Where are you reading this article right now? Wait, let's guess! Probably via a mobile device... Actually, although we do not say this, internet usage statistics around the world say so. The figures announced every year by We Are Social show that we prefer to access the internet from mobile devices, which has increased in recent years. According to the 2018 report, 52% of web traffic worldwide occurs only through mobile phones, while desktop and laptop traffic remains at 43%. The situation is no different in Turkey. In fact, Turkey is above the world average with 65% mobile web traffic. Therefore, this situation also affects our experience on search engines, which are among the sites we visit most frequently. Google, which expresses the importance it attaches to user experience at every opportunity, aims to offer a search experience that suits the needs of mobile users with mobile first indexing .
What is Mobile First Indexing?
Mobile first indexing, translated into Turkish as mobile first indexing, was first announced in 2016. In this first announcement, Google stated that it had started working on mobile-first indexing, and in March 2018, after a one and a half year test and development period, it officially announced that it had started to move the most suitable sites for mobile-first indexing.
Previously, Google ranked pages in both desktop and mobile search results based on the desktop performance of pages. With mobile first indexing, this situation has changed to mobile sites being taken as basis in search results. Whether the search is made on desktop or mobile devices, Google now gives priority to pages that most accurately implement mobile SEO guidelines in the search results it offers to users. So now Google uses mobile versions of web pages as the primary index, focusing on improving the experience of the majority who switch to the mobile side.
Why is Mobile First Indexing Important?
First of all, mobile first indexing aims to improve the user experience. In terms of SEO, this means that you now need to focus heavily on the mobile version when optimizing your site. Doing all your SEO work on the desktop version as before may not be enough to get the results you want in the search results. For mobile-first indexing, you need to focus on mobile SEO and even put the mobile version of your site first.
Google currently only evaluates sites that offer the best experience on mobile within the scope of mobile first indexing. Google, which sends notifications via Search Console to the sites it moves to mobile-first indexing, states that site administrators who receive this notification will notice that Smartphone Googlebot visits have become more frequent in their crawling statistics. It is also noted that the mobile versions of these sites, which will rise to the top in mobile searches, will also be listed in the search results. If you have received a message starting with “Mobile first indexing enabled for…” via Google Search Console, you can understand that your site will be subject to mobile-first indexing.
When Google completes its mobile-first indexing transition, we can say that sites that lag behind in mobile SEO will also fall behind in search results. Mobile first indexing, which will cause ranking loss to sites with poor mobile SEO optimization, no matter how good their desktop performance is, is an important opportunity for site owners who make the necessary adjustments. Mobile-first indexing, especially on e-commerce sites, will have a positive impact on direct sales as it will bring more mobile traffic.
What Should You Do to Switch to Mobile First Indexing?
In its last announcement, Google stated that it is currently only switching sites with the best mobile applications to mobile-first indexing. You can prepare your site for the mobile-first indexing period by following the best practices shown by Google. Here are the tips given by Google itself for a successful mobile-first indexing-focused SEO:
Mobile Compatibility
If your site is still not mobile compatible, unfortunately you have no chance. Mobile compatibility, which is among the most important SEO rules , is also a must for mobile first indexing. If your site only has a desktop version, users will see the same version on mobile as the desktop version. However, since your desktop site will not provide a good user experience on mobile, users will quickly leave your page. This will cause bounce rates to increase and will directly affect your rankings negatively.If you already have a responsive design, mobile users will still see the same version as your desktop site. However, since the site is mobile compatible, there will be no problems in terms of user experience.
In order to rank at the top of mobile-first indexing along with mobile compatibility, your site speed must also be optimized to provide a quality mobile experience. The issue of site performance, which has gained importance especially with the speed update, is among the issues that Google emphasizes. Therefore, the faster site will rank higher in mobile indexing.
Mobile Special SitesIf you have a mobile site separate from your desktop site, such as m.example.com, which Google also calls m-dot sites, this site will naturally take priority in mobile-first indexing. However, large differences between your desktop site and your mobile site may cause you to lose traffic.
Dynamic Service
In case of dynamic serving, which is based on showing different versions of your site on different devices, Google again lists the version that is best for the mobile experience. Since the action will be taken through a single URL, there will be no problem such as loss of ranking. However, as in mobile-specific sites, the content displayed on different devices must be the same as the content on the desktop site. Additionally, if you prefer dynamic serving, you should also pay attention to the use of canonical URLs to avoid duplicate content problems.
AMP PagesIf your page has an AMP version, this version is preferred for mobile indexing. AMP, which stands for accelerated mobile pages, is a powerful application that can put your site ahead of your competitors in mobile searches.
What Should You Consider When Switching to Mobile First Indexing?
- Make sure your site is responsive. If you already have a responsive structure, you will not need to do any additional work focused on mobile first indexing.
- If your site has two versions, desktop and mobile, you need to rearrange your site in line with the mobile first indexing guidelines. If the mobile and desktop versions look different from each other or if there are differences in content between the two versions, both versions should be as similar as possible in order to avoid losing rankings.
- Both versions of your site must have structured data markups .
- Meta title and meta description information must be filled in both desktop and mobile versions, and there should be no major differences in the metadata in the two versions.
- You must correctly mark rel=canonical and rel=alternate between mobile and desktop versions.
- You should make sure that the mobile version of your site is also accessible in the robots.txt file so that Googlebot can crawl your mobile pages as well.
- If you have a separate mobile site, you should verify the mobile version along with the desktop version through Search Console.
- Check if your server can handle mobile traffic and browsing speed. If your server is not sufficient, move to a more advanced server.
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