may suffer if you do not build your website for mobile devices, have clear goals, and focus on various types of content. To stay ahead of the competition, try employing contemporary SEO strategies and staying up to speed on the latest ones.

Source: ashtonmacquoid.livejournal.com/551.html