17Aug

Google’s mobile first index: An overview

Brightbridge_admin Business,Search Engine optimization 1497

Today, there is a surge in the mobile internet penetration and people tend to perform searches on Google from a mobile device. Though the ranking system is based on the desktop version of a page’s content to evaluate, this may cause an issue if the mobile page has less content. As Google algorithm is not evaluating the actual page that is seen by a mobile searcher. Therefore Google started experimenting the so-called – “mobile-first index”. This is a major shift in Google’s indexing and webmasters have to focus more on the mobile-first index.

This roll-out is going to change the way of your sites ranking in the SERP’s. Before, Google crawled your site pages as a desktop user and now it will crawl your site as a mobile user. This is going to make a remarkable difference in the internet world. Hence it is high time to concentrate on the mobile version of your website. This article will provide you with the necessary points in order to shift your website to the forthcoming future.

If you have not yet optimized your site for the mobile here is the checklist you should do for the mobile-first index.

Build responsive sites

Responsive sites mean that the layout and contents of the website adapt to any size of the screen when it is displayed. A responsive website automatically fits any type of devices like desktops, tablets, and mobiles. Use HTML and CSS to create responsive websites. This enables the content and images to shrink, resize, enlarge to look good on any type of screen. Responsive sites provide more friendly UI and will be the best for indexing.

Synchronize contents

Make sure your desktop website and the mobile version are synchronized. If you are going to apply any changes, keep in mind you update it in favor of your mobile site as it will be the primary focus of Google. Add fresh unique and relevant contents to your mobile site for good indexing.

Website’s speed

The page speed is considered essential to improve usability, especially on mobile sites. Google considers the speed of a website when ranking and you need to gear up your mobile site’s speed. To check the speed of your site uses Google’s- PageSpeed Insights Tool. If your site speed is low, fix the issue at the earliest. Here we have provided the screenshot of page speed of Amazon.In. The google page speed insights show the speed for both mobile and desktop version.

Internal Linking

A dynamic website which has separate URL’s for their mobile site will have variations in the internal linking with the desktop site. If your internal linking/ architecture of your mobile site is not similar to the desktop site, this can cause some issues and your ranking drops. Hence, make sure the internal linkings of your mobile site replicates the desktop site.