Optimizing search engines or SEO is an area of constantly changing marketing. We are often informed about a new algorithm launched by Google to offer users the best content on the internet.
This requires always keeping an eye out and changing many of your SEO strategies to deal with changes. But it's not always easy to be up-to-date about Google trends. Looking forward to producing relevant results, the search engine constantly improves its technology and has artificial intelligence to support results.
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Optimizing research mechanisms plays a vital role in attracting consumers to your website. SEO can help increasing online visibility of the search engine results pages.
It is an indispensable component in creating digital presence. It has a lot of value in delivering content. When used strategically, it can help companies direct organic traffic, optimize user experience and increase revenue.
Mobile-First
To achieve good results with SEO, you need to think of the web as a mobile experience. Since 2019, Google has been treating the mobile version of a site such as the primary version and the desktop version as the secondary version. So you need to be thinking about the mobile-first approach.
This makes sense because currently about 2 billion people access the internet only through their smartphones. In 2025, we can see almost three quarters of users accessing the web exclusively through mobile devices.
Thanks to the omnipresence of smartphones and tablets, Google will only use the mobile version of the content for indexing and rating from May. But before we examine some of the best practices for indexing that prioritizes mobile devices, it is good to clarify any possible confusion about the update and what it means.
The indexing that prioritizes the mobile phone is currently the standard, and it has been for a while. Any website that has been new on the Internet or Google Search since July 1, 2019, mainly uses the mobile version of the site for indexing.
The update means that Google will use the mobile version of a site for indexing and rating, instead of the desktop version.
There's no other choice. As a website owner, it is impossible to cancel the update. Google's goal is to move all sites to indexing that prioritizes mobile devices, and it's up to you to prepare and comply.
“Everything you want indexed, must be on mobile”. John Mueller (Google).
The recommended indexing practices that prioritize mobile phones
Now that you have a better understanding of indexing that prioritizes mobile devices and what it involves, let's discuss some of the best practices to implement and ensure a smooth navigation:
Bet on Responsive Web Design
If you haven't done it yet, it's time to join the 70 percent of mobile-optimized sites. You can achieve this with responsive web design. A responsive site ensures that users always see an optimized version of the site, regardless of the device or screen size.
A responsive website is beneficial for its flexibility – responsive design means that website owners do not need to create multiple versions of their websites to suit different devices.
If you already have a responsive site, indexing that prioritizes your mobile phone should not have a significant effect on performance on the results pages of the mobile phone. search engine (SERPs).
If you are in the stage of still building responsive design of your website, web design tools can help you. In fact, Google has stated that responsive websites that use dynamic service correctly need not make any changes.
Make sure Googlebot can access your mobile site
O Googlebot is Google's web tracker software and needs to be able to access and process its content. Allow Googlebot to examine the features of your website and make sure that your mobile site has different URLs from your desktop site.
Also, remember to check that a disallow directive may be blocking the URL. To ensure that your website is rated, you need to use identical robot metatags on your mobile and desktop websites.
Different robot metatags can cause Google to fail to track and index your page when your website is enabled to index mobile-first.
Keep your site identical on all versions for desktop and mobile
Users should not be penalized for using a tablet or smartphone instead of the desktop. Your desktop site should have exactly the same content as your mobile site. If your mobile site currently has less or different content, you should update it.
Finally, make sure you do not use “slow charging” for the main content. Slow loading is an optimization technique that postpones loading content that is not visible or critical.
Remember that Googlebot will refuse to load content that requires loading any user interaction, such as typing or clicking.
While you compare your content in both versions of your site, give it a little bit of content. Keep your titles consistent and make sure they are aesthetically attractive in the mobile version of your website.
Pay attention to visual content
Any images or videos in the mobile version of your website have their own list of best practices to follow. When it comes to images, you need to provide the user with high quality images in a compatible format.
Make sure to include only images that have high enough resolution and do not look too small when viewed on a smaller screen.
For images and videos, try not to use URLs that change when a page loads images because if URLs change continuously, Google will not be able to process and index your images properly.
As for video content, it needs to be easily found on a mobile device and should be placed in a compatible format and with relevant tags.
Avoid putting a video down on the page, forcing users to roll indefinitely. The recommended practice for structured data also applies here: keep the same data in your website's mobile and desktop versions.
Loading speed (Core Web Vitals)
With the arrival of Google Page Experience and Core Web Vitals, the new main web metrics, the speed of loading of content has risen to a new level of importance.
In addition to offering a much more complex browsing experience, this aspect of your site is also important so that it can simply be viewed by mobile devices, since mobile internet technologies do not have the same speed as broadband used by desktop computers.
Tip: To learn how your site is rated in the three new metrics, called Largest Contentful Paint, First Input Delay and Cumulative Layout Shift, just access the Google tool: PageSpeed Insights.
Keep important content
Generally, there are some differences between the appearance of a website on your mobile phone and desktop. This is because it is harder to show everything from a computer site to mobile due to smaller screen sizes.
There is no room for things like sidebars or large menus, so mobile sites usually exclude or hide parts of content present on computer sites.
Your mobile site content does not need to be identical to the content of your desktop site, but any important content should be present on your mobile phone. Excluding things like email opt-ins is not going to be a big deal from the SEO point of view, but deleting things purely because someone thought it was too long for mobile devices can have a negative impact.
Previously, if the content were not shown on the mobile by default, it would count less than the visible content. This changed with indexing that prioritizes mobile phones, and now you have more design options, such as content with guides.
Google no longer gives discounts to hidden content to improve user experience.
Conclusion
It is important to note that if you have not yet started adapting your website to the new requirements of the world's greatest seeker, you better hurry, because the change will take place in just two months, from May 2021.
The indexing that prioritizes mobile seems complicated, especially for those who don't have much knowledge of the subject, but the reality is that if you're already offering an incredible experience for mobile devices and you've made sure you'll have the same content between computers and mobile devices, you have little to worry about.
