Google Introduces 'Mobile First' in 2018.

Google said it was coming and in July 2018 after 1 and a half years of testing is now rolling out 'Mobile First'.

So what is 'Mobile First'?

When Google crawls your website it will use 'Smart Agent' to index your website. If your website is mobile friendly it will index it as so and use the mobile version of the content for indexing and ranking. This means that if your website is mobile friendly it will rank your website above those that are not.  Historically, the index primarily used the desktop version of a page's content when ranking, this is now reversing the way it used to work and Google is not creating a separate index.

So why is Google making this change?

Google reports that over 78% of all searches are carried out on a mobile device so that's a tablet or phone. As a result, Google wants to see a better user experience on the sites that it ranks first, still based on content relevance for results but with an improved user experience.

What does mobile friendly mean?

A mobile-friendly website is created using responsive design which in effect is 5 versions of your website, desktop, tablet portrait. tablet landscape, mobile portrait and mobile landscape. This means that the format and layout of the page are created for these formats and when you visit the site on say a mobile phone in portrait mode the site will be shown in the shape and layout for that view on that device.

This will mean that everything fits, you can read the text in the pain without pinching and pulling to zoom in, you have a new navigation so you don't have to scroll right to find the navigation to the page you want and then pinch and pull again to read it.

So what does 'Mobile First' mean for my website?

If your website is 'Responsive' so mobile friendly then Google will tag your site as being mobile friendly and will use 'Mobile First' to display your site above those that are not in search results. This is just one factor in ranking, you still need to do all the other organic SEO methods with relevant content, but it is now the first factor in ranking.

Is my site Mobile Friendly?

There are still millions of site out there that were produced some time ago that are not mobile friendly. You can check to see if your site is 'Mobile Friendly' by using Google's Mobile-Friendly Test Tool here.

If your website is not mobile friendly then we would be happy to discuss how we can help you to make it so. Give us a call 0844 939 0333

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