According to Statista, mobile devices generated around 58% of web traffic worldwide in the final quarter of 2023.
Today, a large number of customers turn to their mobile devices to find and research a product or service.
Due to the extensive usage, a mobile SEO audit is of paramount importance when you launch a website.
With a mobile SEO audit, you get data on your website optimization and prepare you for future measures.
In the given blog, you will explore the steps involved in a mobile SEO audit to boost web traffic and revenue.
Let’s begin without further ado.
Why Do You Need A Mobile SEO Audit?
After Google rolled out mobile-first indexing, everyone in the market shifted to mobile optimization of their sites.
Those who relied on the SEO basics to work for their websites also started exploring mobile SEO optimization rules.
Performing a mobile SEO audit entails evaluating how well your website functions on smaller screens.
With a mobile SEO audit, you can cross-check if the site complies with Google’s mobile-friendly requirements and how well it offers users a satisfying mobile user experience.
User experience (UX) decides the impression a user gets from using your website.
It may impact your SEO ranking because Google assesses websites based on various variables, including page speed, usability, readability, and engagement.
Key Elements of Mobile SEO Audit
These components of mobile SEO play a fundamental role when you monitor mobile SEO.
1. Content
When you finalize your website, remember that good content is good. If you lack this aspect, you may not see the difference you want, even after the mobile SEO audit.
For mobile-first indexing, one of your site’s most important mobile SEO strategies is its content.
You should be skilled in creating exciting, captivating, and engaging copy while also optimizing the already-existing content.
Google believes that’s the appropriate place to index it for mobile devices, which will rank your website highly for mobile SEO.
Delivering high-quality content is a step that you can easily achieve if you keep the following in mind:
Writing brief and direct content is among the finest mobile SEO strategies. Only use the content that the audience will find relevant and informative.
Choose the appropriate group of keywords and use them to inform the creation of engaging content in various formats.
The link to your website will be rapidly clicked by your mobile audience if you use rich snippets. These tell the audience what your website is about.
2. Responsive Design
Some of the most important guidelines for developing a responsive mobile website include a fluid site layout, a distinct look, clear graphics, and smooth site browsing.
When you monitor mobile SEO, all of these elements are crucial.
These are the mobile responsive elements that you need to consider:
- Simple loading on multiple devices
- Having internal links and redirects
- Does not conceal any informational content for mobile versions
If you pay attention to these elements from the beginning, your mobile SEO audit will also be seamless, with fewer issues waiting to be resolved.
3. Dynamic Serving
You can offer the HTML or CSS version, depending on the specific device your visitor is using. Simply put, the user can use your site’s mobile and desktop versions with the same URL.
Dynamic serving is a mobile SEO tip that allows you to use a single URL for a specific device.
To put it simply, you will need to design two separate versions of the page: one for desktop use and another for mobile use.
4. Technical Aspects
For a mobile SEO audit, technological advancement is equally essential.
Let’s discuss some of the aspects that affect your website, which will be discussed in the subsequent section in detail as well:
Site speed: Your mobile site needs to load quickly enough to keep users interested. If a website takes more than 3 seconds to load, more than 58% of mobile users are likely to leave without engaging fully.
You can improve it with three basic tips:
- Use compression to make your files smaller
- Cut down on redirects
- Optimize your CSS files
Accelerated Mobile Pages
AMP is another essential element of a mobile SEO audit that enables you to produce eye-catching, visually appealing, and highly effective ads for a variety of platforms and devices.
These pages’ lighter HTML and CSS codes allow them to load more quickly than their equivalents.
The click-through rates and mobile rankings will consequently rise significantly.
Get Rid of the Technical Errors
A customer accessing your mobile site and receiving a 404 error can negatively impact your brand.
With a mobile SEO audit, verify that the website is free of technical faults, such as poor navigation, duplicate material, or other problems.
For a more detailed guide on resolving redirects, read our blog on How to Fix Page with Redirect in Google Search Console In 7 Steps.
5. User Experience
When doing site audits, be sure not to overlook the client experience.
Providing an excellent mobile user experience is a primary feature that helps to improve the rank of a website.
In this regard, content, photos, infographics, typography, and site design are all important.
When you monitor mobile SEO, check the following to offer a better user experience:
- Creating brief forms that don’t take up the whole mobile screen
- Reduce the size of the feature image to accommodate lower mobile screen sizes.
- A functional CTA button with catchy phrases
- A breadcrumb trail (a graphic component) and a small menu can aid navigation.
Mobile SEO Audit in 6 Steps
Below are the integral steps to carry out a mobile SEO audit:
1. Analyze Web Traffic
Find out how much mobile traffic your website receives and from what devices before you dig for more detail in the mobile SEO audit.
You can make sure the pages are properly optimized for mobile visitors by knowing the sites they visit.
With the help of this information, you can develop your mobile keyword strategy by knowing the search keywords.
Traffic volume, the number of visits to your landing page, engagement, conversion, and revenue rates created for mobile devices show if you are fulfilling users’ expectations.
Knowing how your customers engage with your website when they visit it on a mobile device can help you better prepare for changes.
2. Check Google Search Console’s Mobile Usability Feature
Google Search Console gives you information about how Google perceives the accessibility of your website on mobile devices.
In your mobile SEO audit, you can use it to keep track of the following:
Crawl Data: Find out when Google last examined your website and whether it is mobile-friendly.
Problems with Usability: Determine the particular problems that hinder mobile usability. Crowded elements, tiny font sizes, and viewport settings are common problems.
Related Blog: The Dos and Don’ts Of Building A Mobile-Friendly Website
How To Use the Feature
You will be able to determine when the page was indexed and whether or not it is responsive to mobile devices.
Moreover, by clicking on the Mobile Usability option in the sidebar, you will learn about the different problems that impact your website’s Mobile Usability.
The mobile usability checker in Search Console highlights problems that impact the usability of your website on mobile devices.
It is simple to use GSC if your website is designed to be responsive.
But if your website’s design is dynamic, you must produce XML sitemaps of its URLs for the search console to index your mobile site.
3. Boost the Speed of the Site
Another important mobile SEO audit is page speed since customers want quick and seamless loading times when using their phones for browsing.
Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool allows you to assess your website’s speed on desktop and mobile devices and receive recommendations for optimizing it.
Using a content delivery network (CDN), minifying your code, compressing your pictures, enabling caching, and minimizing redirection are a few popular techniques for improving page speed.
Try your website’s appearance and functionality across a range of devices to see what works and what doesn’t to enhance user experience.
4. Analyze the Content
For any type of website design, the content is similar. In your mobile SEO audit, you need to update it to enhance readability and make it more apt and knowledgeable for the viewer.
Follow the character limitations for the meta title and description for maximum optimization. Otherwise, your content will show up with ellipses in the search results, leading to lower click-throughs.
There isn’t a hard-and-fast rule, but 58–60 characters are considered ideal for the meta titles and roughly 115 characters for the meta description.
Apart from that, be aware of the latest relevant keywords that may be missing in your content.
You can utilize SEMRush, Ahrefs, or other keyword research tools to learn what search terms people are typing into their mobile and tablet devices.
5. Make the Content Suitable for Mobile Devices
The main goal of a mobile SEO audit is to see if your site attracts users.
To increase the number of visitors to your site, there is more to mobile website optimization than just technical aspects.
The content you create must be written with the audience in mind.
Shorter sentences and paragraphs are preferred for mobile devices. The website should be responsive to identify the screen size and adjust the layout and content according to it.
This method guarantees that mobile devices can read your information. Who wants to read a massive wall of text when they land on an article? Not me.
Try to keep paragraphs to no more than three sentences.
Even if you can convey what you want in lesser words, it will work. Because the pictures and videos on your site provide your viewers with involvement opportunities and keep your material engaging.
Pro Tip: According to a study, your content should be centred on the page for best results with Google SEO. Positioning the main message where the user’s attention is entirely focused is crucial.
6. Verify the Compatibility of Pop-Ups
Mobile pop-up advertising is one clever mobile marketing tactic that encourages the audience to perform a specific action.
Many sites use them to obtain email addresses, advertising deals, and produce leads that may eventually become profitable clients.
In order to develop a successful pop-up approach, you need to ask yourself a few questions. You need to be clear about your objectives, and what kind of pop-ups help you achieve them? What else can you add to pop-ups to benefit the user?
When used in the wrong way, pop-ups may irritate users and negatively impact their experience.
For instance, when users visit your site, and before they even take a good look, a pop-up appears. Such immediate pop-ups may annoy them enough to leave your site.
When pop-ups are used inappropriately, Google may penalize you.
Google advises utilizing pop-ups that are simple to close and don’t restrict access to the information on your website to avoid getting penalized.
If pop-ups make your visitors’ experience worse, we can anticipate that they may have an indirect effect on your SEO.
Here are some guidelines that you can adhere to in your mobile SEO audit to solve any pop-up issues:
- Make sure pop-ups don’t take up the entire page
- Ensure their responsiveness
- If someone decides not to use them, it should be easy to close them
- Make sure there is a call-to-action button on it so that users may quickly reach it
- Before including your pop-ups on your mobile website, test them on various devices
- Avoid common accessibility problems like missing labels, tab focus, tab loops, etc.
FAQs
How often should I carry out a mobile SEO audit?
Whenever you make major changes to your website or at least twice a year, frequent audits help ensure your website is always optimized for new algorithm changes or mobile SEO trends.
Is a mobile SEO audit possible with Google Analytics?
Yes, Google Analytics offers insightful data on user behaviour, mobile traffic, and website performance. You can use it to find problems, monitor advancement, and make data-driven choices to enhance mobile SEO.
How does mobile SEO relate to mobile user experience (UX)?
Because search engines favour websites that provide a good user experience, mobile user experience is important. An integral component of mobile SEO, good UX can increase engagement, longer visit durations, and higher search ranks.
The Bottom line
Conducting a mobile SEO audit entails evaluating multiple components to guarantee that a website is optimized for search engines and offers mobile users a smooth and satisfactory experience.
Focusing on content, user experience, usability, design, and performance are all the things you check when you monitor mobile SEO.
If you don’t know how to implement changes to achieve impeccable mobile responsiveness or to conduct an audit, reach out to The Dreams Agency.