Website promotion has an ultimate goal, to be on the top of the SERPs. Digital marketing principles are also based on user trends & lead you to the right techniques & strategies essential for your online business. Numerous digital marketing principles have contributed so far to the success of the online appearance of businesses that are unaware of the search engine norms & protocols. Mobile-First Indexing is also a search engine protocol that has inspired digital marketing professionals, website designers & developers to create virtual products & services that are compatible with mobile phones & tablets.
The Mobile-Geddon Update introduced by Google was a breakthrough in the field of web designing & development. It is still a considerable concept that inspires budding website designers & internet marketers even today. It is still an indivisible part of contemporary digital marketing & web designing campaigns. In this article, we are going to learn about Mobile-First Indexing & how essential it is for your online marketing strategy. Here are the leading highlights of our study:
- Meaning & Emergence of Mobile-First Indexing
- How Important is Mobile-First Indexing?
- Is your Website Mobile-First Indexed or Not?
- How to Prepare for Mobile-First Indexing of your Website?
- Closing Thought on Mobile-First Index
Following the search engine standards & protocols is the prime objective of online marketing strategy. Top search engine results & popularity among users automatically follow. Well actually, Google Algorithms are just a set of rules & standards that inspire you to enhance your web presence from time to time. We’ve created other segments of information before to help you understand the dos & don’ts of online marketing & promotion.
You can reach eGoodMedia & read our blog for better information regarding various old & new aspects of online marketing that are essential for your upbringing among the top search results. Our Skilled On-Page & Off-Page Website Optimization Team is there to assist you throughout your online promotion journey!
Meaning & Emergence of Mobile-First Indexing
Mobile-First Indexing came into existence when Google first entailed the need for mobile-responsive designs. Because the traffic was on the way to shift to the mobile phone screens. In fact, Google was also involved in offering a corresponding operating system considerably for mobile phone users. That’s right, we call it Android. It is the most used mobile phone operating system in the world today. It is affordable, convenient & offers an easy UI to the users.
The operating system has also inspired Google to come up with Mobile-First Indexing updates from time to time. Because Android soon got global recognition & became the most reliable & fun mobile operating system in the world. Here’s a detailed description of the timeline through which the development of Mobile-First Indexing took place:
- In November 2016 the update was first announced by Google & tested on certain domain addresses
- Mobile-First Indexing properly took place in March 2018 when Google started implying the same on all websites
- Mobile-First Indexing covered over 50% of the websites by the end of the year
- The very next year, in July 2019 Google came up with a default mobile indexing standard for all upcoming websites
- By the beginning of 2020, Mobile-First Indexing covered more than 70% of websites & started giving them more prominence over desktop-only websites.
- March 2021 is going to be a probable introduction of a 100% Mobile-First Indexing update from Google
So what you’ve got to do is to conduct a check over all your web addresses & examine if you’re indexed on Google as a mobile-friendly UI or not. At eGoodMedia you can easily review the worth of your website as per mobile responsiveness & convenience. Our Award-Winning Digital Marketing & Creative Web Designing Company keeps you updated on varied Google standards & norms that are going to affect your business presence!
How Important is Mobile-First Indexing?
As the name suggests, Google is first going to index the websites that have mobile-friendly UI & a corresponding fine experience. That doesn’t mean desktop designs are going to be rejected entirely. Whenever a new website is launched, it needs to be indexed by Google ASAP to get displayed on the SERPs. Without indexing, you can’t fetch even the last page of the results associated with queries related to your goods & services.
Coming back to mobile phones, now you have to think exceptionally before deciding on your website layouts & overall design. Mobile-First Indexing means Google will give priority to the new websites that follow mobile-responsive UI to provide for the corresponding users. Google will index them first. Consequently, such websites will appear earlier on the SERPs & gain recognition in advance. Some other benefits could be entailed as follows:
- Mobile-First Indexing would help you reach out to your potential visitors faster
- Mobile-First Indexing could enhance the popularity of your web presence faster
- It improves your web relationship with Google
- The concept improves your page rank for targeted website content
- Eventually helps to promote your business offerings, goods & services
- Mobile-First Indexing improves your online marketing strategy for future
- It will help you achieve your business goals faster & effectively
- You can plan your web page layout, design, ads & information structure effectively
The update has brought enough opportunities for webmasters to grow their online reputation & popularity. Now you must check if you’re Mobile-First Indexed on Google or moving slower on the track. You can share your search engine promotion concern with eGoodMedia anytime. We’re a renowned Search Marketing & Social Media Monitoring Company from Vancouver focused on varied website promotion tips & techniques the budding webmasters require!
Is Your Website Mobile-First Indexed or Not?
You have to figure out first if you’re already indexed for mobile-friendliness or not. There could be different reasons why you’re not indexed in Google like that. If we’re able to track down those reasons we could run certain alterations on our website & get the desired results. All your website pages need to be well structured & organized with respect to the Google norms. It is the initial requirement you need to fulfill.
Though it belongs to a backend procedure the search engine crawlers need to experience first, an organized frontend also provides for user satisfaction in the future. Here are the leading parameters that often decide whether your website is perfect for Mobile-First Indexing or not:
1. No Structured Information
The very first factor that represents your failure to be indexed by Google is your unstructured web page information. Even a single page could create problems for your website building plans. Structured information could help Google crawlers understand the mobile-responsive UI you want to offer to your target audience. As such, it helps you grow faster & index you right away for your mobile-first potential. Unstructured data is also rejected if it resides on a desktop-based website. In addition, unstructured data won’t let you design a mobile-friendly UI for your website. You’ll face difficulty to run your designing operations.
2. Missing Alt Text
Even if you’ve already designed a mobile-friendly UI, you have experienced problems as such. Unstructured data could also be found on a mobile-responsive website. Similarly, the website content comprises certain elements that are very important to take care of. If your web page information is structured but doesn’t exhibit an identity on the part of visuals & images you need the search engine crawlers & visitors to view, you get into trouble. Using Alt Text along with every web page image & video can let search engines recognize the content in your mobile-friendly website.
3. Slow Loading
Slow loading affects multiple aspects of your digital marketing campaign. Even if you’ve got the best designing & development support, you’re going to suffer this. The reason is your website hosting. Until you’ve got your server support or dedicated support system you have to witness poor loading speed. Either you can approach a dedicated hosting provider or create your own server at home. Though it is not mandatory if you’re working on a new website building plan, you have to think about it in the future when your website gets matured. However, there’s no need to worry as such. Google may take some time to index your website. You have to keep calm & wait for a week to see the results. Don’t forget to register yourself on the Search Engine Console to get the future status of your website.
4. Other Elements
There are other elements that may affect your UI & drop your impression in the eyes of Google Crawlers. Following this, we advise you to get a preview of your mobile-friendly website through a mobile phone. You have to analyze the UX you were just going to offer your website visitors. Don’t publish special website content & pages before evaluating such factors. While checking for your mobile-responsive design through the phone you have to take care of the following elements- Fonts, Size of Pictures & Words, White Space, etc. Things work in the same way they used to work in the case of a desktop, however, you need to stay updated on the user behavior.
5. Tools & Techniques
Another important aspect you can use to figure out whether you’re noticed by Google or not is the tool you’re going to use. There’s nothing more reliable than the Google Search Engine Console here. Used to be called Google Webmaster earlier, it generally determines how Google recognizes your online presence. It gives you clear ideas of what you need to do with your website to remain on the top search engine results. Regarding mobile-responsiveness also, it will help you find out the best solutions to your web designing & marketing concerns.
This way we can analyze if our website is indexed in Google for the mobile-first category or not. If things aren’t working well you can evaluate a firm reason behind the same & make your alteration strategy right away. In the next segment, we’ll discuss how you can prepare for a Mobile-First Indexing strategy as such. Stay Tuned!
How to Prepare for Mobile-First Indexing?
As discussed earlier, Mobile-First Indexing & Desktop Indexing aren’t two different things. If they were, what could be the purpose of prioritizing one as such. Website indexing will remain the same for both mobile-friendly & other UIs. The difference is all about your turn. You need to fetch the Google Search Engine Appearance as soon as possible to start ranking further. And that’s the ultimate rule of the game. No indexing, no SERPs. Google would take more time to index your website pages & even ranking you in the long run.
Hence we suggest you prepare for your Mobile-First Indexing & grab your fine position in the leading SERPs addressing your top products & services. Here are the steps you need to follow:
1. Conduct a Technical Audit
Though it is a website marketing strategy that you have to undergo, you have to approach your designing team to conduct a technical audit for understanding where you need to improve your mobile-responsive layout & design. Apart from the Search Engine Console, you’ve got other tools to analyze all the technical aspects affecting your Mobile-First Indexing efforts. Ahrefs Webmaster Tools introduces an amazing site audit tool for your associated strategy to find & remove potential faults.
The tool helps you figure out the elements responsible for a poor UI that Google isn’t going to permit reaching the SERPs, even if the overall appearance is mobile-responsive. The elements you can approach & make alterations to are:
- Title Tags
- Meta Descriptions
- Alt Texts
- Robot.txt
- Loading Speed
- Ads & Pop-ups
- Structured or Unstructured Data
- Canonical Tags
- Alt Attributes etc
Addressing Robot.txt files means you need to take care of the web pages you want search engines to crawl or not. If you don’t remember what web pages you’ve restricted for being viewed by Google, you can not decide on the corresponding alterations you have to make on your website. Title Tags & Meta Tag items like the excerpt, meta description, etc are also an integral part of your website content. Users surely need to be offered everything on mobile that’s available on desktop, whether through innovative or traditional means.
2. Proceed to What you Want to Keep
When you’re done with the designing & content management part you have to decide what to keep & what to kick out. You can additionally decide what you need to hide & what you need to mention depending on the resolution & size of the mobile screen the users are going to find you with. Here are the ideas you can follow to do so:
- Analyze the major differences between the mobile screen & desktop appearance addressed by your website
- See for better solutions regarding sidebars & mega menus you’ve got on your desktop
- Don’t try to make your mobile-responsiveness identical to the desktop, no one does that
- Always try to switch your finest piece of information to your mobile responsive design, take help of corresponding tools for mobile-friendly layouts
- Remove email opt-ins but make sure you’re not affected by the size of your website content anyway
- Make sure about hidden content as users are still able to see them in search engines aren’t when you apply Robot.txt commands over the same
- For eCommerce websites pay adequate attention to added product details, user queries, reviews & ratings
So, this way you can decide on the elements you want to keep & remove from your website for better mobile-friendly UX for both users & search engine crawlers. This will also help you entail a better Off-Page & On-Page SEO Strategy for the future online marketing operations you’re going to undertake. For further advice regarding website SEO, you can consult eGoodMedia & get started with your promotional plans. Here we offer the best Website Promotion & Social Media Monitoring Services to aspiring business owners across the West Coast!
3. Optimize your Website Navigation
The navigation structure of the website is closely related to its mobile-responsiveness. As such several WordPress plugins & tools have been developed over time to redesign the website navigation. In fact, different website navigation themes & styles are made available on various online platforms to help emerging webmasters & designers overcome their Mobile-First Indexing concern. A mobile-friendly navigation structure essentially focuses on the thumb zone it’s going to support for the convenience of the users.
The same is followed by the requirement of pagination at the end of your website content or a list of items. Likewise, you can decide on the use of “Load More” or “Infinite Scrolling” pages for your mobile responsive design.
4. Internal Links
You don’t have to care about the external links. Mobile-First Indexing has more to do with your internal information structure & therefore you must take care of it. Internal links are always helpful for user engagement & considerable Dwell Time on your website. What you have to do is to maintain the appearance of such links so that the users are comfortable making use of them. Moreover, you have to ensure the existence of all your important internal links for specific web pages over mobile-friendly designs. That’s all about how you can prepare your Mobile-First Indexing strategy!
Closing Thought on Mobile-First Indexing
Apart from the principles, tools & techniques discussed above, you can reconstruct your design & marketing strategy as per your business requirements. No two websites are completely identical and therefore the web designing & promotional journey has multiple routes. To analyze your journey you can approach eGoodMedia and represent your fine work before Google Search Engine Console. Our specialized Website SEO & Search Marketing Team is always there to assist you with your innovative business plans. Just get in touch!!
