As of July 1st, 2019, Google officially began rolling out its mobile-first indexing update. It means that when indexing websites, Google will now look to the mobile version of a website “first” before the desktop version. For website owners, this is a significant change, and it requires that you take the proper steps to ensure your website has maximum optimization or mobile-first indexing. If you need help with going about these steps, fortunately for you, the blog post discusses how to prepare your website for Google’s mobile-first indexing.
1. Improve your Website’s Loading Speed
Google has announced that loading speed will be essential in mobile-first indexing. Therefore, ensuring your website loads quickly on mobile devices is crucial. A website that loads quickly is essential for a good user experience and website ranking.
There are several ways you can improve your website’s loading speed:
- Reduce image file sizes: Images can be one of the main culprits of slow page load times. If your images are smaller, they will take longer to load. Use an image optimization tool to reduce the size of your images without sacrificing quality.
- Minify HTML, CSS and JavaScript: Minifying is the process of removing unnecessary characters from code to reduce its size, therefore improving the loading speed. You can use HTML Minifier or CleanCSS to minify HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
- Enable browser caching: Browser caching allows your visitors’ browsers to store a copy of your website’s files locally on their device, which will help pages to load faster. You can enable browser caching by adding specific code to your .htaccess file.
- Reduce redirects: Redirects can slow your website’s loading speed. Avoid redirecting visitors to other pages whenever possible, or minimize the number of redirects you use.
- Consider using a content delivery network (CDN): A CDN is a group of servers located around the world that deliver web content based on the geographic locations of the user. A CDN can improve your website’s loading speed, especially if you have a lot of international traffic.
Following these tips optimizes your website for mobile-first indexing and loading quickly on all devices.
2.Increase the accessibility of your Website to everyone
When creating a website for mobile-first indexing, you need to ensure that your website is accessible to everyone – this is the essence of mobile-first indexing in the first place. And making your website accessible means creating a website that works on both desktop and mobile devices. It also means ensuring it’s easy to use and understand.
Further, making your website accessible also means it is responsive. A responsive website only means it can automatically adjust itself to fit different screen sizes.
At this point, we must mention that it’s also essential to check your website for any potential accessibility issues. It means running tests for colorblindness, screen reader compatibility, and keyboard navigation on your website.
Of course, you may also want to review your website with a tool like Wave to identify any accessibility issues you need to address. Once you’ve made any necessary changes, use tool like Axe Core or Tenon to run additional tests and help ensure your website is fully accessible.
By following these tips, you can help ensure your website is accessible to all users and ready for mobile-first indexing.
3. Improve Your Website’s Design
We must give you reasons to improve your website’s design before we can complete our list. Of course, improving your website includes making it responsive and easy to navigate. But it also includes making your texts vivid, buttons lucid, and the links self-evident. Consider reducing the amount of content on each page; this will help minimize clutter and make it easier for users to find what they’re looking for.
Optimizing your website’s design for mobile devices ensures that your website looks great no matter where your customers view it. This is crucial when preparing your website for Google’s mobile-first indexing.
4. Use responsive design
A responsive design is essential for a successful mobile-first indexing process. It is the process of creating a website that automatically adjusts its display according to the size of the device being used to access it. In other words, responsive design enables your website to look great on any device – from smartphones to tablets, laptops, and desktop computers.
Further, responsive design ensures that all users have an enjoyable experience when they access your website, no matter their device. It also helps Google’s search engine crawlers understand your content better and index it accordingly.
When implementing a responsive design for your website, ensure that the HTML coding is organized so that the main content and the navigation are placed before any other elements. It would be best to consider using media queries and a fluid grid layout so that all elements on your page automatically resize and reposition themselves based on the screen size.
Finally, ensure you test your website’s responsiveness on multiple devices and browsers to ensure it works correctly across all platforms. This will help ensure your website is optimized for mobile-first indexing and ready to give visitors a great user experience.
5. Use an SEO Agency
If you need more time or technical know-how to optimize your website for mobile-first indexing, using an SEO agency can help. An SEO agency is a company that specializes in improving websites’ search engine rankings by optimizing them for mobile devices and making sure they are perfect for Google’s algorithms. They have experience dealing with the complexities of mobile-first indexing and can help ensure your website is ready for the changes ahead.
Of course, we as an SEO agency offer these services and more. We perform an audit of your website to ensure it’s meeting the new requirements. This will help identify areas that need improvement, such as the contents, images and formatting for mobile devices. Of course, the videos will not be left out during mobile view optimization.
By working with us, you can be confident that your website is optimized for mobile-first indexing and will perform well when the changes occur. Not only will we help you stay ahead of the competition, but also increase the chances of your website being seen by potential customers searching for what you offer on their mobile devices.