Why Mobile-First Indexing is Now Google’s Default – And What That Means for Your Business

There are heaps of use cases for mobile queries. Recently I wrote about the uptick in location-based searches as a response to users’ on-the-go approach to search in order to meet their needs in real-time. These days, more than 63% of users use the web from their smartphones and 60% of Google’s organic search traffic originates on mobile devices. It should come as no surprise that Google’s response is to prioritize mobile-first indexing.

Mobile-first indexing is Google’s way of prioritizing a website’s mobile version for indexing and ranking a page before indexing the desktop version. Mobile indexing will have an impact on all searchable sites – the degree of impact for your site will really depend on whether or not your site is optimized for mobile.

If your site was built using responsive web design, it will not be affected by mobile-first indexing. Responsive design is a smart approach for any business looking to meet best practices and scale the web experience across devices.

Businesses with separate mobile and desktop sites will be most heavily impacted by mobile-first indexing and can respond by adopting a mobile-friendly approach with optimizing design, content, site speed and user experience, all with mobile in mind. This means going for clean layouts on visible grids, short paragraphs with contained word counts, and strategically chosen images that don’t slow down the site’s load time. A deep dive on these best practices is available here.

If you’re looking to optimize your site for mobile and ride the mobile-first wave, make ASTRALCOM your partner for digital marketing and SEO. Get in touch today.