These days, having a business website that is not mobile-optimized will cause you to miss out on numerous opportunities. Mobile users are quickly outnumbering desktop users. Google, which is dedicated to ensuring that all the information in the world wide web is organized and accessible, is slowly upgrading its search engine to optimize mobile users’ content.
How Mobile Adaptability Affects Search Results
The index, which showcases a search engine’s results, is not the same for desktop viewers and mobile users. Google used to utilize the desktop version’s index for both desktop and mobile users but eventually made changes. Nowadays, when mobile users access a particular site, it will appear differently from a desktop.
The mobile site is now the primary baseline for determining rankings in Google; that is why it is called the mobile-first practice. Mobile-first indexing means that Google crawlers will crawl the mobile version of your site first before going into the desktop or web version.
Even if your site does not have a mobile version, it will not be excluded from the search. Google will still index your site, but not having a mobile version can lead to a drop in your rankings. On the other hand, optimizing your mobile site will make you rank higher, even for desktop searches.
How Mobile-First Indexing Can Affect Your SEO Strategy
If your website has a responsive web design, you have nothing to worry about. However, you need to ensure that your content is optimized for mobile and that your load times are quick and prioritized.
The mobile-first indexing that Google implemented means that it can completely throw off your website’s current SEO efforts and impact your rankings. If you only have desktop content, your site will most likely be pushed down the rankings in mobile and desktop searches.
If your site has a desktop and mobile version, then you are on the right track. What you can do to improve your ranking is to optimize your site pages for the mobile experience.
Here are Google’s recommended best practices that you can follow to ensure that your SEO is not impacted and your web rankings stay consistent.
- Your mobile site should have the same content as your desktop site. If your mobile site has less content, consider updating it to match your desktop site. You need to include the primary content, such as text, images, and videos, in both.
- Make sure that the URLs on your desktop site are the same as the mobile version.
- Metadata, such as the titles and meta descriptions, should be present and consistent on both site versions.
- Ensure that both versions of your site are verified in Google Search Console to guarantee you have access to data and messages for each.
Conclusion
A website needs to adapt to screen changes so that mobile searchers will quickly find what they need. If not, it will affect the site’s SEO score. Websites that follow the best SEO practices have a higher chance of ranking in search, so if you want your website to get more traffic, make sure your site is mobile-optimized.
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