Mobile Scare: Google/Search Engines May be Scaring your Mobile Users Away

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Google: More Searches Now On Mobile Than On Desktop

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Search Is #1 Content Discovery Tool For Mobile Users

Source: IAB, Harris

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Mobile-First Design Initiative- Google

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“To improve the search experience for smartphone users and address their pain points, we plan to roll out several ranking changes in the

near future that address sites that are misconfigured for smartphone users.“

Yoshikiyo Kato, Software Engineer, on behalf of Google Mobile Search

MOBILE RANKINGS

• At SMX West, Google’s Gary llyes surprised the crowd: Google already has plans for a separate mobile index and there is a team already working on it.

• He isn’t sure what stage they are at, so Google has nothing to announce about it at this time. (More here: Google is Working on Completely Separate Mobile Index From Desktop Index)

GOOGLE MOBILE INDEX

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Responsive Dedicated Dynamic Serving

• ALL devices• 1 URL• Same Content/HTML• Use CSS to render pages

• Separate Mobile & Desktop URLs

example.com/m/ m.example.com• Different HTML

• All devices • 1 URL• different HTML (and CSS)

depending on user agent (desktop or mobile device)

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Responsive Dedicated Dynamic Serving

Pros • 1 URL• Easier to maintain• Link Consolidation• No Redirects > Reduce

Loading Time• Recommended By

Google (saves resources, pages crawled once)

• Small/Medium Sites

• Better Mobile Experience• Faster• Dedicated Mobile Content• Easier Implementation

• 1 URL• Link Consolidation• Capacity for different

mobile content• Complex/Large Sites

Cons • Slower• Same Mobile/Desktop

Content

• Link Equity Dilution• Higher Cost to maintain• Crawled Multiple Times

with different user agents

• Slower • Higher Cost to maintain• Old Redirect Lists• Complex technical

implementation• Crawled Multiple Times

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Responsive Dedicated Dynamic Serving

• ALL devices• 1 URL• Same Content/HTML• Use CSS to render pages

• Separate Mobile & Desktop URLs

example.com/m/ m.example.com• Different HTML

• All devices • 1 URL• different HTML (and CSS)

depending on user agent (desktop or mobile device)

Pros • 1 URL• Easier to maintain• Link Consolidation• No Redirects > Reduce

Loading Time• Recommended By Google

(saves resources, pages crawled once)

• Small/Medium Sites

• Better Mobile Experience• Faster• Dedicated Mobile Content• Easier Implementation

• 1 URL• Link Consolidation• Capacity for different

mobile content• Complex/Large Sites

Cons • Slower• Same Mobile/Desktop

Content

• Link Equity Dilution• Higher Cost to maintain• Crawled Multiple Times

with different user agents

• Slower • Higher Cost to maintain• Old Redirect Lists• Complex technical

implementation• Crawled Multiple Times

SEO • Check Google Webmaster Tools Crawl Errors for Redirect & 404 Errors

• Check Page Load Time for Mobile and Desktop

• Allow Search Engines to crawl all assets (CSS, Images, JS)

• Redirect Mobile Users and Bots to the mobile site

• Test Desktop Site for Redirects & 404 Errors

• Add Rel=Alternate to desktop and rel=Canonical to mobile site

• XML Mobile Sitemaps

• Use user-agent vary header to help search bots to find your mobile content

• Test for Vary: User-Agent HTTP Header

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Word of Caution

• Responsive is not the answer to all problems and may not be suitable for your site/industry yet!!

• Googlebot-mobile is only used to crawl feature phones content

• Googlebot is used to crawl smartphones content

Read: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2014/01/a-new-googlebot-user-agent-for-crawling.html

• Even though Google recommends Responsive implementations, they have been pretty clear that they will treat all mobile subdomains, dynamic serving, and responsive web designs (RWD) implementations the same (from a ranking perspective).

• If you have no mobile page, show the desktop page

Read: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2014/01/a-new-googlebot-user-agent-for-crawling.html

Bing

• Ideally, there shouldn’t be a difference between the “mobile-friendly” URL and the “desktop” URL

• the site would automatically adjust to the device — content, layout, and all.

• That’s why we continue to recommend you use responsive designs over separate mobile (m.*) sites

• ensure a great experience for users on all devices and avoid compatibility, readability, and functionality issues. 

• http://blogs.bing.com/webmaster/2014/11/20/bing-and-mobile-friends/

• http://blogs.bing.com/webmaster/2014/11/03/meet-our-mobile-bots/

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Tablet

• Google has no specific recommendations for search engine friendly sites.

• You can use any of the 3 approaches

• Serve tablet users the desktop version (or if available, the tablet version).

Read: https://developers.google.com/webmasters/smartphone-sites/tablets

Mobile Ranking Factors

• SEO Traditional Ranking factors

• Important Ranking Factors• Mobile Friendliness• Mobile Usability• Mobile Speed/Performance

• Negative Mobile SEO Factors• Mobile Errors• Broken Content

Mobile-Friendly

• Test your site @ Google Mobile-Friendly Test Tool

• https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/

• Blocked Internal Resources may prevent Google from recognizing your site as mobile-friendly site

• Page by Page

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• Page speed is a ranking factor since 2010

• Google Released a ton of tools and reports to help improve page speed

• Google started testing “Slow” Red Labels

• How will this affect your CTR??

• http://searchengineland.com/google-testing-red-slow-label-search-results-slower-sites-215483

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Where to Start?

“80-90% of the end-user response time is spent on the frontend. Start There.”

- Steve Souders, Google’s Head Performance Engineer

• I.E. Backend actions (database queries, server delays and hardware limitations, …) only account for 10-20% of your load time!!

Google PageSpeed Insights Tool

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Optimized Rendering

Read: https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/performance/

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Above-The-Fold (ATF) Content

• 1 second load time for 'above-the-fold content' on mobile sites!

Read: https://developers.google.com/speed/docs/insights/mobile

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Optimize Speed

• Avoid Multiple Redirects• Example.com > www.example.com > m.example.com (slow

mobile experience)

• Consolidate DNS requests

• Enable gzip Compressions (reduces up to 90%)

• Remove unnecessary / legacy code

• Optimize Images• Proper formatting and compression• Use Web fonts instead of encoding text in images

“Avoiding these mistakes helps your smartphone users engage with your site fully and helps searchers find what

they're looking for faster. To improve the search experience for smartphone users and address their pain points, we plan to roll out several ranking changes in the near future that address sites that are misconfigured for

smartphone users.”

6/11/13 Google Webmaster Central Blog

MOBILE ERRORS

• First, Check Google Webmaster Tools Crawl Errors

MOBILE ERRORS

Faulty Redirects

• Google Reporting Faulty Mobile Redirectshttp://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.ca/2014/06/faulty-redirects.html

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Unplayable Videos

• Verify no flash is used for navigation, videos, or other elements on mobile pages.

• HTML5 is preferred for video players.

• Google warns users of incompatible sites.

• Consider having the transcript of the video available on all devices as that may better serve your smartphone users.

Interstitials

• Avoid App Download Interstitials (use banners instead)

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• Irrelevant cross-linking between desktop and mobile content

• Infinite redirect loops• Googlebot-mobile > redirected to feature phones site >

redirects to smartphone site > redirects to desktop site

READ: https://developers.google.com/webmasters/smartphone-sites/common-mistakes

MOBILE ERRORS

• Unplayable Videos• Flash/Sliverlight• Popups• Sideway Scrolling• Tiny Font/Buttons• Device Specific Content• Slow Pages

BROKEN CONTENT

Desktop vs Mobile

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Page Timing

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Takeaways

• Choose the site structure Wisely. Responsive is not the answer for all your problems!!

• Fix broken content and faulty redirects

• Mobile SEO is technical

• User experience is important

• Focus on Local SEO, Social, and Focus Email markup.

• More SERP real estate for Paid results in mobile

TAKEAWAYS