How Does Mobile-First Indexing Impact SEO?

26⁰³
2019

As one of the most recognized SEO companies with a huge client base in Toronto, Vancouver, Winnipeg, Edmonton and many other parts of Canada, we are often asked tips and tricks by business owners on how to increase and maintain their Google rankings.

One of the most common complaints that many well-known businesses have approached us with is, although their business is doing just fine, their Google rankings are not really great; even though they have made no changes in their website for many years, except the content at times. One of the critical aspects of SEO that many traditional businesses today seem to completely bypass is Mobile First Indexing for their website. Modern businesses need to consider the multiple touch points where a potential buyer/user is trying to reach them.

Websites can no longer only be catered to laptop and desktop screens. They need to have a responsive interface that lets anyone browse their website through a mobile device of any OS, with the same flexibility and ease, as if they were using a desktop. Ideally, your website visitors must be able to do any and every kind of operation and browsing through their mobile device.

The reason why one needs to build a mobile-friendly site is quite apparent. By the end of 2019, in Canada alone, the number of mobile users is estimated to reach 30.6 million, out of which at least 72.9% are expected to use mobile internet for searching and browsing.

With such a gargantuan potential that awaits mobile internet searches, it is extremely essential to tune your business website to a mobile friendly version. For this, adopting Mobile-First Indexing is a must. Before we jump right into how Mobile-First Indexing impacts SEO, let us understand the meaning of Mobile-Indexing. Mobile-first indexing means that the mobile version of your website becomes a starting point for what Google includes in their Indexing and how they determine a ranking. In simpler words, it is a practice of making your website such that Google indexes your website and displays it in search results first when anyone tried to search your business using their mobile device.

If your website content already has a responsive design (caters to both desktop and mobile), you don't need to worry about creating a mobile-first version. In any case, even if you do not have a mobile version, Google will still crawl and display your desktop site version. However, your desktop site will not work well as a mobile-friendly site. This can negatively impact your overall search engine rankings as your website will be perceived to have a poorer user experience by the crawler.

Depending on what kind of website you have, Google will prioritize the crawling and indexation. If you have the mobile first indexing, Google will crawl the mobile version first, which in turn determines the rankings for both your mobile and desktop website. Even if you have the best SEO practices in place, you may find your rankings to be dropping.

What can you do about Mobile-first indexing for your existing business website?

Although the Mobile-First Indexing is still at a nascent stage, it is something Google is seriously considering to promote ease of access and a better experience for mobile searches. This change is being rolled out to only websites that are considered by Google to be ready enough. In fact, as mentioned earlier, if your website has a responsive design and works well in both desktop and mobile versions, you may not need to do anything. It still makes sense to regularly monitor and test your site for loading speed and optimization of images and dynamic elements so that they offer the best user experience.

Although basic SEO strategies can mostly give businesses the result they desire, it is best to partner with a dependable SEO company like BreezeMaxWeb to work on your website. Our SEO specialists can work on your website content, images and other dynamic elements to make sure that your website ranks well on Google. Give us a call today to see how we can help your business to get the growth you deserve.