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5 Reasons Your Mobile Rankings are Dropping

mobile website rankingsWhen 2017 started, Google was ready with a mega plan. No one then had a clue that the search engine giant is all set to switch to a mobile-first strategy from existing desktop first indexing. The message behind the makeshift was crystal clear- mobile websites will now be the game changers. They will be indexed first and businesses with a picture perfect mobile website will be getting a ranking boost. People, who got the message right and acted promptly, were successfully adjusted in the new ecosystem. However, if despite having a pretty organized mobile website, your website ranking sucks, maybe you haven’t had time to optimize it.

And what seems the most dreaded is that because it drops for mobile, it drops for desktop searches, too. So if you’ve been figuring out what causes that drop, here are a few things that could be the problem.

1. Your Redirects are At Fault:

When users visit your desktop website, the best practice is to redirect them to your mobile website. However, most people redirect users to the mobile version of the homepage, regardless of the page they are looking for.This ambiguous redirection results in frustrating user experience. And, since Google is very keen on ensuring consistent and clutter free user experience, it could end up in Google penalty and ranking drop. If, while editing your website, you trace issues with URL redirects, fix it quickly. Ensure that each desktop page redirects to its equivalent mobile page.

2. Your Website Takes Ages to Load

Nothing annoys users as much as a website that loads in years. Searchmetrics claimed in a survey that great websites take an average of 1.1 seconds to load. By the time your website loading speed drops to 3 seconds or even more, users switch to your competitors. No one is going to stick around that long for your website to get what they want.

More the time your website takes to load, more the bounce rate it generates. Google’s PageSpeed Insights is an ideal tool that can list factors that’re actually stalling site loading speed. Not only the tool helps you in identifying issues, but also gives detailed instructions on how to fix them.

3. Your Website Isn’t Optimized for Local

You might have failed to read the trends in searching. Mobile users are now more inclined to find things nearby. It’s therefore important to optimize your mobile sites for local search so that you come up as a result when user runs a search query for local store. To get this done, register your business with Google, add in your address, contact information, website, business category, and hours. It will help someone find you when the next time he will look for something nearby him.

4. Your Website Pops Wacky Interstitials

A person arrives at your website to find something exactly what he is looking for. If annoying interstitials and overlay ads are the first thing your website is showing, it’s against the Google’s user experience guidelines. There should be a clear distinction between content and interstitials. Don’t give users hard time to sit through overlay ads and wait until it goes off. It’s a stark breach of fair user experience practice Google talks about.

Overlay and interstitial ads are of optimum importance for companies and businesses for many reasons. They are used to collect email addresses, advertise discounts and allow users to sign up for the newsletters. But you can’t force the user to sit through them, dismiss them and then proceed through actual content. This nuisance could hit your website ranking badly. In January, Google rolled out an interstitial penalty to scan websites that abuse overlays and interfere with user experience.

5. Your Website is Still Not Responsive:

We already have written over twenty plus articles stating why responsive websites are the most. If your web site rankings dropped drastically and you’re clueless why, check your website’s responsiveness. You will get the answer. Google’s notion behind a responsive website is pretty straight forward. In order to give users clutter-free viewing and browsing experience, Google wants that a website should fit the screen size of any device it’s browsed on. To avoid penalties and ranking drops, ensure that your website is responsive. That means, it’s coded and optimized for whatever screen happens to be displaying it.