As
the world is turning to handheld devices for everything from shopping to social
networking, mobile is becoming the loudest buzz in the digital marketing
industry. The increased mobility of Internet access has made mobile SEO an indispensable
part of search marketing strategy of businesses both big and small.
With
Google’s dedication in providing its searchers with the best search results and
user experience, and the rising mobility of users, you cannot afford to ignore
the importance of optimizing your website and online content for
mobile users. This post focuses on the Mobile SEO best practices and the common
mistakes you should avoid.
Make your Website Mobile
Friendly
The desktop version of your website may not be comfortable
for a user to browse on a handheld device, because the user has to perform
additional actions like zooming and scrolling to view the content. Most mobile
users would not want to take the pain of viewing your desktop site and simply
ignore it.
There are three different ways to make your website mobile
friendly. You have to choose the type that suits your website’s features and
other requirements. Before choosing the way, you should decide what you want
your mobile visitors to see on the mobile version of your site.
One way to make your site mobile friendly is to use a
Responsive Web Design. In a responsive website the HTML code and URL is same
for both the desktop and mobile versions, but the CSS coding changes according
to the screen sizes of the devices used to view the site. It is easier to
maintain and is Google friendly too, but your flexibility of customizing mobile
user experience is very limited.
Another way is to use the Dynamically Serving Web Design. In
this setup, a server presents different versions of the website with different
HTML/ CSS coding for the same URL, depending on the device requesting access to
the site. The device will determine which version to accept in order to view
the website in the best possible manner. You can customize the user experience
with no restrictions, but it is costly and difficult to create and maintain as
it involves multiple coding.
The third option is to have a separate mobile site. Here, the
mobile version has a separate code base with a URL slightly different from the
desktop version. For example, if your website’s URL is www.webexample.co.in, the mobile version will have the URL- m.webexample.co.in. You get greater customizability, but your
website is prone to duplication and faulty redirect issues with search engines.
The Best Approach to Mobile
SEO
·
Optimizing Smartphone Load
Time
Page load time
on smartphones plays a very vital role in the ranking of the site on search
engines. Google favours websites that load faster, because it seeks to provide
the best user experience. Test your mobile site speed with tools like Pingdom, and implement the suggestions for improving the
speed.
·
Indexing your App
If you have a
mobile app, you can index it on major search engines and have it appear on
SERPs. This will let your potential customers visit your app page directly from
the results page. Although, the click-through rate may not benefit your
website’s rankings immediately, with time, it will help in you in reinforcing
the overall digital marketing strategy for your brand.
·
Using link rel=
“canonical” and “alternate” tags in the Head section
If you are
using a separate mobile site for handheld devices, it is important that you
tell Google about it. In the HEAD section of the HTML code, add a link tag for
each page as follows:
On the desktop
website page, enter the following line:
<link rel=
“alternate” media= “handheld” href= http://m.webexample.co.in/>
On the mobile
site page write the following line:
<link rel=
“canonical” href= “http://www.webexample.co.in”/>
This will let
Google know the relationship between the different versions of the website.
This will help its search spiders to crawl your website better.
·
Using Mobile Sitemaps
The purpose of
having a sitemap is to make it easier for the search crawlers to sift through
the different categories of content on your website. If you have a separate
mobile website, include in its sitemap only those URLs that are on the mobile
site.
The Common Mistakes
·
Wrong Redirects
When you design
a separate mobile website, you are likely to make the mistake of faulty
redirects. This happens when a link in the search result is not redirected to
the right mobile URL. For example, if the product page of our example website-
http://www.webexample.com/products is supposed to redirect
to its mobile equivalent- http://m.webexample.com/products, but instead it just
redirects to the mobile site’s home page- http://m.webexample.com. This will be regarded as
a faulty redirect and Google will see it as a negative factor, because your
links are not helping the visitors.
·
Interlinks between Desktop
and Mobile sites
If you are
using responsive web design or dynamically served website, you may not face
this problem. If you are using a separate mobile website, it is very likely
that there can be certain instances where you may include some internal links
that take a user from the mobile site to desktop site or vice versa. This can
cause problems for users as they are taken to an undesired platform.
·
Poor Presentation of
Multimedia Content
With the
rising speed of Internet access, you cannot ignore the fact that people can use
their smartphones instead of a computer to view videos or images. Optimize your
mobile site’s multimedia content for quick and easy access by users. It is
recommended that you use HTML5 to include video and image content on your
website and slowly move out of Flash, as it is not supported in all
smartphones.
Reach out to the User
·
Know your Audience
A mobile visitor’s
intentions may be different from that of a desktop visitor. You should
understand the objectives of a user who visits your website on a small screen
and include features that are appropriate. Understanding your target audience will
help you improve your mobile site’s user experience.
·
Social Media
Social media
is the ladder is to popularity in this Internet Age. As the visitors share the
content on your mobile site on social networks, more and more people find out
about your brand. Make sure that you include easily visible sharing buttons on
your mobile site.
·
Localize
Get your
mobile site listed on Google Places, Yahoo and Bing. It can help local
searchers find your shop and reach out to you for business. Have a country
specific domain name for a greater advantage on local searches. By localizing
your site, whenever a user searches for a service in the local area, your
website gets preference on the results.
·
Content Quality
Never compromise on content,
even if it is for the small screen, because it is the information that draws a
visitor to your service. Having a quality content that convinces a visitor to
click through is very vital for every mobile site. Shortening of content for
mobile site can result in higher bounce rates and fewer conversions. This is a
negative signal that Google may act upon while evaluating your website’s
relevance of the search results.
As
the mobility of Internet access is rising every day, Content Developers in Mumbai are constantly creating and condensing
information for the mobile to stay ahead of the mobile marketing trends around
the world. If your brand needs that shot in the arm to reach out to the
audience, it is not too late to avail the services of an experienced content developer in Mumbai.
