Avoiding mobile SEO mistakes
The mobile market has risen to dominate modern web use, resulting in the industry being reshaped as a result of the browsing habits of smartphone and tablet users.
From the point of view of search engine optimisation there are a number of new challenges to overcome in the wake of mobile-friendly algorithm updates from Google, Bing, Yahoo and other providers in the past few months.
In fact the importance of mobile optimisation when seeking improved search ranking has become so great that around 83 per cent of the sites at the top of Google’s SERPs are endowed with the sought-after mobile-friendly tag.
Dublin seo agency ryco, are helping smaller firms adapt to the mobile age. But what are some of the SEO mistakes that sites might be making that could hurt their mobile rank?
Content Access
One of the pillars of mobile-friendliness is a site’s ability to provide fast, uncomplicated access to the information that searchers are seeking. But when clicking through from a SERP, some sites persist in harnessing interstitial ads that immediately obfuscate that all-important content underneath.
While ads like this may be intended to drive engagement and encourage email list sign-ups and other calls to action, they can compromise the user experience and might soon be taken into account in Google’s ranking process.
Decision-makers at the search giant have started talking about how these interstitial ads, which are effectively pop-ups by another name, are unhelpful. And ultimately they may be bad for SEO, especially on mobile devices where display area is at a premium.
Site Speed
Optimising the speed with which your site’s pages load over a mobile connection can put you ahead of the pack in terms of search rank and customer satisfaction alike. And yet this is something that webmasters can neglect if they are too focused on integrating as many eye-catching features as possible.
Simplicity is often the key in this respect when it comes to mobile web design, so while having an appropriate balance of text and images is important, remember to avoid integrating too many plug-ins which can bring page load speeds to a crawl and play havoc with your position on SERPs.
Improving mobile SEO cannot be done overnight, but with the right advice and professional support you can make a difference.