By now, you’ve heard a lot about mobile responsive design, accelerated mobile pages (AMP), user-experience and Google mobile-first indexing. Right? But, do you know why everyone is going banana over mobile-friendly website? No, OK don’t worry, we are going to tell you in a jiffy. 2016 marks the very first year in the history when internet usage was more on mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones rather than on desktop and laptop computers, according to the research conducted by the web analytics firm StatCounter. And, this might be one of the reasons why people can’t get enough of mobile-friendly websites.
But, in spite of the dramatic rise of mobile traffic, there are many companies out there whose mobile websites are not doing a great job for them. And, the worst part is that they are not paying any heed to get that fixed. Considering the amount of mobile traffic, committing cringe-worthy mobile SEO mistakes can cost them a significant loss of traffic, potential leads, sales and return of investment (ROI). Here, we have highlighted 5 common mobile SEO mistakes that may cost you an arm and a leg.
#1 You Are Not Paying Extra Attention to Accelerated Mobile Pages
Accelerated Mobile Pages, in short AMP – It is a Google-backed project/platform designed to optimize the speed of mobile web pages and you should consider using it for your website. Why? Ok, let us tell you. AMP optimized pages will load not only faster on mobile devices but also rank better on the search engine result pages (SERPs) as well.
#2 Your Website Takes More Than 2 Seconds to Load Completely
Nothing is more frustrating than waiting for a website to load completely. Right? If your website takes a good amount of time to load on the mobile devices, you should optimize its speed at the earliest otherwise users won’t be heading back to it anymore. Also, Google doesn’t entertain slow loading website. For testing your site, we recommend you to use Google PageSpeed Insights. This free tool allows you to address the issues that are slowing down your website.
#3 You Are Still Giving The Cold Shoulder To Responsive Design
Although, responsive design has become the standard parameter but still there are many websites that lack mobile-friendliness. Non-responsive websites simply do not rank well on the search engine result pages (SERPs). This clearly shows that if you want to score over your competitors, you website must be mobile-friendly. To check how mobile-friendly your website is, you can try out this tool.
#4 You’re Making Faulty Redirections
Faulty redirects not only misguide the user but also increase the bounce rate of a website. Take a look on the below image to understand in a better way.
The best possible way to avoid this is using a responsive site or you can change the target link.
#5 Sitemap (.XML File) Of Your Mobile Site Is Missing
Many people are under the wrong perception that they don’t need a sitemap for their mobile website. However, the truth is that if you have a separate mobile site, you must have a separate sitemap because without separate sitemap, it becomes really difficult for search engines to identify, crawl and index your site and its pages.
By avoiding these common yet cringe-worthy mobile SEO mistakes, you can improve the visibility of your website on the search engine results pages (SERPs). If you also know some other common Mobile SEO Pitfalls, please don’t forget to share with us.
