Here’s the Lowdown on Mobile First Indexing

The digital landscape is always changing and mobile first indexing is the next step in small business online evolution. Because a well informed client is our best customer, we put together some thoughts on this new development.

What It Is

Basically, the name says it all. The mobile version of your website is set to become a lot more important. In fact, it’s going to be one of the baselines that determines ranking. Small businesses should pay attention to the word first too. 

If you don’t have a mobile friendly website, the desktop version will still be included in the search engines index. That doesn’t mean you can get away without a mobile friendly site if you’re looking for good rankings.

Why It’s Important  

Simply put, mobile first indexing is critical because Google says so. They crawl the web to determine your rankings as a business. Google has done its homework and found that most of its users use mobile searches. That’s why they’ve bumped mobile rankings up.

What Small Business Needs To Do About Mobile First Indexing

If you’re not mobile friendly, there’s no need to panic just yet. The whole process is in the developmental stage. Still, by a lot of industry accounts this is the wave of the future. It’s important to understand your desktop and mobile pages need to be in sync.

Some reports say that over half of the current search results are indexed through mobile first indexing. Google is reportedly moving sites that have parity between mobile and desktop content first. In other words, it’s a proactive move to take a look at a few key factors now.

Tackle Your Content

Tackle your content first. It’s a good idea to ensure that your mobile version has the same information as your desktop. Go through everything including images, text and videos.

There’s some other requirements online small business will need to know about. Basically, things like meta data and structured data will need to be equivalent on both mobile and desktop sites.

The word equivalent is important here. There might be shorter character counts on your mobile site but the information and keywords should be the same.

Does all this sound a little overwhelming? Another thing to add to your ever expanding small business to-do list? Let us help. Our professionals can help you get the most from mobile first indexing to stay ahead of the curve.