Back in March of 2018, Google announced the mainstream roll-out of mobile-first indexing. This meant that the mobile/responsive version of your website would take priority when Google is determining how to evaluate it for organic rankings.
Sites that followed Google’s best practices for mobile were the first to be migrated to this form of indexing. Those sites saw an added benefit in search results, and enjoyed a clear advantage compared to sites that didn’t have a good mobile experience.
With Google’s most recent announcement, be prepared for mobile-first indexing to become the standard moving forward. As of July 1, mobile-first indexing will be enabled for all new websites.
What does this mean? If you plan on launching a new website after July 1, make sure you are following Google’s best practices for mobile experience. Having a responsive site is a start, but not alone good enough to achieve page-one rankings.
Here are somethings that new websites should consider:
How do you do this? There are a couple of small tweaks you can make to ad campaigns:
• If you’re redesigning a current site, pay close attention to your current site’s mobile performance. Look for pages with high bounce rates and exits. Identify areas for improvement, and make the appropriate changes
• For your new site, responsive is considered best practice, as opposed to mobile-specific URLs and redirects
• Follow these
12 Best Practices for the Mobile-First Era
• Once your site is launched, pay close attention to its mobile performance. It also helps to heat map the mobile version of your site to see how users are interacting with it
Current websites will be treated by Google the way they have been since last year: continuous evaluation of your mobile experience until ultimately being included in mobile-first indexing.
How's your site's mobile performance? Are you launching a new site, and concerned about mobile-first indexing?
Reach out to us today, and let us help you through some of the questions you may have.
