What are some of the most important aspects of mobile-first indexing that an SEO expert can help you with?
Google has been making a few changes to how it indexes and ranks sites recently. One such change is mobile-first indexing. The mobile-first index will change how Google prioritizes a site’s content for ranking purposes. It will also make a website more likely to rank highly on both desktop and mobile devices.
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While the definite timeline for this update hasn’t been fixed, it was hinted at SMX Advanced last June that 2018 would be the year of its deployment. Essentially, when mobile-first indexing goes live, your website’s Googlebot will crawl your mobile site and that will be what’s indexed. This means that your website must be fully optimized for mobile or it will have a hard time ranking well on Google’s SERPs.
As a result, a lot of SEOs are trying to figure out how to best optimize their websites for this new index. While a lot of this information is still unknown, there are some things that can be done to prepare. In this article, we’ll discuss what are some of the most important aspects of mobile-first indexing that a site should consider.
Mobile-First Indexing and Your Site’s URL Structure:
Historically, Google has always preferred to index your desktop version of your website over your mobile website. This is because the desktop and mobile versions of your site often have different URLs. Having these different URLs is bad for search engines because they can’t index the entire content of your site. That’s why it’s so important to have a responsive web design. Having responsive websites will help ensure that both your desktop and mobile version of your site are indexed.
Mobile-First Indexing and Page Speed:
The mobile-first index will be a game changer for site speed. This has been a big concern for many people in the industry since Google first announced this initiative. While a lot of people will be able to afford to have their site hosted on a fast server, the reality is that most sites are not in this position and need to do everything they can to improve their speeds.
This will include ensuring that your website has no broken links and that the HTML tags on your pages are properly formatted. It will also be necessary to ensure that you are not using any type of “fake” redirects on your website. This could be a problem for some sites with responsive designs and can cause them to be ranked lower than they deserve.
The Importance of User Intent:
In a mobile-first world, Google will be focusing on the intent behind the search query more than ever before. This is an exciting development because it will allow Google to better understand the value of your content and how it meets the needs of the user.
While we don’t know how much of this new emphasis on user intent will be incorporated into core algorithm updates, it is a good idea to keep an eye out for any news or changes that may come about. By keeping an eye on your site’s performance in Search Console and by examining your mobile usability and Core Web Vitals reports, you can stay ahead of the curve when it comes to this new index.
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