Note: This was featured as part of our Web Wednesday segment on Charleston’s 105.5 The Bridge with Box in the Morning. You can catch us every Wednesday morning at 8:20 am ET for your dose of social media & digital marketing news. You can listen to the segment below:
Google just came out with a new mobile-first index, which means that they will create and rank every search listing based on the mobile version of the content. There are a lot of businesses that may only have desktop versions and are now in panic mode but we have all the answers for you!
What Is It?
As more and more people have started using their phones to search information, Google has created mobile-first indexing to make phone users represent the majority. Google has started to use websites mobile version as their primary search engine index and how they determine their search ranking. It got the name “mobile-first” because not all businesses have a mobile version of their website. However, businesses lacking mobile-friendly experience could have a negative impact on where they are ranked on Google.
The First Thing to Know
First things first, don’t stress about it. This is still a very new concept for Google and is still in its earliest stages. Google stresses that every business should create a mobile version as that’s what a large amount of the information seekers rely on. If you have a mobile site already, make sure the content and links are similar to the desktop version so Google can consume the right content and rank your site properly. Sometimes the mobile page has less content, which can cause the system to be less accurate and score a lower rank. If your mobile and desktop versions are already identical, you won’t need to make any changes!
What Do Search Engines Look For?
Keywords are very important to help retrieve the right information that a person may be looking for. If you want your page to be found, you need to make sure you use the proper words that you would want your page to be found for. You also need to remember to check updated plugins that you have incorporated into your website and make sure they are not broken. If any are broken, the website will not function, which could have a negative impact for you. Metadata and header tags will help track the activity of your website and see the amount of people who click through. Having a mobile-friendly site is crucial in today’s day and age in order to reach out to a larger audience and get more views, since almost everyone today uses their mobile phone to fetch information.
If you are concerned about whether your website could suffer from Google’s mobile-first indexing concept, we would love to sit down and help you make any changes to help improve your SEO. Give us a call at (888) 632-4499 for a FREE consultation. It’s not too late!
