More and more searches are coming from mobile devices, and more and more website traffic is now mobile. Across our 200+ clients, we're seeing on average that mobile traffic now accounts for <55% of all visits, with desktop falling below half for the first time ever, in a pivotal shift toward mobile that we don't see as changing anytime soon. If anything, mobile will become more and more the dominant device as websites and search engines become more mobile-friendly and technology enables better and faster browsing via 4G networks.
Prior to Google's official announcement in Nov 2016, we knew that the search engine giant has been planning a mobile-first index for some time. Going into 2018, we're expecting the mobile-first index of webpages to roll out. It's been hinted that this could be an early 2018 release and Google have confirmed that a number of sites have already been tested on the mobile index from as far back as October 2017.
We understand that an impending wider rollout of the mobile-first Google index is expected soon as Google have provided instruction on how to discover if a site has moved to the mobile-first index. It appears to be a controlled iterative switch for most sites, so it would be wise to prepare for the switch as part of your technical SEO strategy sooner rather than later!
What will change?
With a mobile-first index, Google switches the primary source for content and information architecture to mobile - compared to the traditional method of indexing your website based on desktop user experience.
How can you prepare?
If your website is designed responsively or with dynamic serving, and your primary content and mark-ups are consistent across devices, then you're in a good position going into the mobile-first index. If you fall outside of these parameters, you should consider investing in a mobile responsive website and improving your technical SEO markup so that it is optimised for all devices.
- Make sure your site is mobile friendly
Over half of visits are now from mobile devices, and organic traffic is reflecting a similar splits. You can check how Google rates your site with their Mobile Friendly Testing Tool.
- Check your crawler
In most instances, GoogleBot’s crawling is 75-80% desktop crawler and 20-25% mobile crawler. When a website moves over to the mobile first index, you would see that flip to about 75-80% GoogleBot mobile.
- If you're using a separate mobile site
Make sure you claim the mobile version in Google Search Console to continue to get accurate data.
- Ensure key content is delivered to all users regardless of device
- Verify that your mobile version is accessible to GoogleBot
You can do this with the robots.txt testing tool.
- Look into mobile-first technology like AMP
Expect to see an even greater emphasis on Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) project as mobile becomes the priority for search engines. You can use the AMP validator to test your webpages current AMP status.
- Make sure to serve structured mark-up for both desktop and mobile
You are able to verify your structured mark-up across desktop and mobile with the Structured Data Testing Tool.
What will the effect be?
Consider that mobile brings a whole new meaning to instant gratification. Web browsers will soon be able to deliver visitors to websites via mobile devices faster and more effectively than ever before and the emphasis is very much on speed as well as traditional technical SEO best practice. If it's not instant, it's not fast enough. According to AMP, conversions fall by 12% for every extra second a webpage takes to load. If you want web visitors to engage with your brand and improve the performance of your campaigns then you have to speed things up.
If you couple speed insights with mobile-first search optimisation tactics and your site will be on to a winner in 2018.