Mobile phones have become a necessity of the mankind. They are used to connect with the world, get updates about the events happening around the globe, to find places, click pictures etc. Since most of us are using phones for most of the things, even looking for answers to our queries; it has become really important for the user to get the most relevant and timely results regardless of the source of information.
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As more and more people are using mobile devices to access the internet, the search engine needs to enforce algorithms to adapt these changes i.e. web pages must be configured properly and even the view of the page on mobile devices must be in proportion with the screen size.
In order to make it more user-friendly, Google has introduced App Indexing to get useful content from applications along with the two major announcements one of which was to make site more mobile friendly to get the relevant and timely search results.
With Google encouraging webmasters to enhance their compatibility with mobile phones by creating a mobile-friendly testing tool and a step by step guide which assist user in optimizing their mobile experience, it is surely going overboard.
Google has provided some recommendations which will optimize and access your mobile web search presence. Let’s check them out.
Web optimization means the SEO audits; if you have a mobile friendly site, it is important to perform regular SEO audits so that Google can identify and serve the content.
You can validate/test your site with Google’s testing tool making sure resources such as images, styles, css files are also crawable.
There are various tools such as Google Webmaster Tools mobile usability report which report usability issues such as use of Flash, improper size etc.
Others include Crawl Error Reports which upon selecting the ‘Smartphone’ tab check, uncover problems while crawling your website like page not found, blocking indexed areas etc. You can identify them and block or unblock them as needed.
Using the Fetch as Google feature you can check if the right version of your page is getting accessed, and whether the pages are being setup correctly based on the mobile configuration and so on.
Page Speed Insights tools checks for the speed issues on the web page as speed is the ranking factor for the website in both mobile and desktop applications.
The Search Queries Report helps in identifying the top page and queries under the ‘Mobile’ filter.
While using the Search Queries Report, a check-list for the following should be prepared:
Are Desktop and mobile search queries same?
Do the mobile users look for the same information in same way as Desktop users?
Distinguishing between High and Low click through rate queries.
Search Pages Trending upwards in traffic and rankings.
Under the Audience tab, Google Analytics Mobile report can be used to identify top ranked mobile devices user uses and look for pages with highest views which enable you to identify your competitors.
You can discover the keywords by using tools like Sistrix, SMErush, for which your competitors are ranking and use the same information to look for more potential keywords.
Once keywords have been identified, they can be combined with the keywords from top search query report and a master list of keywords can be created by using Google Webmaster tools.
Google Keyword Planner segment these keywords into categories, suggest new potential keywords and allows you to see ‘Breakdown by Device’ and ‘Mobile Trends’ which gives an idea about the trends and volume of mobile searches over time.
Ranking Tracking Tool tracks the ranking of you and your competitors with identified keywords. With that, user can look out for root cause for the gap between the rankings.
Popularity and Optimization of your ranked pages can be tracked by using Google Analytics.
Even without this announcement, mobile device was on the priority for market researchers. Users are rushing towards mobile devices and so websites with poor mobile experience will soon lose out to their competitors.
In order to have more mobile friendly websites the Google Step by step guide can prove to be another significant source.
