Google Mobile First Indexing
I have received numerous questions about “mobile-first indexing” in the past few weeks. I would like to share what mobile-first indexing actually is, and how it may affect SEO efforts, especially for local SEO.Mobile-first indexing means that the mobile version of your website becomes the first criteria for what Google includes in their index and the baseline for establishing search engine result rankings. This is a fundamental difference in how websites are evaluated. The old Google method of evaluating websites was to review the desktop site first and mobile presence second for search engine positioning. Mobile-first does not mean “mobile-only index”. Even a site without a mobile-friendly version can have the desktop included in the index. But the lack of a mobile-friendly experience could impact negatively on the rankings of that site, and a site with a better mobile experience would potentially receive a rankings boost even for searchers on a desktop browser.If your mobile and desktop versions are equivalent like they are if you use a responsive website design, or if your content is optimized for mobile, mobile first indexing should not have any significant impact on your site’s search results. Google has encouraged webmasters with a separate mobile site (m.domain.com) to implement switchboard tags. Google’s own latest guidance on the topic states that if your website is responsive or otherwise identical in its desktop and mobile versions, you may not have to make any changes to your website. It is wise to keep a close eye on mobile page speed and load time. Check images and other dynamic elements to ensure that they are optimized correctly for the mobile user experience. With mobile-first indexing, content which is collapsed or hidden in tabs, etc. will not be treated differently than visible content as this mobile design technique is actually a mobile best practice.The end goal for mobile-first indexing is that the index will be based on crawling mobile content. If you have a heavily indexed desktop version, it is highly unlikely that Google will suddenly disregard your desktop content and just index your mobile content. If you take care that your mobile version contains all relevant and valuable content, your site should continue to enjoy good rankings.What is the future? Mobile is the future, at least according to Google and the mobile v. desktop search stats for the vast majority of clients that I work with. My guess is that content will not be arranged with the structure of websites (URL and navigation), and will become more interactive, and delivered more like a mobile app? AMP (accelerated mobile pages) will help some sites to deliver mobile content quickly and easily, but will quickly be supplanted by more robust content delivery systems that help Google deliver data through a more intuitive search (like the use of structured data mark up) to put together individual search preferences, location, and other factors to deliver timely and relevant search results. SEO will continue to become more complicated from a programming standpoint, but content will become simpler and time sensitive. As technology improves, social media and search seem to be using key elements of each of their platforms to stay relevant with the online audience.