Mobile SEO has now become as important as desktop SEO today, when phone usage is at the highest level. With the mobile SEO guide I prepared ...
Mobile SEO has now become as important as desktop SEO today, when phone usage is at the highest level. With the mobile SEO guide I prepared in this article, you can learn how to make your websites mobile compatible, thus increasing your click and conversion rates.
What is Mobile SEO?
Mobile SEO, or mobile search engine optimization, is the process of optimizing your website for mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, making it appropriately visible on these devices. When it comes to SEO in general, desktop SEO optimizations are meant, and mobile SEO studies include many of the desktop search engine optimization processes.
Nowadays, people are using mobile devices more often to search on search engines like Google. Therefore, it is very important, especially for websites, to make pages suitable for mobile use.These results tell us that we should give at least as much importance to mobile traffic as to desktop traffic.
What is Google Mobile Compatibility?
Mobile First Indexing Google, the most popular among search engines, uses mobile-first indexing. This means that Google gives weight to sites that have a mobile version for indexing and ranking. If your site has a mobile version, it will give priority to the mobile version when indexing your content.
Let me make a note here; Separate indexing is not done for desktop and mobile rankings. The content is indexed once and mobile is given priority at this stage. If there is no mobile version, the desktop version will be indexed. This means that if your site also has a mobile version, it will get into Google's index faster.
Why is Mobile Search Engine Optimization Important?According to Google, 27.8 billion more queries are made on mobile than on desktop. So the future of mobile searches seems pretty clear. Google also focuses on mobile searches, showing how important this is for websites.
How to Do Mobile SEO?
Mobile search engine optimization involves optimizing website design, content production, and many more critical features with mobile-first in mind. So much so that even the keywords you target on mobile and desktop vary.
There are 4 steps you need to follow for mobile SEO:
- Designing the site as mobile compatible
- Quality site speed
- Mobile friendly URL
- Mobile friendly content
- Mobile Compatible SiteMobile compatible sites are designed to be presented accurately to users on both mobile and desktop.
On a mobile-friendly site, different HTML is displayed on users' devices, but the URL is the same. Only the server returns different codes.
Site-Page Speed
One of Google's ranking factors is page experience. The most important point that affects the page experience is the page or site opening speed. Google recommends that mobile-friendly sites load in less than a second.
As a suggestion, you can use Page Speed Insights , a tool from Google, to check the loading speed of your site .With this tool, you can see the factors that positively and negatively affect the page experience. You can also see and implement suggested solutions for negative reviews. You can find detailed information about Page Speed Insight in the content I prepared here .
Mobile URL
Different URL structures can be used for mobile pages, but Google does not tolerate this tactic. Because every page has two versions, you need to add rel="canonical" tags to each of these pages. Only this way you can tell Google which is the primary version of this page.
However, this process causes unnecessary code usage and the margin of error is very high. At the same time, desktop and mobile pages may be seen as duplicate content. Instead, mobile pages allow you to automatically generate a mobile-friendly URL.
Mobile Compatible Content
It is very important that information is easily and quickly accessible for mobile users. I will give you some practical information that you can apply for this.Keep paragraphs short.
Paragraphs that appear short on desktop may appear much longer on the mobile version. For more readable texts, keep initials limited to 2-3 sentences. Use short and clear sentences.
Prefer short sentences of 10-12 words instead of long sentences of 25-20 words. Try to split long sentences appropriately. Use bulletins, lists and tables.
Try to present the text in different ways to make it more readable. If you wish, you can also consider uploading text fragments as images or videos.Give actual introductions in the introductory paragraphs.
The time users spend on your site is limited. Therefore, to convey that your content is valuable, informative and useful, explain the main idea at the very beginning. Then elaborate. If you are writing a question-focused article, state the answer to this question at the beginning. Explain your reasons later. Use quality white spaces.
White space is the unused space between text blocks and media areas within the site and in the margins. The fact that it is not used actually serves a purpose.The correct amount of space between headings, lines, images and all other elements makes it easier to read. Avoid pop-ups.
You may have seen the notification windows that appear as soon as the page is opened on some websites. These are generally used for e-mail subscriptions, discounted products or campaigns. However, Google can penalize these pop-ups that intervene as soon as the page is opened. Instead, you should properly use these windows for age verification, terms of use, or necessary advertising.
Using Schema Markup (Structured Data)
Using structured data on your website makes the Content easier for Google to understand. This protocol, known as Schema Markup , allows adding factors such as recipes, site ratings, low product prices or locations directly to SERP rankings. Your content may appear in rich snippets.
AMP Usage
AMP pages, also known as accelerated mobile pages, are versions of pages designed to load quickly on mobile devices.
AMP pages load 4x faster than non-AMP pages.
AMP applications work with Google support. That's why accelerated mobile pages are distinguished by an icon in the rankings.Although AMP pages may seem advantageous, they actually cause serious limitations in functionality on the site. Ad control, controls within the page are limited. While it increases the page loading speed, it causes various restrictions. It is always more functional to design the website for mobile instead of creating AMP pages.
Mobile SEO Advantages Your content appears as a single URL on both desktop and mobile, rather than a separate mobile URL.
- It shortens loading times.
- It ensures that users encounter a view optimized for each device. Provides improved user experience.
- Prevents duplicate content issues.
- Design problems are solved because the layout always adjusts to different devices.
- It attracts more website traffic.
- The time spent on the website increases.
- Provides higher customer engagement and conversion rates.
- It also provides improvements in desktop SEO.
- Things to Consider for Mobile SEO
In addition to the ones I mentioned above, there are a few more criteria you should pay attention to and check in mobile SEO studies.
Voice Search Optimization
The use of voice search in mobile searches is increasing day by day. Users frequently use voice assistants such as Siri and Google Assistant. For this reason, voice search optimization is gaining importance day by day.
It is important at this stage to create content that targets searches made by users using voice assistants. You can target long-tail keywords for this. Because people who use voice assistants generally use longer sentences and speak more randomly. Content in question-answer format, keywords targeting local searches, and data configurations on the site are important in voice search optimization.
Title and Meta Descriptions
To increase your page's click-through rate on mobile, you need to optimize title tags and meta descriptions. Only the first 50-60 characters of titles appear in mobile searches. Therefore, using long titles will be useless.
It is also very important to start the first words of your title with the keyword and come up with a unique title for each page.
The maximum character limit required for meta descriptions on mobile is 120. This means that some of the descriptions longer than 120 characters are usually not displayed. In this description, you can summarize your page's content, include your page's main keyword, and place CTAs to encourage clicks. You should also be careful to create custom and unique meta descriptions for each page.
Optimizing for Touch Screen
Since mobile devices are touch-enabled, clickable areas should not be too large or too small. There should be no clickable dots in areas where the page is scrolled, as this could result in unintentional tapping. Font sizes and heading sizes should also be adjusted according to the phone and tablet screen. Images should not overflow the screen and can be enlarged when necessary.
Local SEO Optimization
If you have a local business, you also need to optimize your mobile content for local searches. You need to determine your brand name, address, phone number and place all of these on the site.
Checking the Mobile Optimization of the Site
Once you've set up the mobile version of your site, you can check how user-friendly your site is with a variety of free tools that Google offers.
Google Search Console
After logging into your GSC account, you can click on the “Mobile Availability” section by clicking on the menu bar in the upper left corner. Here you can check whether a mobile version of your site is available. If there is a mobile version, you can also detect problems such as text being too small, clickable elements being too close together. This way, you can make the necessary updates to your page.
Google Mobile Compatibility Test
Another tool you can use when checking your mobile compatibility is Google's own tool, Mobile-Friendly Test . With this tool you can check the mobile usability of your individual pages. You do not need to log in for mobile compatible website testing. Just type the URL you want to check in the search box. In the results, you can find whether your site is mobile compatible, the problems it has, and suggestions to solve these problems.
Desktop and Mobile SEO Comparison
You can compare the desktop and mobile SEO performance of your pages using Google Analytics. You can view the reports from the “Page Experience” section in the control panel.
What is the Difference in Mobile SEO?
Desktop SEO is done to make websites and pages stand out in Google rankings and improve user experience. Mobile search engine optimization is done to ensure that pages are used better on mobile and indexed faster. Essentially, mobile search engine optimization also includes desktop SEO practices. But as an added bonus, it also focuses on making the website appear accurate and useful on mobile. At the same time, as a result of mobile SEO applications, Google indexes and highlights these pages faster.
Mobile SEO Plugins
There are several plugins, especially for WordPress sites, that will make your site compatible on mobile devices. You can make your pages suitable for mobile devices by adding the one that suits you best to your site.
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