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We all have heard a lot about mobile-first indexing. Many of us have understood the term, but there is also confusion about what this means for the average business owner. So, in this blog, we will be going to discuss the given below things:
1. What is Mobile-First Indexing?
2. What are the websites that get affected by Mobile-First Indexing?
3. Different strategies to be used?
Let’s discuss them one by one.
What is Mobile-First Indexing??
As the name suggests, Mobile-First Indexing means Google will use the mobile version of the content for indexing. Earlier, as far as rankings were concerned, Google was using the desktop version of the content for indexing, and based on that, Google decided the ranking. But now, the scenario has changed.
According to Google’s statement, most searches are from mobile, i.e., around 60% of the searches came from mobile devices. Therefore, they are considering mobile-first indexing.
In mobile-first indexing, the crawlers will use a smartphone agent to crawl and index the pages.
Let us take a scenario.
Earlier, the site xyz.com was crawled by Google bots for desktop, and the place was indexed according to the desktop version. But now, Google has decided to use mobile-first indexing, and as a result, the site example.com is indexing based on the mobile version of the website.
So, the next question arises that.
Do my website rankings get affected by Mobile-First Indexing?
Your website gets affected only in these 3 cases.
1. Separate URLs
If the desktop URL has an equivalent URL that serves mobile-optimized content. This type of website is also known as an m-dot site.
For example, everyone has heard of the famous https://www.cricbuzz.com/ site.
Cricbuzz.com has an equivalent URL that serves mobile-optimized content, i.e., m.cricbuzz.com.
So, in this case, a mobile URL is preferred over a desktop URL for Indexing.
2. Dynamic Serving
When your website serves different content on different devices, in this case, users only see one URL.
So, in this case, Google prefers mobile-optimized content for indexing.
3. AMP and non-AMP
In this case, your website has both AMP and non-AMP URLs. Then Google will use the mobile version of the non-AMP URL for indexing.
So, the mobile-first indexing will be considered in the above 3 cases only. Now let’s discuss the strategies we should use for these three cases.
1. Content
The content should be the same on mobile as well as on the desktop site.
Let’s take an example. If abc.com had enough content and was ranking for specific keywords, the mobile version has a low volume of content compared to the desktop site. Earlier, there was no problem with the ranking as Google was using the desktop version of the website for indexing. But now, after mobile-first indexing, Google is using the mobile version of the website for indexing. As the volume of content is low compared to the desktop website, the ranking can gradually decrease.
So the amount of content should be the same, be it text, images with alt attributes, and videos.
2. Structure Data
The structure data should be the same on both the mobile and desktop websites, and URLs in the schema of the mobile website correspond to the mobile version.
3. Metadata
You should ensure that the metadata, i.e., Meta Titles and Meta descriptions, should be the same on mobile versions and the desktop version of the website.
So, I am pretty much sure that you guys have understood the term mobile-first indexing and its consequences on websites.