Sometime back, Google released a significant new mobile-friendly ranking algorithm. It’was designed to give a boost to mobile-friendly pages and urge others to upgrade theirs. This addition to Google seo checklist also meat visitors would see web pages that are mobile-friendly and optimized as per latest SEO guidelines. Not surprisingly, most websites have switched over. Have you?
As per a recent research,
In 2014, 30 % of all searches came from a mobile device, while in the year to date this as increased to over 60% . So, Google is changing its search algorithm to reward sites that are mobile optimized.
As mobile optimized sites have become important, the SEO check-list must include ‘Mobile Friendliness’. Take it up as a priority on the to-do task list and implement!
Mobile SEO Checklist Points
- Test your website on mobile devices and tablet pcs of various dimensions.
What do you see? Check what devices are most used by your site visitors in your web analytics.
Does your website look good on most of them? - Check space between links. For ease of mobile use, there must be a minimum 28 pixel margin between links.
- Does your mobile site carry flash? Most devices can’t render it at all, or make the site slow.
- Does your mobile site match the design of your main website? Most users prefer similar layouts for ease of use.
- Set up a viewport tag to let mobile browsers resize pages so they fit devices perfectly.
- Create / update your mobile XML sitemap file with your mobile page links. Upload to the root directory of your website and submit to Google Webmaster Tools
- Use Screaming Frog to find broken links, fix the errors, and crawl problems.
Desktop vs Mobile: SEO Checklist
- Check specific desktop pages for correct re-direction to related mobile versions. Check visa-versa.
- Check for rel=alternate or rel=canonical tags.
Desktop pages to be set up with a rel=”alternate” tag pointing to the mobile version of the page
For mobile pages, the rel=”canonical” tag points to it related page on desktop version - Use Google’s Keyword Research Tools to find keywords that mobile users might use more
- Research your competitors. Track keywords and campaigns that are driving traffic for them.
- Scan each page on the site to check load times
- Verify responsive design elements for your mobile pages
- Use text sizes that are readable without zooming
- Have content that fits the screen so scrolling and zooming aren’t necessary
- Have proper spacing links
- Add content regularly. Post new content as desktop as well as mobile page versions (if seperate) and don’t forget to link to these posts.
- Promote your content with Structured Data Markup
- Review the mobile site like any normal site and repeat what’s working for you!
You can try Geoff Kenyon’s Technical Audit Checklist for a start.