New Google Mobile-First Indexing Update

Is your website designed with mobile-first indexing in mind? If not, it should be.

As of July 1, Google’s new mobile-first indexing update is in effect.

  • Brand-new sites that are “previously unknown to Google Search,” will be indexed with the mobile site in mind.
  • Other sites that have already moved over to mobile-first indexing will continue to be indexed this way.
  • Older sites that were previously known to Google and have not yet migrated to mobile-first will continue to be indexed using desktop-first, until they are ready.

“For older websites, we’ll continue monitoring and evaluating pages for their readiness for mobile first indexing and will notify them through Search Console once they’re seen as being ready,” Google said.

But what does this mean for you?

For the first time, Google is putting top priority on how the website renders on mobile over desktop. If you are building a new website, you will need to think about the mobile experience even more than the desktop one.

If you have an existing website that isn’t currently optimized for mobile, now is the time to make the switch. While these sites are still being indexed as desktop-first, it’s only a matter of time before they, too, will be required to have a mobile component.

When Google “crawls” a website (scans the website for content, keywords, design, etc. to decide how to rank it), historically they have been putting emphasis on how the site renders on a desktop computer. But with mobile-first indexing, Google is looking instead at the mobile phone version of the site first.

If your mobile site is not optimized, this will impact your SEO and organic traffic.

Google determines readiness for mobile-indexing based on:

  • Parity of content (including text, images, videos, and links);
  • Structured data;
  • Other meta data (such as titles and descriptions and meta tags).

Action Plan

To prepare for mobile-first indexing you will need to:

  • Evaluate the responsiveness of your existing website.
  • Make sure your desktop website has the same content as your mobile one.
  • Structured data and meta data should be present on both versions of your site.
  • If you have a poor mobile experience, you will need to improve the responsiveness.
  • If you are building a new site, or re-designing your current one, make sure responsiveness is kept in mind.
  • Ensure your servers have enough capacity to handle an increase in crawl rate.

You don’t have to navigate Google’s mobile-first indexing alone. Pulsion Marketing has website design and SEO experts who will help evaluate and improve your website experience.

Contact us today for a free consultation. Call 1-888-701-4441 or visit www.digiforcemarketing.ca.