Inform Google and Other Search Engines

Make sure Google and other search engines understand your mobile configuration. Most

important of all, Google must understand your page so that it can rank your website

properly. How you inform Google depends on which mobile configuration — responsive

web design, dynamic serving, or separate URLs — you have opted for.

In case your site has a responsive design, Google’s algorithms can understand it

automatically without you having to inform Google. When you have a responsive design,

just make sure your viewport is set with the following content:

<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">

The viewport decides how your webpage will be displayed on a device. A site with

responsive design varies its size based on the size of the device screen. Declare a viewport

so that your webpage displays correctly on any device.

If your site is dynamically served, make sure you allow Google detect your configuration

using the VaryHTTP header:

Vary: User-Agent

In case you maintain separate URLs, you can inform Google by adding a special link

rel=alternate tag that points to the corresponding mobile URL.

Desktop page:

<link rel="alternate" media="only screen and (max-width: 640px)"

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href="http://m.example.com/page-1" >

Mobile page:

<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/page-1" >

Avoid Common Mistakes

In order to optimize your website for mobile devices, make sure you avoid committing the

following mistakes:

· Slow Mobile Pages ─ Mobile networks are slower as compared to wired Internet

networks, so it is important to pay attention to how fast your mobile pages load. It

is a critical Google ranking factor. Use a mobile SEO tool to find out your mobile

page speed.

· Don't Block CSS, JavaScript, or Image Files ─ Don’t hide your JavaScript, CSS,

or image files. Make sure all these elements are accessible to Googlebot. If your

site’s robots.txt file blocks Google from crawling on these resources, then it may

have a negative effect on your site’s ranking.

· Mobile Redirects ─ Since mobile networks are normally slow, too many redirects

can hurt your page speed. If you are maintaining multiple URLs, make sure all your

links point to the relevant pages. In case you maintain multiple URLs and you

recognize a user is visiting a desktop page from a mobile device and you have an

equivalent mobile page at a different URL, then redirect the user to that URL instead

of displaying a 404 error.

· Avoid plug-ins and pop-ups ─ Plug-ins like Flash and Java may not be available

on user’s mobile device. Always ensure you don’t have any unplayable content on

your mobile page. Avoid using pop-ups on mobile pages because it becomes quite

clumsy to close these pop-ups on a mobile device.

While creating a mobile page, always keep in mind that the user has limited space to work

on. So, you need to be as concise as possible while creating titles, URLs, and metadescriptions

– of course without compromising the essence or quality of information.

Useful Tools

Here is a list of some useful tools that you can use to find out how mobile friendly your site is:

· Mobile Emulator ─ It lets you see how your site appears on a wide variety of

mobile devices.

· Moz Local ─ Use this tool to ensure that your local SEO is in order.

· Responsive Web Design Testing Tool ─ Use this tool to see how your responsive

site looks like on a variety of mobile devices with different standard screen sizes.

· Screaming Frog ─ This is a useful tool that allows you to analyze your site and

double-check all the redirects.

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· User Agent Switcher ─ This is a Firefox add-on that you can use to find out how

your site looks like when accessed from a different user agent.

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There are various other tips related to SEO. We have not categorized them into any special

category and hence, putting these in miscellaneous category. Go through these tips one

by one.