An Introduction To Mobile SEO – How To Be Mobile-First In 2022?
In today’s world, almost every one of us has a smartphone. It helps us connect with our friends, play games, watch videos, and do much more, even while traveling. However, such immense popularity also means that you will have to work on your website’s Mobile SEO alongside everyday practices.
However, it will not be an easy job to improve your mobile presence from the get-go.
You will need to have a specific strategy and abide by the rules altogether. So, do you want to know more about this context?
Then, start reading and let us help you make your website SEO ready!
How Does Google Judge A Mobile SEO-Optimized Website?
Whether you believe it or not, Google favors Mobile SEO more than you may think of.
However, understanding how Google works in this regard might be a little too confusing. So, let’s check a few points to understand the context better.
- To make your website mobile-friendly, you will need to create two different URLs. One should be for mobile, and the other one would be for desktop. However, the index will be of the mobile version in both aspects.
- The mobile-based index will not influence your website’s ranking position in any manner. However, the mobile-friendliness of your website will be necessary. So, you will need to improve your site’s UX to boost its overall Mobile SEO.
- Your site needs to have pages, which are well-optimized for smaller screens. You should not add too much information to it as well. Otherwise, Google might deem your website to be less friendly.
How Would You Improve Your Website’s Mobile SEO?
So, as you can understand, making your website mobile-friendly will help it rank higher in the search results. But, how are you going to do it?
Here, in this section, we have shared some tips that may help you out in this regard. But, of course, you can also hire a mobile SEO service provider if you don’t consider yourself to be too SEO-savvy.
1. Use A Responsive Design
A responsive design of a website will help it in adapting to any screen size possible. So, even when someone checks from a smartphone, the page will scale down to the required size.
So, how do you create a responsive design?
Firstly, you will need to use a lightweight theme. For instance, a responsive theme will have a small number of colors, a streamlined outlook, well-maintained fonts, etc.
Secondly, it will be better if you use low-sized yet well-optimized photos on the site. This way, you can maintain your site’s heaviness and avoid the issues of slow-loading.
A cache plugin should be ideal for improving the speed of your site.
Also, voice search has become pretty standard in the current mobile-searching scenario. So, you can also add it to your armory to improve your website’s overall Mobile SEO.
2. Try Merging Image And Text Searches
There was a time when people used to tweak their content with some keywords to secure an excellent ranking spot. However, it will not be enough in today’s updated SEO technology of Google.
Fortunately, Google is still being playful and trying to do something unique with the AI opportunities. The recent invention from this segment is known as MUM or Multitask Unified Model.
According to some sources, it will feature as a part of Google Lens and incorporate text-image searching together.
So, how is it going to change the traditional practices of Mobile SEO?
- For starters, you will have to optimize your website’s alt tags (incorporated with images) from now on. Otherwise, it might indirectly affect your site’s organic traffic generation.
- Geotagging (adding location) an image will be crucial for maximizing your local SEO mobile optimization. As almost 46% of Google searches are contributed as local, this technique would help your regional clients find you quicker.
3. Do Not Forget Your Link Building Practices
Link building is probably the most common search engine optimization strategy used by SEO marketing specialists.
So, how does it work?
Usually, you can add two different types of links to your content. The inbound links are all about hyperlinking additional (yet relevant) pages of your site to any content.
This way, when your readers click on them, they will be redirected to somewhere. Thus, the more time they spend on your website, the more organic traffic you will generate.
On the other hand, outbound links are usually taken from an authoritative website. These can prompt Google to mark your website as a priority. So, the search engine will rank you higher than others while someone searches a keyword relevant to your site.
Optimizing Mobile-First Indexing – A Step-By-Step Guide
As we have already mentioned before, mobile-first indexing is pretty helpful in improving your Mobile SEO. However, you will need to optimize it properly before getting any results out of it.
Hopefully, the following tips can help you out in this aspect.
Step-1: Allow Googlebot To Access Your Content
You will need to allow Googlebot access (as well as render) your website content to make it well-optimized. Here are some suggestions that may help you out –
- Use the same meta tags that you had utilized to crawl both mobile and web versions of your site. However, your site probably already has this setting as its default. So, you do not need to worry too much about it.
- Make sure not to block any specific URLs that have disallowed directives.
- Try to make Googlebot see all of your lazy-loaded content.
Step-2: Create A Structured Data
Do you have any structured data on your website? If so, then be sure to keep it on both your website’s mobile and web versions.
Additionally, do not forget to check if you are using the correct URL or not.
If you are using a data highlighter on your website’s desktop version, try to train it on mobile as well.
Step-3: Keep The Same Content On Mobile And Desktop
In a few updates before, Google had warned website owners about keeping different content on their site’s web and mobile version.
So, you must keep the same amount of writing in both places. Also, do not forget to stay similar headers on both your desktop and mobile site.
Otherwise, it might affect your Mobile SEO severely.
Step-4: Try Following Other Recommendations Provided By Google
Some other suggestions you have to follow to improve your mobile-first indexing are –
- Try learning about the standard of better ads before displaying advertisements on different mobile devices.
- Do not forget to jot down the same metadata on both web and mobile versions of your site.
- Make sure that all of your site’s available images follow the best practices of SEO-based images.
Conclusion
Working on Mobile SEO can be pretty tricky and confusing at first. So, it might be better for you to opt for a mobile SEO company. They can help you create an SEO-friendly website while abiding by the rules established by Google.
Nonetheless, if nothing works out for you, be sure to try and improve your content even more. Write everything again if you think it is lacking in any department.
So, do you think we missed anything while jotting down our suggestions? Be sure to let us know in the comments!
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
1. Why Is Mobile-First Crucial For A Website?
The mobile-first technology helps in making the content of your digital products perfectly readable on small screens. Therefore, it will be much more accessible for everyone using a smartphone or any other small-screen device in general.
2. What A Mobile-First Website Really Is?
A mobile-first technology or approach usually involves designing or creating a website with a mobile version. However, you will need to make this model first and then adapt it for a large-screen device. This way, it will be easier for you to improve your website’s Mobile SEO.
3. Will The mobile-First Approach Make My Website Responsive?
Yes, a mobile-first website will be highly responsive, both for a smartphone and a PC. Unlike traditional techniques, a mobile-first website will load faster, crash less, and scale more, disregarding what device you are using.
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