1- Ensure that your site does not have any faulty redirects. Simply redirect smartphone users from a desktop page to its equivalent smartphone-optimized page. DO NOT redirect all the desktop users visiting several different inner pages to the home page of the mobile site. For ex- www.example.com/ should be redirected to www.m.example.com/ and www.example.com/foo should be redirected to www.m.example.com/foo and not www.m.example.com. (If your site is responsive it’s best and there won’t be any issues of faulty redirects). Have a look at the below image to have a more clear idea:
2- Check whether the search engine crawlers are able to accurately crawl all the pages of your smartphone optimized site. You can simply submit a mobile sitemap under GWT in the similar way as the regular sitemap. (If your site is responsive then you don’t need any extra sitemap).
3- Make sure that Googlebot can crawl your JavaScript, CSS and image files by using the “Fetch as Google” feature in Google Webmaster Tools.
4- Make sure your robots.txt is working properly.
5- Take the mobile friendly test and check there aren’t any issues with your site – https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/
6- Use HTML5 standard tags to include videos or animations. Other formats might not be supported by mobile videos and might cause the below message to get displayed.
7- If any user is visiting a desktop page from a mobile device and you have an equivalent mobile page at a different URL, redirect them to that URL instead of serving a 404 or a soft 404 page.
8- For promoting app downloads, make sure the interstitial is not blocking the user from completing tasks.
It is recommended to use HTML banner or image, similar to small advert, that links to the app store where the user can download the app.
9- Make sure your mobile site loads quickly. You can use the Page Speed Insights tool for making your site faster.
10- Check the Mobile Usability Section under the GWT to find out issues that might affect the mobile users from properly accessing your site’s content.
Make sure to follow all the above guidelines in order to make your website mobile friendly and to keep your site safe from any negative ranking fluctuations.
Why It’s Important?
Making your website mobile friendly is important because if your site loses mobile rankings it can drastically impact the organic traffic to your site. Just check the amount of mobile traffic your site is getting and then think if this traffic is affected, your overall website traffic might get down. So, in order to keep your web traffic stable, please follow the above guidelines.
Also See:
70% of Mobile Searches Call a Business Directly From Search Results
Website Carousel For Mobile Search Queries
