Any Good Professional SEO Agency Should Be Talking About Mobile-First Indexing

Any professional SEO agency nowadays will make frequent mention of mobile-first indexing. They’ll incorporate it into their SEO plan for your business website, or at least highly recommend that you take note of it. But what is it, and how does it affect you? Do things need to change, and if so, how? If you’ve previously been unaware of this latest hot topic, this blog seeks to explain the whys and wherefores.

Having a website that was equally easy to navigate on a mobile device like a smartphone or tablet as it was on a desktop or laptop was once seen as a nice-to-have. But as Google strives constantly to ensure the World Wide Web is as mobile-friendly as possible in response to consumer demand, mobile-first indexing is the new buzzword. Simply put, this means the mobile version of your website is now Google’s first port of call when indexing your site and evaluating how high up the search engine rankings your company comes. SEO experts will be quick to reassure you that your mobile site is not the only version Google will look for. If you don’t have a mobile site, your desktop-enabled one will still count for something. But a professional SEO agency will also tell you that to reach the ranking you want to achieve in the search engine results, a site that offers users a great mobile experience will score much better than one that doesn’t. This marks a fundamental shift in thinking for SEO services industry-wide. It’s safe to say that several years ago, the majority would focus all their attention on the desktop version, while the mobile one was a kind of ‘lite’ version, without the same emphasis on content, mark-up, structure and backlinks.

So what do you need to do to take account of this change? Firstly, one key check you should expect your SEO agency to do is on page loading speeds for mobile. If smartphone or tablet users can’t view your pages fast, you’re likely to be downrated for this aspect. This also includes ensuring that images, videos and the like are optimised so they load and run where applicable as smoothly as they do on desktop sites. Other factors include ensuring the same level of content appears on your mobile site as it does on the desktop. Metadata, like titles and meta-descriptions, should be equally as informative (though not necessarily the same) on both website versions. There are a host of other technical details and adaptations that can be made behind the scenes by a professional SEO firm too that will improve your mobile site’s ranking. In terms of the content itself, the change is not so much to Google’s algorithms as it is to website users’ behaviours when viewing websites. Because mobile device browsers are typically viewing your website on a much smaller screen, and often while on the move, you’ll want to make sure your content is short, snappy, engaging and informative. It must also, of course, include all the keywords identified as being valuable to users searching for your kind of product or services.

Have you previously written your own content? Will you struggle with this new style, or overall, with ensuring your website is just as fit, if not more so, for mobile viewing as it is for desktop browsers? Then it’s time to speak to a professional SEO agency for advice and action today.