How can you master mobile-first indexing and push your mobile website to the top of mobile search results? The Ericson Mobility Report reveals that mobile data traffic is set to increase to nearly 107 exabytes every month. As per the report, each mobile subscriber around the globe will stream full HD videos for 10 hours. It is also estimated that by 2023, 20% of mobile traffic will be steamed with the help of 5G networks, which is more than 1.5 times more traffic than the traffic of 4G, 3G and 2G put together. The report clearly implies one thing – Gear up for the mobile search war before it gets you. Competition will be high and things will get tougher for mobile websites as far as search engine rankings are concerned. You need to prepare well for mobile-first indexing.
Mobile-first indexing ranks the mobile sites that are prepared for the revolution higher than the ones that are not. SEO changed forever after November 2016, the day mobilefirst indexing was introduced. Google chief executive Eric Schmidt bounced the idea of mobile first during the Mobile World Congress in February 2016. "We understand that the new rule is mobile first," Schmidt said. "Mobile first in everything. Mobile first in terms of applications. Most first in terms of the way people use things. And it means ‌ that we have a role now to inform, to educate through all these devices."
There has been a lot of focus on mobile-first indexing and optimizing for the mobile websites, thereon. As per an article published on Search Engine Land, Google suggests that you go adopt a responsive approach. It implies that you have the same content i on a page-by-page basis on both desktop and mobile website. SERP will be based on mobile-based content and site index will prefer mobile pages. In the absence of mobile site, Google will rank your desktop website but preference will be given to websites that are mobile-optimized. Some of the critical aspects that can boost the ranking of your mobile website are listed below: •
Site speed (your website needs to load in less than 1.10 seconds). You should conduct some extra tests to check if you should add dedicated servers in case your load times are falling short
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Ensure that you have consistent and complete structured markup (that contains the content description, contact information and page title) across desktop and mobile versions Unordered lists You must reduce the number of redirects Optimized images (compress the images, if required) Social Signals Reduce the flash content on your website Local SEO AMP Use of relevant keywords and phrases There should be no change in canonical links on mobile sites The mobile website must be verified as a separate entity in Google Search Console Ensure that you have a bug-free mobile website
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Servers hosting your website must have the capacity to managed increased crawl rate
Google gives weightage to websites that provide a positive user experience in case of both desktop and mobile users. To stay competitive, you need Google to include your mobile website in their index so that it can be included when determining rankings on mobile search. Google prioritizes on the basis as per mobile versions of web pages and it gives a second preference to desktop users. As per experts, Google’s mobile first indexing might be giving weightage to how keywords and language relate with entities. Entities are a powerful way to search and surmount language hurdles. There are SEO experts who also believe that mobile-first indexing will work on the Knowledge Graph premise (and not the link graph). The knowledge graph first understands
facts related to places, people and things, and the connection between these entities. It’s not only the mobiles that must be optimized for SEO but websites across all devices. If you fall short of any of the parameters listed above and feel that you aren’t prepared for mobile-first indexing, you can speak to one of the Digital Success SEO experts to get your mobile ready for the mobile revolution. To read it online, please click here: