Every SEO company that is dedicated to optimizing their client’s website by deciphering algorithms, searching for hacks for link building etc., must have felt a jerk after hearing about Mobile-first Indexing.
After a thorough research on search engine optimization, Google surprised you by introducing mobile- first indexing.
Mobile-first indexing is Google’s new approach to making a better user’s experience and a more useful search engine result.
What Is Mobile-First Indexing?
This short video will help you to understand the main idea of Mobile-first indexing.
Mobile-first index, in a nutshell, is Google’s way of ranking your website on the basis of the mobile version of your website. This means that if you optimized your site for your mobile phone, Google will rank you favorably on mobile as well as desktop.
This was implemented after due research on Google’s part which came to a conclusion that having a desktop as a primary index caused problems for mobile users. Because the website was completely different when shown on both of these mediums.
Mobile-first indexing, however, does not imply that websites that are not mobile friendly will be absent from the index altogether. If you didn’t optimize your websites for a mobile version, you will have their desktop version present in the index.
However, this will affect the ranking of that website. A website which is mobile-friendly will have an edge over the ones that are not.
Also it is important to notice that the mobile version of the website will be given preference over the desktop version. This information should not worry the webmasters who have an equivalent level of optimization on both the version. However, if you didn’t optimize your mobile version it will reflect negatively on your business.
By the way, if you want to know more about Google you can read this article about Google penalties and how to protect your site.
And here is a link to an official announcement from Google.
How It Affects the Life of the Target Audience
According to Google, a majority of its users are on their mobiles. Because of this it only makes sense that they shift their focus on indexing “mobile first”. The following is a list of things the target audience will achieve after implementation of mobile-first indexing:
- Faster loading time of the website and its elements while working on the phone. With the stricter eye of Google on every website’s mobile version, webmasters will now strive to achieve a faster loading time.
- Better quality content as opposed to what it used to be before. This is owing to Google’s crawlers who will determine your ranking or indexing.
- The mobile site will have a more structured data. This is again because of Google’s crawlers who will visit your website to determine its rank based on how structured the data is.
These are a few benefits audience will accrue after the implementation of mobile-first indexing.
Why It Is Important for Webmasters
Now, if the question arrives as to how the webmasters will get affected by it. The answer is clear; this change in algorithm is a severe alteration for the webmasters. Let us find out how.
This algorithm will change the number of the audience a webmaster gets on his website. This happens because the audience searches a particular subject he is interested in on Google. The search engine lists a number of results based on the ranks. These ranks are given by Google itself to the websites on the basis of the level of optimization it has. With the change in the algorithm with respect to the level of optimization needed, the whole business gets affected.
That is why it is better if all the webmasters must be brought-up-to-date with the changes in the algorithm.
How Can Webmasters Prepare?
This goes without saying that “Mobile-first indexing” will focus on the mobile version of your website. However, if your mobile version is equally optimized as the primary version that you have nothing to fret about.
However, even with a fully optimized mobile version, you need to be ahead of yourself. You should check the loading time of your page and the dynamics present on it. Lack of this will otherwise have a major impact on your website’s indexing.
However, if your head has not been present in optimizing your website’s mobile version it is okay. You just must take care of the following:
1. The Content of your Page
This point must be highlighted as the content of your mobile version is the selling point of it. Make sure to create a unique quality content which does not bear resemblance to your desktop site.
Also, do not forget to install those formats on your mobile version which are indexable as well as crawlable.
2. Technicalities
Several technicalities on your mobile site can make or break it for you. Some of these technicalities are:
- The Meta descriptions you use have to be equivalent or corresponding to both versions of your website.
- Both the versions must contain social metadata like Twitter cards etc.
- Verification of your mobile version on the Google console is a must.
- You must incorporate the identically structured data mark-up on both the version of the website.
You must take care of these technicalities while optimizing your mobile version.
Builder for Mobile’s version optimization:
It is probably best to invest in a good website builder for an optimized mobile version of your website. This will prove to be a good investment for the accessibility of your audience.
A website optimization builder works like magic. It altering the view of the website according to the mobile phone or gadget from which the viewer is accessing your website. It will make the layout of the website compatible with the operating system.
You can start by looking at the website optimization builders that come highly recommended by Google.
Conclusion
Many of you might be wondering if this was 2018’s “Mobilegeddon”, we can’t be sure of that as of yet. Instead, we can prepare ourselves for this new change. Because the technology is ever-changing and ever-evolving. Also we must evolve with it if we don’t want to be obsolete.
So if you don’t your business to suffer you must start working on optimizing your mobile version.
