Winning in a Mobile Search World #LearnInbound

#winningmobile at #learninbound by @aleyda from @orainti

Winning in a Mobile Search World

Since a few years ago, in a galaxy not so far away….

Smartphones have become our primary digital device

We might be a bit addicted

With a few exceptions

Mobile phones are a primal need now

Like, very very primal

Would you be willing to give up your Mobile phone?

For good & bad, our behaviour has largely changed with them

Since 2014 Smartphones have driven the growth of digital time spent

20% of ecommerce transactions are performed from Mobile devices

#winningmobile at #learninbound by @aleyda from @oraintihttp://searchengineland.com/report-nearly-60-percent-searches-now-mobile-devices-255025

Search is also mostly mobile driven now

As a consequence, Google is moving towards a Mobile First Index

https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2016/11/mobile-first-indexing.html

Ranking signals will come from yourmobile Website, not Desktop one

http://searchengineland.com/faq-google-mobile-first-index-262751

It’s already being tested, and likely to happen next year

http://searchengineland.com/googles-mobile-first-index-likely-not-coming-2018-earliest-277074

At some point Google will switch to a Mobile-Only Index

http://searchengineland.com/faq-google-mobile-first-index-262751

Sadly, many mobile sites are not ready… because they’re not really optimised

AERLINGUS PROPERTY.IE

Which makes people to leave

https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/articles/three-ways-mobile-is-changing-canadians-expectations.html

Negatively influencing mobile conversions

http://www.monetate.com/blog/ecommerce-benchmarks-q4-2016

Causing a non-trivial mobile-desktop conversion gap

It’s time to learn some Jedi Mobile SEO Skills

I’m Aleyda Solis

I help companies to connect with them

Some of them brands you likely know

Today, I’ll help you too

A correctly configured and accessible Mobile Website you must have

#winningmobile at #learninbound by @aleyda from @orainti#winningmobile at #searchstarsSE by @aleyda from @orainti

THAT WAS YODA ACCENT, DON’T BLAME ME

Responsive Web Dynamic Serving Independent Mobile Web

There are 3 main Mobile Web Configurations

Responsive Web Design, that uses CSSMedia Queries to reformat the same HTML

Dynamic Serving, showing different HTMLs through the same URL based on user-agent

Desktop Mobile

Independent Mobile Site, that serves different HTMLs through different URLs

Desktop Mobile

Each of them have Pros & Cons

https://developers.google.com/search/mobile-sites/mobile-seo/

Responsive Web Dynamic Serving Independent Mobile Web

Same HTML for Mobile & Desktop = Less

personalisation & speed restrictions

Different HTML for Mobile & Desktop through the same URL = More difficult to correctly serve

and maintain

Different HTML for Mobile & Desktop through different URLs = More difficult to

configure, serve, crawl and maintain

#winningmobile at #learninbound by @aleyda from @oraintihttps://developers.google.com/search/mobile-sites/mobile-seo/

But they are all recognised by Google

As long as they comply with certain minimal configurations

https://developers.google.com/search/mobile-sites/mobile-seo/

Responsive Web

Don’t block images, css & js resources.

Include the Vary: User-Agent HTTP header

Identify & serve the relevant Web version to the right user agent

Implement Rel alternate & canonical Tags between mobile & desktop URLs.

Implement 301-redirects between mobile &

desktop to refer the user agent to the relevant Web version

Dynamic Serving Independent Mobile Web

Google’s requirements won’t likely change with the Mobile First Index too

#winningmobile at #learninbound by @aleyda from @oraintihttps://www.seroundtable.com/google-mobile-migration-24024.html

But if you’re looking to move from an independent to a responsive site, do it now

#winningmobile at #learninbound by @aleyda from @oraintihttps://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly

It’s then critical to verify if your site pages pass the Google Mobile validation

MOBILE WEB CONFIGURATION ISSUE

MOBILE WEB AVAILABILITY

#winningmobile at #learninbound by @aleyda from @oraintiGoogle Analytics

Use Analytics to identify the top mobile devices already being used by your visitors

#winningmobile at #learninbound by @aleyda from @oraintibit.ly/chromedevicemode

Emulate them using Chrome to check how your most important pages are shown

RIGHT CLICK + INSPECT

#winningmobile at #learninbound by @aleyda from @oraintiGoogle Search Console

See if they trigger Mobile Usability errors in the Search Console

#winningmobile at #learninbound by @aleyda from @oraintiSitebulb

You can also use SEO crawlers to verify all of your mobile Website URLs easily

#winningmobile at #learninbound by @aleyda from @oraintiDeepcrawl

As well as checking the relevant mobile Web configuration for all your pages

Your content must also be findable in your Mobile Website

It’s usual to find Mobile sites showing less content than the desktop versions

#winningmobile at #learninbound by @aleyda from @oraintihttp://searchengineland.com/faq-google-mobile-first-index-262751

But with a Mobile First index you should bring all your content & structured data

It’s ok to use expandable content by using CSS in this case

#winningmobile at #learninbound by @aleyda from @oraintihttps://www.seroundtable.com/google-prepare-for-mobile-first-index-24052.html

But critical to make sure your mobile Web content is accessible and indexable

#winningmobile at #learninbound by @aleyda from @oraintihttps://webmasters.googleblog.com/2016/08/helping-users-easily-access-content-on.html

This is why bigger intrusive Mobile app pop-ups & interstitials are penalised

Start by not doing this

#winningmobile at #learninbound by @aleyda from @oraintihttps://www.sistrix.com/blog/pinterst-com-hit-googles-interstitials-update/

Or this might happen :(

GOOGLE POP-UP UPDATE RELEASE

BYE MOBILEVISBILITY

To refer to apps, is better to use app banners instead

#winningmobile at #learninbound by @aleyda from @oraintiScreaming Frog

Emulate the Googlebot for Smartphones and crawl your site w/ JS rendering

Verify if the mobile crawler sees the same than the desktop and the user

WHY IS THE MOBILE SUBDOMAIN BLOCKED?

Are there errors, non-relevant redirects, blocked or no-indexed URLs

WHY ARE THESE RESOURCES RETURNING ERRORS?

HOW IS THE MOBILE CONTENT

RENDERED?

Do the same with every content element, from titles to main text

ARE THE TITLES SPECIFICALLY RELEVANT TO EVERY PAGE?

Do a parity mobile-desktop SEO audit to compare the crawler behaviour

https://moz.com/blog/mobile-parity-audits

Your Mobile Website faaaaaast should be

#winningmobile at #learninbound by @aleyda from @oraintihttps://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-resources/experience-design/mobile-page-speed-load-time/

Your site speed is critical to your Mobile users experience & conversions

As well as their well-being

Your users have a minimum expectation of 2 seconds

The average is shockingly higher though

https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-resources/data-measurement/mobile-page-speed-new-industry-benchmarks/

And consequences are devastating

#winningmobile at #learninbound by @aleyda from @oraintihttp://www.thesempost.com/google-mobile-first-index-page-speed-ranking/

Mobile speed is only getting more important with Google’s mobile first index too

How long does the The Independent mobile home page takes to load?

7 Seconds

https://testmysite.thinkwithgoogle.com/

… what about the Argos Ireland home page?

10 Seconds

… and the lottery.ie home page?

18 Seconds

Sigh. What about your own site?

#winningmobile at #learninbound by @aleyda from @orainti#mobilefirstseo at #TuringFest by @aleyda from @orainti

Use Analytics to see which of your most important mobile pages take longer to load

Google Analytics

Complement this data with the one of your own Mobile crawls

With Sitebulb you will get the pages and resources affected, along recommendations

Verify this for your top pages with the Chrome Lighthouse integration

Obtaining directly the resources that need to be optimised too

The solution is to implement WPO principles to make your Mobile site to load fast

https://developers.google.com/speed/docs/insights/rules

But big sites have restrictive legacy systems & small ones little resources to improve it

That’s why Google launched AMP two years ago

http://searchengineland.com/amp-top-stories-now-live-243314

It uses a “simplified” HTML version with optimised resources & cache to serve it faster

AMP should be published “parallely” to your current (slower) Web pages

https://www.rte.ie/lifestyle/living/2017/1019/913657-plastic-surgery-in-ireland-who-is-doing-what-whats-wrong/

game-of-thrones-gendry-olympian-running-meme-2017-8https://www.rte.ie/amp/913657/

It’s certainly much faster

https://www.rte.ie/lifestyle/living/2017/1019/913657-plastic-surgery-in-ireland-who-is-doing-what-whats-wrong/

game-of-thrones-gendry-olympian-running-meme-2017-8https://www.rte.ie/amp/913657/

Although AMP usage is not a ranking factor (at least yet)

And Google won’t index AMP in a Mobile First Index (unless is used as the canonical version)

It has been made a requirement to be included in the News Carrousels

As well as shown in organic results

AMP article rich resultsCan be free-standing in the

results page, or embedded in a carousel of similar result types. All AMP article rich

results are also rich results.

AMP non-rich results A basic, non-graphical

search result pointing to the AMP page.

All this has skyrocketed its visibility

https://www.rankranger.com/amp-on-google-serp

As well as the extra traffic sites can get from using it

AMP Rich Results

AMP Non-Rich Results

Non-AMP Results

More Mobile organic visibility and traffic from

AMP than non-AMP results

Which has incentivised its adoption, especially among big media oriented sites

Sistrix

However, AMP is not a replacement of your Mobile site

Even Google representatives agree that is not a “bullet-proof” solution for all sites

“It wouldn’t be reasonable for us to expect that a group of limited functionalities replace all what you can do at the moment in the mobile environment…AMP its meant to serve in certain use cases”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtOjUwGnrVY

#winningmobile at #learninbound by @aleyda from @orainti#winningmobile at #learninbound by @aleyda from @orainti

AMP is a fast “add-on” to your existing (but slow) mobile Web, don’t use it as a silver bullet solution or a replacement to your mobile site but as a resource

Avoid this type of experience

#winningmobile at #learninbound by @aleyda from @orainti#winningmobile at #learninbound by @aleyda from @orainti

So for those of you who can’t improve your own mobile speed or

are media sites that could profit from the extra visibility, here’s how

to make the most out of AMP…

Before starting with AMP, verify that your mobile Web functionality can be replicated by using it

https://www.ampproject.org/docs/reference

Check with your development team if you have the capacity and flexibility to use it

https://ampbyexample.com/

The goal is to keep the UI and functionality consistent with your AMP version

ORIGINAL MOBILE PAGE AMP URL VERSION

Avoiding this

There are also free Wordpress plugins that highly facilitate the implementation

You can also use freemium and paid WP plugins like AMP for WP and weeblrAMP

They will allow you to personalise more, but you’ll likely need further development support

They’re not an “out of the box” solution and will still need design personalisation

There’s also an inconsistent mobile user experience when accessing to AMP pages from SERPs

Which ends-up causing users to link and share the non-canonical Google AMP Viewer URLs

Start avoiding these by making sure to only link internally to your canonical URLs from AMP

Remember to also redirect based on the user agent to not show non-mobile visitors your AMP URLs

DON’T DO THIS DO THIS

Avoid AMP implementation errors, suffered by +70% of top publishers using it

https://www.semrush.com/blog/amp-mistakes-semrush-study/

Most common AMP mistakes are related to usage of disallowed and non-supported attributes & tags

#winningmobile at #learninbound by @aleyda from @oraintihttps://sitebulb.com/

Crawl all of your site pages to validate AMP implementation issues before and after launching

#winningmobile at #learninbound by @aleyda from @oraintideepcrawl.com

SEO crawlers like Sitebulb, Deepcrawl & SEMrushalready include AMP configuration problems

You’ll be able to obtain and fix quickly those that would generate critical issues in the Search Console

Once you launch though, monitor the potential still existing errors over time

Prioritise to fix critical issues first, which will be the ones preventing to be shown in SERPs

Focus on identifying how the non-supported code is included to establish a pattern and remove it

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/amp-validator/nmoffdblmcmgeicmolmhobpoocbbmknc

Follow-up also with your AMP Queries & pages attracting visibility via the Google Search Console

Use SEOmonitor to track AMP for your targeted (ranked or unranked) keywords

You can also spot AMP opportunities vs. your competitors with SEMrush rank tracking

As well as verify the queries for which AMP results are shown to prioritise your content

sistrix.com

These are the highlights to maximise your results when implementing AMP

There’s more though! Here’s a complete presentation about it

https://www.slideshare.net/aleydasolis/amp-do-or-die-smxeast-81162535

But time is (sadly) almost up!

There are more Mobile First questions to address to maximise your visibility

https://www.slideshare.net/aleydasolis/setting-amp-for-success-at-brightonseo

What’s your Mobile

Audience Search

Behavior?

What’s your site Mobile

Search Visibility &

Traffic Performance

What’s your competition Mobile Web

Search Visibility?

Does your site have a

Mobile Web Version?

How Mobile Search Crawlers access to your

What’s your Site Mobile

speed?

Is your Mobile Web Content

effectively Rendered?

Is AMP effectively

Implemented?

How do your ranked pages look in Mobile

SERPs?

What’s the AMP impact on mobile visibility &

traffic?

What’s your Mobile

Visibility impact on

Conversions?

Here’s how to answer them

#mobilefirstseo at #TuringFest by @aleyda from @oraintihttps://moz.com/blog/mobile-seo-stack-tools

To obtain this mobile search visibility increase

these mobile search conversions

And this growth trend

Now is your turn

Go raibh maith agat

Winning in a Mobile Search World #LearnInbound

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