Google has started implementing its mobile-first index, which is a direct transition to one of the most important changes in user behavior. This shift is not unexpected, as over the past few years, surveys and studies have shown that mobile devices account for approximately fifty-seven percent of all traffic. This move by Google means that mobile-friendly sites will take precedence over desktop-only sites in terms of ranking. When the index completely changes, the mobile version of the websites will become the basic version. To take advantage of this development, search engine marketers should be extremely vigilant to make sure their sites are fully optimized for mobile devices.
Below are some helpful tips for search engine optimization professionals to help them get newer and newer mobile technologies.
Watch Google crawl activity
When your site switches to the mobile-first index, you’ll receive a notification from Google via Search Console. However, you need to gather more in-depth insight into the search giant’s indexing activity. If you monitor the data from the log file, you will be able to find out how search engine bots are accessing your site. If you find that mobile devices are more active than their desktop counterparts, you’ll have to work on making your site mobile-friendly or lose end users to the competition. Since Google runs some tests and the data obtained may be inconclusive, you can hire search engine optimization services and ask experts to monitor your website’s performance closely.
Create content for mobile devices
Companies with responsive websites have little to do in setting up a mobile-first index, but only if their content is targeted at a mobile audience. If you have the same content on different devices, there is no guarantee that your website rankings will remain the same. In fact, research suggests that keywords return different results on computers and mobile devices. This means that consumers expect different content on different devices. For smartphones and other mobile devices, you need to create content that will help users achieve their goal quickly. You can integrate progressive web apps into your mobile content strategy to offer your customers a quick experience.
Understand the journey of the mobile user
On mobile devices, audience attention time is even shorter than on a desktop computer. So you have to understand the micromoment well. When your audience is using a mobile device, you’ll basically get very short windows of opportunity to engage consumers. To take full advantage of this opportunity, you need an effective data-driven strategy, such as a voice search strategy, as it targets specific micro-moments. If researching consumer behavior is too much of a challenge, you can use the services of a professional SEO agency that has the tools and experience to immediately give you the answers you are looking for.
Discuss SEO technical best practices
To prepare for the mobile-first index, you need to follow some technical SEO best practices, which are:
- Check if your site is a mobile site in Google Search Console by adding a robots.txt file. Your site must have an “m”. to be a mobile site.
- Review your metadata to see if you can further optimize it for a higher CTR (click-through rate) on mobile
- Do a speed test to make sure your mobile site is not running slow. If so, you need to take appropriate action to optimize and accelerate its speed.
You can no longer procrastinate with having a mobile website. So contact specialized SEO agencies and improve your ranking opportunities.
