10 Deadly Mobile SEO Mistakes to Avoid in 2020

Mobile SEO Mistakes: From different algorithms such as “mobilegeddon” in 2015 to mobile-first indexing in last 2016,Google has been always delivering a message i.e. your website should be mobile-first.

It means mobile SEO is now more pivotal than ever. 

Here are the top 10 mobile SEO mistakes you have to avoid if you want to get better positions in search engine results pages, drive more traffic to your mobile website.

1. Slow Site Speed 

Page load speed is one of the main Google ranking factors. According to Google research, 53 percent will abandon a page if it takes longer than 3 sec to load.

Your website goal should be to get a mobile page to render in under 1 sec.

How will you get a mobile page to render in under 1 sec?

Here are a few immediate tips to help speed up your mobile website (Mobile SEO):

• Minimize requests and redirects: Always try to keep pages clean and simple. Avoid using the 301 redirects as much as possible, optimize your HTML code, remove unnecessary elements from your page, and also minify the CSS and Javascript code.
• Compress Images: You can use built-in tools in WordPress to automatically resize images for you , and tools like compresspng.com to compress the file size.
• Check your hosting solution: Cheap hosting provider wouldn’t give you the site speed you need to host huge volumes of traffic. This is especially true for e-commerce.
• Check your progress: Using Google PageSpeed insights is a quick and easy tool to check the website’s performance.

You can also create AMP optimized pages. These pages load multiple times faster than regular. 

2. Blocked Files

Googlebot crawls the website like an average user, which means restricting access to JavaScript, CSS, and image files on the website can harm the ranking. Check your website’s robots.txt file to see if any important elements are disallowed. Go to the Google Search Console and text the robots.txt file. 

Remember to test all the URLs, especially if your site uses separate mobile and desktop URLs.

3. Interstitials Ads

If your website displays any pop-up ads that cover the full screen, then you might rethink your mobile design- especially when it is your most compelling CTA.

Any website page that provides a poor user experience could rank lower in organic search. This includes:

• Pop-ups that cover a page’s main compelling con.
• Pop-ups that cover a website’s page main content
• It is difficult to dismiss the standalone interstitials, especially when clicking on these
• interstitials redirects you to a new page.
• Misleading layouts, where the above the fold portion tricks users to think they are viewing an interstitial.

But there are some exceptions to this interstitial rule. Interstitial ads that are not adversely affected by the ranking signal include:

• The interstitials that are legally necessary includes the age verification and cookie usage.
• Login dialogs for unindexable content.
• Reasonably sized banners that take upto 20% of a screen.

4. Unplayable Content

Before including the video on your page, consider how it will affect the website speed and whether the video-embedded is working on all the different devices.|

Try to include the transcript whenever possible. This will help Google for indexing.

If you want to include the animated content on your website, use HTML5. 

5. Bad redirect or cross links

Wrong redirects are a major error that haven’t been optimized for mobile. This is more pivotal for those who have separate mobile and desktop URLs. 

You can improve in the given area:

• If  mobile users by mistake land on the desktop version of your website, redirect them to the mobile version of the page they are looking for. They should not be redirected to the mobile website’s homepage.
• If you don’t have the mobile version equivalent of your desktop pages, remedy that as soon as possible. Until those smartphone pages are live, you should land users to the desktop page as opposed to redirect them to the mobile home page.
• Mobile users who request for the dynamically generated URLs should be taken to an equivalent mobile URL that properly displays the information they are looking for. 
• Mobile users should be served the same content across all devices.
• Avoid linking to desktop-optimized versions of your website pages from the mobile URLs.
  
  If you want to be automatically alerted to wrong redirects, verify your mobile website with Google. This will help you detect crawling errors that you can later correct in Search Console.

6. Mobile-Only 404s

Users on the desktop and mobile versions of your website should be able to access the same content of your website. You need to remedy any instance in which mobile users receive a 404 error while trying to access a page that desktop users can see.

Generally, you should eliminate all 404 and soft 404 pages- these could help improve the search engine ranking of your website. Website auditing software such as ahref will help you easily find and fix the broken links and 404 errors.

7. No Rich Snippets

You can give extra information about your website by using the schema.org. It provides the answers to queries that will give your website a lift up in mobile search results. 

If you are not using the Schema or Structure Data markup yet to categorize your content, then you are missing one of the keys that drive organic CTR. The users tend to respond more to rich snippets that trump your CTR.

You can test the website’s structure data, and be sure that both the mobile and desktop versions are equivalent, by using the Structure Data Testing Tool.

8. Not specify the Mobile Viewport

Different mobile models have multiple shapes and sizes, so if you don’t specify the correct viewports using the viewport meta tag, then the users may experience pages improperly fitted to their device.

Common mistakes include:

• Fixed-width viewports only work on certain devices.
• Poor mobile viewport parameters leave the users with smaller devices.