Google Just Officially Introduced Mobile First Indexing - What’s Next?

Google has introduced mobile first indexing, and it will apply to all new sites indexed after July 1, 2019. This decision could have severe repercussions for websites who still haven’t adapted their website for mobile users and could completely transform the approach for web design from now on. Let’s first take a look at what mobile first indexing is and the reasons for the rollout. We'll also address what these changes could mean for website owners and how they can make the transition.

An Introduction to Mobile First Indexing

At its core, mobile first indexing means the mobile version of your website is the starting point for the website in the Google index. This means that your site’s value to search engines will be determined by the mobile experience first and foremost, which is a major shift from the PC first approach.

If your website is unfriendly to mobile visitors, it doesn’t mean it will go away, however. It may still appear in the index, but it will be far lower on the list. This is why it is called mobile-first indexing, not mobile-only indexing. If you’re using a separate mobile URL for mobile websites, that will come up first in the search results.

Google won’t notify website administrators that the site is being indexed with mobile-first indexing because that is the default for all newly indexed sites. Google will notify older, existing websites when they are considered ready for mobile first indexing. An estimated fifty percent of existing websites need to be made mobile-friendly.

Mobile first indexing is simply another way of giving priority to mobile-friendly sites in the search results. It’s also a signal that Google is clearly dedicated to its mobile audience. However, mobile first indexing isn’t a ranking factor – mobile friendliness is.

The Reasons for the Introduction of Mobile First Indexing

Google is already rewarding sites that have a responsive web design and dynamic serving. They’re doing this to encourage websites to be compatible with the mobile users who account for more than half of all search engine queries. And the trend is definitely only going to grow bigger from now on.

Note that the traffic on a site is not a determining factor in this process. It doesn’t matter if seventy percent of your traffic comes from desktops. Google will still crawl it from a mobile perspective when indexing it. They’re indexing sites based on the expectation that nearly every future search engine query will be done from a smartphone or other mobile device and optimising the experience for mobile devices accordingly.

How Mobile First Indexing Impacts Website Owners

If you want your new website to rank well in online searches, then it’s essential that your website works well on all platforms. Older websites that haven’t been indexed by Google yet won’t switch on 1 July 2019 but will eventually be moved. This means that website owners need to work with firms that truly understand mobile web design when creating new websites and updating existing ones. This is a service that you’ll find most web design companies offer nowadays. For instance, the web design firm PWD have a mobile service that focusses on responsive design to ensure your website can be used by visitors. If you want to see this in practice, they have a number of case studies that you can take a look over.

Mobile friendliness can no longer be a simple feature; it has to be the optic through which your website will be made. This also means that creating a mobile-friendly site could have a direct positive impact on your search engine results page ranking. For this reason, making the existing mobile site your default and ensuring it is mobile-friendly should be considered part of your SEO strategy. You don’t need to panic, but you do need to plan for mobile-first indexing.

Know that a website that looks good and seems to work well on smartphones may not count as mobile-friendly. For example, Google itself warns website administrators to pay attention to their structured data and alt-text for images. Hamburger and accordion menus are fine as long as the interface is usable on a mobile device. What should you do? Build all new sites in a mobile-first manner, and then test it for compliance with Google’s standards.

Consider the mobile user’s experience while you’re at it. After all, a menu that works on a tablet but presents unreadable text will cause most visitors to bounce away. Your font should be large and clear so that it can be read on a mobile device. The copy itself should be mobile-friendly, too. Write in short sentences and compact paragraphs. Put enough white spaces in between paragraphs and sections so that it accommodates scrolling.

Furthermore, you should test your existing sites to ensure that your site truly is mobile-friendly. You may find that your blog or basic website already counts as having a mobile-friendly, responsive design. In this case, there’s nothing to worry about. But you cannot afford to assume that things are fine and see traffic and search engine rankings suffer as a result. If you cannot or will not maintain a mobile-friendly site, ranking high in search results will be much more difficult.

Note that the mobile-friendliness needs to include every aspect of your website. One common mistake is making the website mobile-friendly but not optimising the mobile snippet for mobile viewers as well. Slow loading times will result in penalties from search engines, whether it is a PC or mobile-friendly version. Interstitials that pop up and block the page will result in a penalty, too, but it is worse on mobile sites.

Good News for WordPress Users

If your site runs on WordPress, then there’s good news. Since most WordPress sites actually run on responsive themes, this means there will be little to no change to rankings. While some might have to make some adjustments as far as menus and navigation are concerned, WordPress themes rank very high when it comes to a mobile experience. The only people who may need to panic are those who have significantly less content on their mobile website than on their PC one.

Conclusion

Mobile first is the order of the day and new websites that aren’t mobile-friendly will have trouble with both ranking and indexing. Existing websites will suffer the consequences too. This means that mobile friendliness can no longer be seen as an afterthought and is now becoming the norm.