As mobile usage continues to grow, it's more important than ever to follow best practices to rank as high as possible in the SERPs. These mobile SEO best practices include some additional aspects that are likely not part of the SEO steps you have implemented for your desktop site, but may prove to be very beneficial in the long run. Masu.
targeted keywords
Targeted keywords are an important part of both desktop and mobile SEO strategies, and keyword research should be part of your SEO marketing strategy. Mobile users enter searches manually on small devices, so mobile keywords are slightly different from desktop keywords. This usually means entering the shortest term possible. Therefore, the keywords you use for mobile SEO should also be short.
Location comes into play here too, as many mobile users are away from home when performing searches. If they live a few towns away and are looking for a birdcage, their search will be centered around that location, so your keywords should match.
Look at your competitors
Everyone is fighting to acquire and convert a specific target audience. This is even more true for mobile SEO as it involves the element of location. Users searching locally will receive fewer results because they have fewer options when the location parameter is added. This is why it's especially important to closely monitor your competitors and the mobile SEO strategies they use.
Semrush offers free organic research tools that allow you to explore your competitors' keyword rankings, where they appear in the SERPs, and how much organic traffic certain search terms are bringing in. Since everyone is competing for the same audience, these additional metrics will help you customize your keywords and phrases to stay on par with your competitors.
consistent content
Although desktop and mobile sites look a little different, providing consistent content on both platforms is an important part of ranking well on Google. Let's say a customer performs a search on their laptop, finds your site, and reads a blog post with helpful recommendations. That same customer should be able to easily find the exact same content on their phone a week later.
When Google introduced its mobile-first approach, it emphasized that websites should provide the same experience on both mobile and desktop. This includes details such as using the same headings and ensuring that Google's web crawler can access the content and resources of your mobile and desktop pages.
Using structured data
In order for search engines to crawl your site and suggest the best results, they first need to know what your website is about. Structured data is a set of data that is organized in a particular way on a web page, giving search engines a way to describe your site in terms that they understand. Mobile SEO labels structured data with specific text groups to help search engines understand the context of the information and provide the most accurate SERPs.
Google, Bing, Yahoo! Yandex and Yandex have teamed up to create Schema.org, a vocabulary used to convert a website's content into code that search engines can read. Structured data is a kind of language that allows crawlers to understand and categorize the content of her website.
visual content
Images are a powerful SEO tool because they make it easier for customers to consume your content. However, an image that looks good on a desktop might be too large on a mobile device. This means you need to edit the image size on your mobile site.
Additionally, while pop-ups work well on desktop devices, they are not suitable for viewing on smaller screens, so mobile sites should not include pop-ups.
Since many users require images along with text results, Google offers some image SEO tips. Search engines are encouraged to use standard HTML image elements to help crawlers find and process images, and to use supported image formats such as BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG, WebP, and SVG. It is recommended.
Site speed optimization
Optimizing the loading speed of a mobile site is not the same process as optimizing the loading speed of a desktop site. People who are sitting around tend to have a little more patience than people who are on the go and need answers right away. According to Google, 53% of mobile site visitors will leave a site if it takes too long to load. This will result in a huge number of potential sales being missed.
PageSpeed Insights is a great tool for analyzing mobile page speed, including what users are experiencing and performance issues. Once you have this information, you can take several steps to resolve performance issues and optimize your mobile site speed:
- Size images appropriately
- Reduce unused JavaScript
- Minimize redirects
- Prioritize content at the top of each page
- Improve server response time
Choose appropriate tags and descriptions
The title tag provides the topic of the web page to both users and search engines, while the meta description describes the content on the page. Both are considered on-page SEO. In other words, they are elements that exist directly on a web page to help users and crawlers navigate your site.
Choosing the right title tag and meta description is essential to improve rankings and get more clicks. Best practices for writing title tags and meta descriptions include:
- Keep title tags between 50 and 60 characters long, and meta descriptions under 120 characters.
- Incorporate your main keywords
- Match title and description exactly with content
- Create unique, high-quality descriptions
- Include a call to action
