The 9 Biggest Mobile SEO Mistakes to Avoid

Mobile SEO is one of the most important parts of a successful marketing strategy. Yet so many businesses still choose to ignore it.

The average person spends about 5 hours of their day on their smartphone. To put it in perspective, that is nearly one-third of all the hours that they’re awake every day.

Additionally, the average mobile user is extremely impatient. In fact, research shows that more than 50% of all mobile users will ditch a website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load.

So what steps can you take to attract more mobile traffic? Well, you can start by correcting your mistakes.

This article will outline the 9 most common blunders that businesses make when it comes to managing their mobile SEO.

1. Tiny Font Size

When designing your website, the most important aspect you should consider is the mobile experience.

Believe it or not, bad mobile experiences will affect your mobile SEO, and this has to do with your bounce rate. Pay attention to your Google Analytics, as a high bounce rate harms your Google rankings.

Remember that what looks good on a desktop or laptop screen might not necessarily impress on a smartphone or tablet.

Therefore, make sure you pay attention to fonts. Don’t use tiny fonts for the body text that make your content difficult, or impossible, to consume.

Also, pay attention to the size of your headers. While a big header might look fine on the desktop version, it can seriously hinder your mobile content by taking up the whole page.

2. Agonizing Slow Page Speed

As mentioned earlier, more than half of mobile users will not forgive you for having a slow website.

With so many options at their fingertip, who can blame them? They would rather leave your site and pull up a competitor’s that functions optimally.

Therefore, if you want to get your mobile SEO in order, you have to make sure you optimize your page speed.

One step you can take to address this issue is to make sure that you compress your images. There are many free tools available online to accomplish this.

You should also make sure you optimize your code and do whatever it takes to upgrade your web hosting. Remember this: never skimp on web hosting!

3. Lack of Mobile Keyword Optimization

Many businesses wrongly assume that keywords for desktop perfectly match those for mobile. While in many cases they do, it’s far from the exact same.

The reason this is a false assumption is because people search differently on mobile.

For instance, mobile users tend to search for shorter queries, as they are looking for fast answers. They also use voice search programs such as Apple’s Siri to conduct searches.

For mobile keyword research, focus on more conversational phrases and questions.

4. Unresolved 404 Errors

There are few things more annoying than a 404 error. However, they can be common on mobile.

This error usually occurs when someone types a URL incorrectly. But it also occurs if a page simply doesn’t exist.

Often times, webmasters will ignore creating a mobile version of a webpage. You want to ensure that you redirect users to a desktop version of your page, at the very least.

The more broken links you have, the more it will ding your site ranking. Therefore, when focusing your mobile SEO, make sure you don’t let any 404 pages linger around.

5. Ignoring Blank Spaces

It’s hard to believe, but mobile users don’t want you to bombard them with content on every line.

The key to this is to use really short paragraphs with only 1-2 sentences in each one.

This increases the readability of your mobile content, as many mobile readers only skim. As simple as it seems, it’s one of the biggest changes you can make for mobile SEO.

6. Poor Use of Interstitials

Have you ever gotten so annoyed of a pop up that you just left the website entirely?

This is how visitors feel if they try to browse your site that has an interstitial covering their entire mobile screen.

The reality is that Google will punish you for having overly intrusive interstitials.

This doesn’t mean that you should avoid them entirely. In fact, they can be quite useful for certain calls-to-action.

However, if you need to use them, you want to ensure that they only cover a small portion of the screen.

7. No Optimization for Local Searches

The truth is that you should focus on local keyword optimization no matter what.

However, research shows that users search for local terms at a higher rate on mobile devices than desktops.

These searches tend to be more transactional in nature, which means that they offer more value to your business.

8. Hard to Find Calls-to-Action

A call-to-action can be one of the most critical components of your page. Therefore, buttons and calls-to-action on your pages should be easy to click and differentiate from one another.

First, avoid putting them too close together, and try to make them stick out on the page. If you do have several buttons near each other, make sure they are somewhat related.

The best way to help the user out is to use buttons that are as wide as your screen. This helps improve the chances that the click goes through on the first try.

9. Desktop-Only Content

This is not as big of an issue as it was in the past, but you should keep in mind that not all videos are available on mobile.

The last thing you want to happen is for a visitor to get an annoying popup telling them that they cannot play their video on the phone.

You need to make sure you remove all unplayable content from your website.

Final Thoughts on Mobile SEO

In today’s world, one would be a fool to ignore mobile SEO.

If you avoid the 9 mistakes mentioned above, you can set yourself up for success in the long-term. If you’re guilty of any mistakes right now, address them immediately.

Remember to keep your website running smoothly, and pay close attention to your mobile design. Also, fix any unplayable video content.

Don’t forget to get your free full SEO / digital marketing audit. We’ll provide you with a better idea of how you rank on search engines and let you know how we can help you climb up!