7 tips to improve your mobile SEO

In 2019, already 75% of French people were considered as internet mobile users. This number have been increasing since so it is important to take it into account in the conception of your website. For example in the interface, you have to make it « mobile-friendly », to ease at the maximum the user experience. Anyway, it is the point of view of Google and other search engines. They now have the habit of valorizing websites optimized for mobile navigation. You also have to know that the importance of mobile browsing doesn’t only imply interface changes. The functioning of mobile SEO is actually not the same than on a computer. That’s why your ranks can really fluctuate depending on the user’s device, phone or computer. The one for your computer is the « desktop SEO » and the one for the mobile devices is the « mobile SEO ». So your desktop SEO can be very good and your mobile SEO not that much, the second one doesn’t depend on the other one. If you want to be as good with mobile SEO than desktop SEO, you should also optimize your website for a mobile browsing. How to be as well-ranked on mobile than desktop ? You have to give to your website a « responsive » interface but not only. Today, we explain you quickly, in 7 points, how to please search engines algorithmes and rank on mobile !

1. Care about the user interface

Get the application look ! 👀

Conceive your website through a mobile use vision. Anyway, your design have to to be « responsive » and, moreover, thought to be visited on a mobile before than a computer. To begin, use the meta tags « name=«viewport » ». It’s a piece of code used for internet browsers and search engines in order to indicate them that the website can match with all devices. The algorithm will resize the website according to the user device at the moment. Secondly, contact an UI or UX designer specialized in mobile device. He will help you to conceive an aesthetic and useful website matching with all devices. Your site almost has to look like a smartphone application. This is actually how search engines want your website to evolve. The advantage, here, is that the website doesn’t use half of your battery. #notenoughbatteryonmyphone

REMEMBER

• your website must be thought for a mobile-first use
• Don’t forget to add the meta tag"name="viewport"" in the coding of the site
• Call the best web designer you know to give your website the most « mobile-friendly » design

2. Get rid off pop-ups !

Team pop-up, faster than lightning ⚡

A pop-up showing up when you arrive on a website, it’s worst than an airplane window opening right in the middle of a flight ! For your SEO, of course…
Nothing is more unbearable than chilling on a phone, find an interesting website on a search engine, « click » on it, and see a pop-up appear faster than its shadow. A real screamer as would say our gamer friends. Let’s recall that the goal of search engines is to show the most interesting and easy to browse on websites. The one with pop-ups so are not the most welcomed and are devalorized by search engines algorithms. If you want to include some advertising content on your website, choose one of these 4 solutions : native advertising, cube format, in-action or reveal. Other possibilities should come quickly as advertising on websites is still a current and bankable habit.

REMEMBER

• Choose an advertising content more adapted to your native content not to lower your SEO

3. Say bye to Java and Flash

Bye, bye, friends ! 👋

This issue especially concerns the eldest sites of the web. If your website is quite new, you will probably not be touched by this. Most of Java and Flash plugins cannot be read on smartphones. It’s bad for your SEO to have this kind of code or extensions on your websites. Algorithms consider that it’s a too old way of communicate on the internet and don’t like it. Like with the youngest, you have to renew your way of communicating if you want to be still interesting. Fit the internet coding slang !

REMEMBER

• Don’t use Java and Flash anymore in the conception of your website because smartphones can’t understand it

4. Optimize your tags and structured data

Don’t worry, it’s not that technical ! 💽

Check your websites’ tags: titles and meta descriptions, to see if they are visible on the SERP. The tags length for mobile SEO have been extended, you can now go to 75 signs.
It is also very important for your website to have structured data for its SEO. It’s judicious to add this little piece of code to your website. These ones can include, for example, if you have a physical business:

• information about your company
• its address and contact (see local SEO)
• your official name and logo

REMEMBER

• Be careful to complete your meta data and add some structured data

5. Adapt your pages thanks to the AMP

AMP is your friend 🤝

« AMP » doesn’t stand for Association of Mysterious Programs including weird SEO algorithms but Accelerated Mobile Pages. It’s an open-source tool created by Google in order to optimize the fastness of page loadings and so the readability on mobile device. The goal is to have a lighter version of your principal pages on mobile without having to call or pay a programer. The bot does it for you and doesn’t oblige you to rethink all of your user interface. AMP adapts your pages when it comes to go on your website with a phone. AMP offers 4 big advantages for your SEO and business:

• Improvement of your pages loading fastness. It’s a prevailing element to be well-ranked on the results page
• Decrease of the bounce rate. If your page is readable, and qualitative, people will logically spend more time on it. Bounce rate is also taken into account in the calcul of your SEO cause it is like a metrics to know if your website is liked or not by your visitors. If yes, then search engines considers that your website deserves to be well-seen on the SERP
• Better visibility in the serps results. The most important point, AMP enables, besides improving your SEO and your ranks, to show your pages in a carousel of results. This carousel finds its place above the results. It has the advantage to catch your eye, plus, it is considered as quality content recommended by Google.

REMEMBER

• AMP has numerous SEO advantages like: improvement of page loading speed, decrease of the bounce rate, optimization of the on-SERP visibility

6. Choose the right semantical content on-site

Ciao SMS language, hello SEO mobile 📱

You don’t communicate with a phone like in real life ! Look at your messages for confirmation. It’s the same thing for search engine. You don’t tape or look for something on a phone as on a computer. You have to adapt your semantical content to the mobile use as it seems to become more important than desktop SEO. So what changes concretely ?

• Keywords you want to be ranked on must correspond to the mobile requests. They must be small groups of 2 or 3 words
• Most requests made with a phone are based on your location. Don’t hesitate to include words referring to your current location.
• Think about « voice search », in other words, assistants as Siri became our secretaries. To satisfy vocal requests, optimize your content in this way. How does a vocal assistant work ? As in real life, this time, imagine you’re talking to a real person : questions, punctuation… Include in your content interrogative sentences and long tail keywords to match with the vocal requests. Write questions several times and in several ways in order to cover every possibility. Put the question in your page title and give the answer to it in the introduction. You can detail in the rest of the page.

REMEMBER

• With mobile, think about keyword requests but also vocal requests. To answer to these requests rightly, choose small keywords groups. To satisfy vocal assistants, try to have questions and long tail keywords in the titles or introductions of your pages.

7. Develop a local SEO strategy

Become the town sensation ! 📍

As guessed in the precedent chapter, local SEO has its importance in mobile SEO of your website. 80% of smartphone users make requests with local interests. Here’s some tips to improve your local ranking :

• Improve, or create right now if not already done, a Google MyBusiness page ! This way, you will officially be able to put your page on google Maps.
• Collect a lot of positive clients reviews, the more they will be good, the better you will be ranked in the SERP results.
• Indicate your geolocation with keywords in the semantical content of your pages

REMEMBER

• Optimize your Google MyBusiness page with all necessary information and collect positive reviews as much as you can

Conclusion

There are, actually, two types of SEO, mobile and desktop, which involves two different ways of ranking according to the used device. It is important for you and your site to perform on both ! Our 7 tips to have a good mobile SEO are: mobile-first UI, no more pop-ups, no more Java and Flash, using adapted meta data and structured data, AMP use, voice search-optimized semantical content, local SEO improvement.