The document discusses conducting a 30-minute mobile SEO audit to evaluate a website's mobile friendliness and performance. It provides steps to analyze mobile traffic and page data, identify issues through the mobile-friendly test, and prioritize fixes. Common problems include blocked resources, non-scaling images/videos, and missing rel="alternate" tags for separate mobile URLs. The audit helps create a plan to address issues either for specific pages or site-wide. Additional bonuses include checking for schema.org markup, page speed, and local search optimization.

1. The 30 Minute Audit:
Mobile SEO
George Freitag
Sr. SEO Strategist
@georgefreitag

2. #PortentU
#PortentU
The Mobile SEO Audit

3. About me.
Illustration by @flashmurphy

4. #PortentU
The Mobile SEO Audit
What do
you mean
“mobile”?

5. “Mobile” Devices Tablets

6. 6
Mobile Friendly site on smartphones

7. 7
Mobile Friendly site on tablet
Nothing!

8. 8
Why it’s
important

9. 9

10. There was
also this…

11. Mobilegeddon!!!
Or…

12. #PortentU
The Mobile SEO Audit
THE NEW
ERA

13. #PortentU
The Mobile SEO Audit
• Affects mobile
searches
• Page by page test
• Simple pass/fail test
• Lots of sites failed
Good news
• Affects mobile
searches
• Page by page test
• Simple pass/fail test
• Lots of sites failed
Bad news

14. 14

15. 15
12% increase in visibility for mobile-
friendly websites from a week ago.
Source:
Advanced
Web
Ranking

16. 16
“Mobile-Friendly” URLs on 1st page
increased from 66.3% to 70.1%
Source:
Moz

17. #PortentU
The Mobile SEO Audit
The
Audit

18. You think
your site is
mobile
friendly and
you want to
be sure.
Your site isn’t
mobile
friendly but
you want to
be.
Case 1: Case 2:

19. Analyzing your traffic

20. Find drops in
mobile traffic.
(8 min.)

21. 21
Mobile Overview.

22. 22
Compare to previous period.

23. 23
If there’s a drop in mobile but not
desktop and tablet…

24. 24
There’s a better way…

25. 25
Segment Out Mobile and Others

26. 26
Drill down to Organic traffic
Select
“Medium”
Click
advancedoptions

27. 27
If mobile dropped but not tablet/
desktop, check it out.

28. 28
Prioritize pages by traffic drops

29. Do this in Adobe Analytics

30. 30
In Adobe you can just apply
multiple segments

31. 31
Export list of pages that dropped

32. If you want, sort pages by change

33. #PortentU
The Mobile SEO Audit
Compare
traffic by
industry
(2 min.)

34. 34
Turn on
benchmarking.

35. 35
Pick your
market.

36. 36
Select Region

37. 37
Select Traffic

38. 38
See how you compare to your
industry.

39. Check Query
Data
(5 min.)

40. 40
Look for
drops in
queries
Filter branded
queries
Filter to Mobile
Enable
“Change”

41. 41
Download table data

42. 42
Look for
drops in
page-level
metrics
(you’ll have to re-
do your filters)
Look for drops

43. #PortentU
The Mobile SEO Audit
Being
mobile
friendly

44. Lookin’ good

45. But then…

47. Mobile
Usability Test.
(10 min)

48. 48
Get a summary of pages
that have issues

49. Break down
issues by
page

50. Get a
rundown
on the
issues

51. Takes you
right to
mobile
friendly test.

52. Spot-check
because it’s
just plain
wrong
sometimes.

53. Go back to
list and
Download it

54. Common
Mobile-Friendly
Issues

55. In search, there are basically
just 2 ways to do mobile.

56. #PortentU
The Mobile SEO Audit Separate URL
Solution
Single URL
Solution

57. 57
Single URL Problem:
Google doesn’t think your site’s OK.
Responsive Dynamic Serving

58. 58
#1 Culprit: Blocked resources
User-­‐agent:
*
Disallow:
/css/
Disallow:
/js/
Look for this in
your robots.txt

59. 59
#2 Culprit: Non-scaling
images and videos
Video isn’t
scaling to
screen Update
YouTube embed
codes or use
this

60. • Button size/placement
• Font sizes
• Viewport configuration
Other
culprits
#PortentU
The Mobile SEO Audit

61. 61
Separate URLs:
Google can’t find your mobile page
?

62. 62
Use the rel alternate tag
<link
rel="alternate"
media="only
screen
and
(max-­‐width:
640px)"
href="http://m.example.com/page-­‐1"
>
<link
rel="canonical"
href="http://www.example.com/
page-­‐1"
>
Both desktop and mobile
canonical tags point to
DESKTOP URL
Desktop URL points to
Mobile URL

63. 63
Don’t make a mobile XML sitemap;
Annotate your normal XML sitemap
<?xml
version="1.0"
encoding="UTF-­‐8"?>
<urlset
xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"
xmlns:xhtml="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<url>
<loc>http://www.example.com/page-­‐1/</loc>
<xhtml:link
rel="alternate"
media="only
screen
and
(max-­‐width:
640px)"
href="http://m.example.com/page-­‐1"
/>
</url>
</urlset>
Add this
to every
<url>

64. making
a plan

65. Get a list of
URLs to fix
(5 min)
Case 1: You have specific URLs to fix

66. 66
Take list of mobile issue URLs you
got from Webmaster Tools

67. 67
Match to landing page export from
Analytics

68. 68
Use vlookup to get a prioritized list
of mobile URLs to fix

69. Build a case
(5 min)
…or Case 2: You have a lot to fix

70. If it’s a something you can
just point out, like a
robots.txt block or missing
rel=alt tag, that’ easy.
Is it a site-
wide issue?
#PortentU
The Mobile SEO Audit

71. If it needs more
justification, use the tools
you just learned to build a
case for it.
Is it a site-
wide issue?
#PortentU
The Mobile SEO Audit

72. 72
Use Analytics to show lost
revenue and traffic.

73. 73
Use benchmarking to show
comparison to your industry.

74. 74
Use Queries and Impressions to
show opportunity.

75. 75
Use Mobile Usability show how it’s a
problem and check your work.

76. Bonus 1:
Schema.org

77. 77
Site Name
Markup

78. 78
Breadcrumb
Markup

79. 79
Review
Markup
STARS!!!

80. Bonus 2:
Page
Speed

81. 81
Use PageSpeed Insights
It even tells
you what to
do

82. Bonus 3:
Local
anything

83. Start here.

84. You
did
it!
BEST SITE
EVER!

85. Prepared by
George Freitag
SEO Strategist
@georgefreitag
Thank
Portent, Inc. 506 2nd Ave. Suite 1700 Seattle. WA 98104-2354 | Tel: 206.575.3740
YOU.
#PortentU
The Mobile SEO Audit