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What Does Google's Mobile-Indexing Mean For Your SEO Strategy?
B.Duncan, 2022
In July of this year, Google finalised the decision of defaulting to a mobile-first algorithm, with approximately 70% of websites switching to mobile-first indexing by March of 2020 in preparation. With major companies undergoing changes to their SEO strategies in an effort to align with Google’s mobile-first indexing, any businesses neglecting mobile-first design are at risk of losing visibility and consequently enduring a significant loss in online engagement from consumers.
What Does Mobile-First Indexing Mean For My Business?
The percentage of mobile device website traffic reached 58.9% in just July of this year, coinciding with Google’s announcement to default users to their mobile-first algorithm within the same month. With the shift beginning in 2020, major companies made the change to mobile-first design a priority well before it became an industry standard. Unsurprising, considering mobile e-commerce sales were projected to exceed $430 billion by the end of 2022 and $710 just two years later. If you didn’t prepare for Google’s new SEO algorithm ahead of time, you’ll need to look into ways to accelerate the success of your mobile website to stand out in an already over-saturated e-commerce market. Part of this means analysing mobile-consumer habits, refocusing your SEO strategy to be solution oriented and finding ways to utilise UX design for your mobile website.
Mobile Commerce Metrics
- time spent on retail apps averaged over 100 billion hours worldwide
- mobile e-commerce completed in-app holds a conversion rate of 54%
- 49% of consumers using mobile devices are comparing product prices
- 60% of consumers use smartphone voice search to find local businesses
With a brief rundown of statistics regarding the mobile-first online marketplace, it’s also important to take note of the issues consumers are facing with the transition to shopping on smartphones. So when constructing your mobile-first SEO & UX design strategies, stay solution oriented.
Mobile Consumer Issues
- 67% of mobile consumers report their biggest issue being links too small to click on
- security concerns placed second at 42% as the most common customer complaint
- more than 1/3 of mobile consumers found excessive notifications to be a deterrent
- similarly 36% complained of items being too difficult to search for on mobile page
Despite these being listed as issues, they’re actually great starting points for you to optimise your mobile-first website using UX/UI design. Start to think of features and layouts your website needs to be recognised by Google as answer-based, practical and suitable for its mobile-first algorithm?
Is Your Website Optimised To Pass Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test?
Believe it or not, Google has its own tool labelled the ‘mobile-friendly’ test that allows you to see how easily a visitor can use your webpage, or custom coded elements on a mobile device. Just enter your webpages URL or custom code to see if Google gives you the green check of approval that you’re mobile-friendly. It won’t work miracles but it’ll give you a brief insight into whether you’re on the right track when it comes to designing a user-friendly mobile webpage. You can try it for yourself for free however, passing the test doesn’t mean your mobile UX/UI work is close to done. Although it’s a great beginner tool, to truly prepare your website for success it’s important to frequently research new ways to improve your visibility in Google’s (now default) mobile-indexing.
5 Tips To Optimise Content For Google’s Mobile-Indexing
1. Make sure your content is accessible to Google: this includes making sure your mobile content can be rendered by Google. It’s also important to use the same meta-tags across both your desktop and mobile web pages, otherwise you’re at risk of Google failing to index your website.
2. Avoid lazy-load content: Google’s unlikely to load content that requires user interaction to access, this includes swiping, clicking or typing. Particularly on primary pages of your website, make sure you check all the content you upload is optimised to run seamlessly for mobile use.
3. Double check ad placement: what might work for your desktop web pages, may harm your mobile page rankings. Research the best ad placements for your mobile-first website layout and make sure they’re effectively placed to avoid overwhelming mobile device users.
4. Design with UX/UI in mind: what could act as a great banner image for a desktop webpage, could be something that ruins your entire mobile website experience. It’s also essential to check any additional features or custom code in your site will also work for mobile users.
5. Size matters: when it comes to images, graphics or videos you need to resize them to remain high quality but still functional. Images too large in size will encourage slower loading times and deter Google from indexing your page and your customers from engaging with your website.
Google Web Stories
Google Web Stories are similar to Instagram, TikTok or Snapchat stories in their visual appeal, however Google Web Stories are featured both on the platform's traditional search engine and Google Discovery. Exclusive to mobile devices, Google Web Stories are now part of the platform, allowing users to personalise their algorithm. Mobile users can filter through what content they’re interested in, prompting the platform to produce content more relevant to each individual. It’s a great tool when looking to optimise content for Google’s (now) default mobile-indexing, all whilst simultaneously boosting SEO on both your desktop and mobile web pages. Just another reminder, as to why it’s so important to replicate metadata between mobile and desktop web pages to ensure Google recognises them as being the same website for SEO rankings.
Conclusion
We all know Google makes updates to its algorithm quicker than you can read about it, but mobile-first content isn’t a trend that’s going away anytime soon. Given the direction e-commerce is headed in this generation, the number of frequent online shoppers are growing more and more everyday. Now, with Google’s default mobile-indexing becoming official earlier this year, there’s no reason not to invest in mobile-first website design for your business.
If you need help with mobile-first UX/UI design, keeping up to date with Google’s algorithms or SEO strategies for the year to come, reach out to our digital agency Melbourne team and book a consultation now!
