Since March 2018 Google is indexing and ranking first the mobile version of a website.
Mobile-first indexing means Google will use the mobile version of your website for indexing and ranking, to better help the primarily mobile users to find what they’re looking for.
Why Google made this decision?
Already in 2015 Google realized that more Google searches took place on mobile devices than on computers. Today, with around 80% of all searches happening on smart phones, it is easy to understand why Google is encouraging site owners to take the necessary steps to ensure their mobile phone users have a good experience. This means for Google more searches on mobile, therefore more of a need for Google to rank sites that provide clear, viewable content that mobile users will appreciate and engage positively with.
What does this mean for your mobile marketing strategy?
Eminence has lined up for you the best practices for achieving a successful Mobile Marketing Strategy
- Website with responsive layout
Google recommends a website with a responsive layout. What does this mean?
A responsive web design is the approach that suggests that design and development should respond to the user’s behaviour and environment, based on screen size, platform and orientation. The advantage of a responsive web design is, that the content and the source text of a page are identic for the desktop and the mobile version. This makes it easier for Google to interpret for both views (desktop and mobile) the same content.
- Register your mobile site in the search console
If you have a separate mobile site, you have to register it in the Google Search Console. All mobile sites should be registered, in order to transmit to Google the existence of a separate mobile version. If you have a responsive site with a main content and a mark-up structure that is the same for desktop and for mobile, you don’t need to undertake further steps.
- Using Mobile User Agents and checking the pages
In 2015 and 2016 Google had launched the algorithm updates Mobilegeddon 1 and Mobilegeddon 2, whereby mobile friendly websites are preferred and better ranked in the organically search results than non-mobile-optimised websites. Nevertheless, today you can still find a lot of URLs in the mobile search results, which are expandable, although they have received a mobile-friendly-label.
There will follow for sure more detailed assessment factors by Google in the next few months. Accordingly, it is important to crawl your own website with a mobile User-Agent; this should be applied for the Search Console, as well as for the analysis and optimisations tools, such as Page Speed, GT Metrix & Co (optimisation tool to check the online performance of your website). You should ask yourself the following questions; What is the usability? Is the main content available immediately? How long is the loading time? Are the banners and interstitials (an advertisement that appears while a chosen website or page is downloading) useful or are they disturbing?
- Check your structured markups
A structured markup is a type of code, which is added directly to your website’s HTML markup. It helps search engines to understand your site’s content.
Structured markups are a user-focused improvement. It tells search engines what your content means, rather than just what it says. Without structured markups, a search engine would not be able to determine whether a page is referring for example to Jaguar the car or Jaguar the animal.
Furthermore, search engines generate rich snippets by using information, which has been coded using structured markup. A rich snippet shows extra information between the URL and the description.
We recommend to review the markup structure of your landing page and ideally use one mark up per site. The markup for the desktop and the mobile version should be the same in order Google can better measure the main content of the landing page.
- Check your desktop visibility vs your mobile visibility
As Google is assessing websites according to the mobile versions, it is very important to check the performance of your website in the mobile search results. You can check and monitor the desktop- and mobile visibility with the Searchmetrics Suite.
