We can’t stress enough the importance of a mobile-friendly website. Mobile friendliness has always mattered, but now more than ever with the shift in Google’s indexing tactics. Recently Google announced they have begun testing a “mobile-first” indexing strategy. In the past, Google has always prioritized based on the desktop version of a webpage’s content. With more than half of searches happening on mobile devices, Google is making the switch to account for the mobile version when analyzing the quality of a web page.
Preparing for the Switch
Google has stated the following:
- If you have a responsive site or a dynamic serving site where the primary content and markup is equivalent across mobile and desktop, you shouldn’t have to change anything.
- If you have a site configuration where the primary content and markup is different across mobile and desktop, you should consider making some changes to your site.
Google has put an emphasis on a responsive, mobile-friendly website which we are continuing to see here. If you are planning on a website redesign please be sure the design is responsive. If you have a separate mobile website, please speak to your webmaster, developer, online marketing agency, etc. on the best steps (each case will be slightly different) to prevent and ensure that your organic visibility will not be hurt with this change. In the past, websites were ranked based on signals from your desktop site, however, that will change with this update. Google will now rank websites based on signals from crawling the site in a mobile view. This modification to the algorithm is still in the testing phase as Google is working out some of the bugs and potential issues, but is expected to fully roll out in the next few months.
