Mobile First Indexing is Coming | Mobile

SEO and Your Mobile Responsive Website

There are always new developments as we march forward in the digital world. Google, as well as other search engines, is constantly changing its algorithm and making changes to enhance the experience of the user. These changes will benefit the user but make it harder for marketers to crack the codes and utilize methods of how to rank better and use the best standards.

Finally Here or Still on The Way?

Since early 2016 Google has been announcing their move forward, in the mobile world, to shift the user experience and indexing rankings to focus more on the responsive version of your website. Due to the high Google search volume coming from mobile devices, rather than desktop, Google is working towards having their algorithms primarily look at the content on the mobile version of sites. That time is now closely approaching. as they have been hinting that they will push this update out in June of 2018. It is important to note that this update will adversely affect those who do not have a mobile responsive version of their website available to users.

What is Mobile Friendly?

Although mobile responsive websites and mobile websites sound similar, there is a difference between the two. A mobile responsive website is a duplicate of your desktop website that has been updated to be responsive or “friendly” on mobile devices. The design and content conform to a specific viewport size of the device you are on. This means that the duplicate website can adapt to a multitude of devices and their different screen sizes. A mobile website is a completely separate website with different content and could be or might not be responsive to the device you are using.

“Our crawling, indexing, and ranking systems have typically used the desktop version of a page’s content, which may cause issues for mobile searchers when that version is vastly different from the mobile version,” wrote software engineer Fan Zhang. “Mobile-first indexing means that we’ll use the mobile version of the page for indexing and ranking, to better help our—primarily mobile—users find what they’re looking for.”

Mobile Only?

How will this affect your business?

Every update to Google algorithms comes with a significant amount of confusion about how it will affect business owners and marketing strategies, as we all fight our way up to the top of Google. Mobile-first indexing is on its way and if you aren’t ready, it could mean a drop in your rankings. Google keeps its algorithms a secret, so there is no way for us to know how it will affect website rankings until it is launched and tested in a real-time environment. However, we do know that the longer you wait to update your mobile site the more you risk having Google lower your rank when the update comes out.

Do you need to check your website? You can test it here with the Google mobile friendly test.

Recommendations

Here are some recommendations, from Google, to help you prepare your website for the mobile first index:

If you have a responsive site and the markup is equivalent across mobile and desktop, you shouldn’t have to change anything.
If you have a site configuration where the primary content and markup is different across mobile and desktop, you should consider making some changes to your site.
Make sure to serve structured markup for both the desktop and mobile version.
Don’t forget about the Structured Data Testing Tool and comparing output.
Use the Robot.txt testing tool to verify that your mobile version is accessible.
Don’t forget about your mobile version in Webmaster tools under your Google account, please add and verify your mobile version.
From Google, “If you only have a desktop site, we’ll continue to index your desktop site just fine, even if we’re using a mobile user agent to view your site.”

Google Resources

Welcome to Google & Why Make a website mobile friendly
Check out Google’s docs on Mobile SEO for your mobile website performance.
Responsive design is the most improtant function you could give your users today. Review Responsive Web Design document by Google today.
If you are new to the website world. Make sure to visit Common Mistakes on the Google Development Website.
Here are amazing FAQs regarding this topic, for more information click here.