Google made an important change to how they crawl websites and eCommerce businesses should be aware of the potential impact on SEO rankings and sales.
The change is a complete departure from the way that Google traditionally crawled or indexed websites and shifts indexing priority to the Mobile version of all new websites.
What is mobile-first indexing?
- It’s how Google crawls and indexes the web. Rather than looking at the desktop version of any pages on a site, Google will now look at the mobile versions.
- As of July 1, 2019, mobile-first indexing was enabled by default for all new (previously unknown to Google) websites.
- NOTE: Only brand-new sites will be indexed using mobile-first indexing by default.
- Google hasn’t (and won’t) send notifications to new web sites (since it’s the default, and they’re new, so no need for any notification).
Why should you care?
- Any newly launched site that doesn’t function well in mobile will likely have issues with indexing and ranking in Google (translation: users won’t be able to find you).
What can you do?
- First and foremost, assess how mobile-friendly your site currently is (Google’s mobile-friendly tool makes it a snap).
- Don’t rely on organic traffic as your only source.
- Ensure your site is responsive, mobile optimized (and mobile-ready).
- Utilize schema to ensure Google is pulling snippets.
- Monitor and address page-loading times.
- Review content – is it mobile friendly? Short words and sentences and big enough font are key.
While this change defaults only to new sites, it is not out of the question that Google might retroactively turn to mobile indexing for all sites at some point in the future. The best thing you can do to prepare is to review your mobile site readiness and develop a plan to meet industry standards.
If you would like to discuss what you can do to prepare and develop a coordinated plan, contact us at sales@freestylesolutions.com.
Questions about how you can ensure you’re ready for mobile first indexing? Reach out to Freestyle today to learn more.
Images courtesy of Pixabay | Simon & Pexels