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Google Pushes Mobile SEO

Didit Editorial

June 12, 2013: Using its familiar carrot-and-stick approach toward encouraging webmasters parties to comply with its directives, Google announced yesterday that it was planning to introduce “several ranking changes in the near future that address sites that are misconfigured for smartphone users.” Although Google didn’t reveal the details of exactly how its ranking changes would reward compliant webmasters and punish non-compliant ones, it did publish a list of common misconfigurations likely to bring the offending site under Google’s microscope.

These errors include:

  1. Videos unplayable on smartphone devices due to a number of possible factors, including licensing constraints and/or 3rd party helper software (such as Flash). Google recommends that HTML5 be used to render video on smartphone devices.
  2. Bad or Irrelevant Redirects. If you’re using a user-agent to redirect users from a desktop-optimized site to a mobile one, make sure that the redirects do not default to a different page. Both sites should have an identical directory structure and redirects from example.desktopsite.com/directory1 should go to mobilesite/directory1 – not to any other page.
  3. Smartphone-exclusive 404 (Page Not Found) errors. If a smartphone user attempts to access a desktop-optimized site, a 404 should not be shown. Such users should be redirected to an equivalent page on the mobile site, or, if this is impossible, allowed to pass through to the desktop-optimized site. Google notes that “showing the content the user was looking for is a much better experience than showing an error page.”
  4. “Disruptive” App Download Interstitials. Google recommends that webmasters seeking to promote their apps via interstitial ads adhere to best practice examples such as Smart App Banners for Safari on iOS6.
  5. Irrelevant Links. Google notes that “a common practice when a website serves users on separate smartphone-optimized URLs is to have links to the desktop-optimized version.” Any such links should be relevant and not, for example, link to the home page.
  6. Slow Sites. Google’s ranking algorithm has incorporated page speed for some time, so it’s no surprise that this factor would loom large in any ranking changes it makes in regard to mobile-optimized site.

If you have any doubt that your mobile sites have any of these errors, it’s recommended to clean them up now. Google has not announced when its ranking change will take effect, but one can assume that it could happen at any time, so take care of these issues now.

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