It’s no longer just talk about Google’s new mobile index – it’s now crystal clear that the wheels are seriously in motion!
Just a few days ago (2018-03-26), Google announced to both the SEO and webmaster world that they are finally comfortable with the tests related to “mobile first indexing,” which took them about a year and a half to complete. Concretely, this means the discussions are over, and the transition has officially begun from an index that was heavily desktop-focused – to one primarily based on mobile versions of websites!
As a site owner, you’ve been notified by Google via Google Search Console if your site has already been affected by the new index at this stage. Otherwise, it’s only a matter of time before it becomes a reality.
What does this mean for SEO?
From an SEO perspective, this means you can no longer expect to rank well in search results if only your desktop version meets SEO requirements. Your mobile version now needs to be equally well-optimized – if not better!
This means, for example, that all content must be present on the mobile version of a site in order to rank for it, that page load times must remain within Google’s guidelines, and much more on top of that!
Why is Google doing this?
As with all updates to Google’s products and services, there’s always a well-founded reason behind them – and this time is no different! Google, as always, keeps the user experience front and center. Once it became clear that mobile searches were steadily increasing year after year, it only made sense to shift from a desktop-focused index to one where mobile comes first!
For anyone working with SEO, it’s time to roll up your sleeves and adapt to the new guidelines. The only alternative is to face the dire consequences of ignoring them – something we assume most would rather avoid!
Martin Ek
SEO specialist
Martin works as an SEO specialist at our Örnsköldsvik office