Google Starts Mobile-First Indexing

Jesus. With all the changes happening in SEO on a constant basis no wonder I’m lazy as f lately. I’ve taken a break from some of our Wordpress installs on Kinsta for a week or so and letting someone else handle that so I can have a rest and not just not do Wordpress for a week haha. SEO is really always an evolving and constant chasing game isn’t it.

So after the endless heads up about mobile-first indexing Google has finally started the roll out. So just what is mobile-first indexing? It’s pretty straight forward. Prior to this rollout, Google didn’t use the mobile version of your website for indexing and rankings. That changes now.

Mobile use has expanded rapidly as the devices we use become more and more capable. I have a MacBook at home. Do you think I’m gonna grab that and fire it up to Search something quickly? No. I’ve got an iPhone XS Max that will get me my answer in two seconds. 

More and more people use mobile devices to surf the internet now which means for all purposes really you need to make sure that your website is not only mobile -friendly but so mobile friendly it loads quick and is free of clutter.

Google is just simply following trends and doing what given it its reputation as the top search engine for years. The point is to direct users to sites that are fully functional on mobile devices, load quick and give the user the information their looking for quickly. SEO related shit is not like completely mistified some of it is actually just common sense lol.

Google still uses a singular index for websites and apps, it’s just that changes have been made to its algorithms to use primarily the mobile version of your website.

Heads up. What works for some may not work for others. There are some who design their website primarily on desktop, and that’s fine. I chose to do mine entirely on mobile, why? Because the trends are going towards surfing more on mobile devices rather then on desktops. Why design on Desktop only to find out your page doesn’t exactly mimic what you thought you created. Just do it on mobile so you can see the changes and create a clean design, one that you’d like to see and you can create on your mobile device for your mobile device.

Not just for the purposes of having something as it was when you designed it on desktop, but to actually experience and create your website on your device and let yourself see as you go kind or what works, what doesn’t, what slows your site down what’s cluttering the user experience. For me it helps to keep things better then just mobile friendly but also user friendly and natural.

If you’ve designed your website (Not this one lol) on mobile like I have, you most likely created a mobile version of your website that is primarily for mobile devices anyways, but there are other things to take into account as stated by Search Engine Lands article..

• Ensure parity between mobile and desktop with content (text, images, videos), tagging, structured data and internal links.

• Ensure your servers have capacity to handle changes in crawl rate.

• Monitor indexation status.

•Ensure robots.txt are validated.

•Check your server log files.

If you’re trying to improve your websites performance your most likely familiar with Google Search Console. Both the old and the new version right? Lol. If not get acquainted with it now. Make sure your robots.txt has no errors. Check back every couple days for indexing issues and don’t ignore warnings from Google.

This change has been coming now for a while and you should have been hearing about it. So it’s now in place. For those who already have a wonderfully mobile-friendly website then there’s not that much difference. Just keep an eye on your indexing coverage and issues and deal with any errors that shall arise.