Google’s Mobile first indexing is now powering more than half the pages that are delivered in global search results. Therefore, you are now more likely to visit website pages via Google search that has first been indexed and crawled using the mobile version rather than the desk top version of the page.

Improving Your Website for Mobile First Indexing

Google is evaluating the mobile version of websites, crawling and indexing the site and decided where it should be shown in the search engines. If your website isn’t ready for mobile or optimised for mobile devices you may find your ranking decreases sharply in the search engine results pages. Most businesses are now fully aware of this but there are many small to medium sized businesses that still need to catch up. There’s plenty of help and advice out there, visit Google’s help document first of all and do feel free to ask us about our mobile SEO services in Worcester.

Is Your Website Being Moved to the Mobile First Index?

Google is informing people when their website is moved to the mobile first index. They send a message to your Google Search Console. If you’re not sure if your site is being indexed this way, visit your Google Search Console and check your inbox. No message will mean your site isn’t on the mobile first index, yet. It’s advisable that you also look at the URL inspection tool and look at the label that your website was given when it was last crawled by Google. If your website has moved it will have a label Googlebot smartphone useragent.

Mobile Pages Vs Desktop

Google informs people to check the alt text for your images and the structured data for your website. This is because mobile pages don’t work the same way as the desktop pages. Changes to the structured data and other information need to be done for your website not to be negatively affected when it changes to mobile first indexing.

Start the new year off with a mobile SEO audit, if your website hasn’t been moved, it will be very soon.