There is no doubt that mobile devices have taken over the world and the Internet itself.
According to Statista, there are more than four billion unique mobile internet users in 2020, which means more than 90 percent of the global internet population are using their tablets, smartphones, and other devices to visit websites, post on social media, check their emails, and shop online.
Given mobile’s current status, it makes perfect sense for webmasters to implement an SEO strategy to make their website easier for mobile users to find and explore.
Still, mobile SEO mistakes are pretty common these days, and they take a toll on a website’s performance, among other things.
Let’s take a closer look at some of the most common mobile SEO mistakes you should avoid.
Not Having A Mobile-friendly Design
This ought to be a no-brainer, but oddly enough, many websites are still not mobile-friendly, despite the benefits that come with being one.
When your website doesn’t have a mobile-friendly design, those who access it on a mobile device will have to do a lot of pinching to zoom in on words that are too tiny or zoom out on visual elements that are too big.
Then again, if mobile users find out that they have to do any of the above, they will likely just drop your site and move on to the next one.
If you want your website to render well on smartphones and tablets as well as desktop computers, responsive web design is the way to go.
Pages That Take A Long Time To Load
In the early days of dial-up Internet, a page that fully loads in 10 seconds or less was already a cause for celebration.
Today, a 10-second page load time is already an eternity. In the age of high-speed Internet, desktop and mobile users expect webpages to load in three seconds or less.
Anything slower than that, and you can say goodbye to getting the leads and conversions you need since users will abandon your website without any qualms.
Since page speed is now a ranking factor for mobile searches, webmasters who care about how their web pages do in search results must do what they can to speed things up.
Some of the things you can do to make your mobile web pages load faster include:
- Optimizing images
- Enabling image compression
- Minimizing HTTP requests
- Minifying the code
- Enabling browser caching
- Minimizing redirects
- Switching to a faster hosting service
Unplayable Videos
With 86% of businesses using video as a marketing tool, it’s only fitting to join in on the fun and create or embed videos on your website.
However, before you do, make sure that any video you post would be playable not only on desktop computers but mobile devices as well.
That’s because many website videos, for some reason, cannot be played on smartphones and tablets, and it’s annoying, especially if the thumbnail looks very interesting.
Not Optimizing Your Content
It’s probably safe to assume that mobile users consume their content while on the go.
To keep mobile users’ attention, you must optimize your content to make it easy to skim through the way they like it.
As with slow loading pages, mobile users aren’t likely to have any patience for reading through walls of text on their devices.
Some of the things you can do to optimize content for mobile include:
- Using subheadings
- Keeping paragraphs sweet and short at 2-3 sentences
- Using shorter versions of words, like “need” instead of “require.”
- Having more whitespace
- Using bullets
- Keeping headings and titles short and simple
Unfortunate Pop-up Use
Pop-ups can be useful, but using them too much can be annoying to desktop and mobile users alike.
For mobile users who are always on the go, few things are more frustrating than being greeted by a pop-up a second after accessing the site, effectively preventing them from accessing the information they need right away.
Pop-ups are great for enticing people to subscribe or download free content, but having them sign up for anything when they haven’t read anything of your content just yet is asking a bit too much.
If you’re going to use pop-ups, you should make it appear only after visitors have already spent some time reading your content. That way, it won’t seem too intrusive, and just might convince the user to sign up for something.
Not Optimizing For Local
In the last few years, there has been a more than 500% increase in the use of "near me" in mobile searches with phrases like “to buy” or “can I buy” in it.
You simply cannot ignore that, not when you’re aiming to grow your local business.
If you want to optimize your site to appear in more local search results by mobile users, you need to do any of the following things:
- Target local keywords
- Optimize for voice search
- Create a Google My Business account
- Create content with local color
The number of mobile users will only get bigger, and you would want to stay on their good side. Avoiding the mobile SEO mistakes listed above should help keep things that way.
