Google’s Mobile First Indexing: Is SEO Changing?

With mobile first indexing upon us, many still wonder the impact it has on our websites and what we can do to make the new algorithmic change happy!

Where is the best place to start, will we have to change our old SEO habits and what exactly do we have to do to give Google exactly what it wants?

Voice Activation & Keyword Research

One of the main reasons for Google going mobile first indexing is due to the increase trend of users using their mobiles.

We have reached a point where more people are searching the Internet using their mobile devices over desktop, and as a result this is changing how we optimize for keywords.

How you ask?

According to Traffic Research, the increase of mobile device searches has resulted in an increase of voice search. This means less people are typing their search on Google, but rather using their voice. It turns out that voice queries are quite different to traditional typing.

Here are some differences between in queries.

Old query (typing): “best headphones”
New query (voice): “What are the best headphones?”

As you can see, although the user is looking for the same type of information, the queries are quite different.

Responsive Design Does Not Always Mean Mobile Friendly

Having a responsive design is important. The way your visitors interact with your website while on mobile devices can make the difference between them staying or leaving. The longer you can keep them engaged, the more positive the signal you are giving Google about your website.

However, responsive design is not only about how well your site can fit into the limited screen real estate of mobile devices. It is also about how much of your desktop’s content can you fit into the limited screen real estate, as explained by Search Engine Journal.

Essentially, it is important for your mobile version to contain all the content and elements that your desktop version has. This includes, images, text, internal links, navigation etc.

Luckily Google is more forgiving with content hidden tabs. This enables adding all the necessary elements without cramming to much data in such a small area.

Have You Checked Google Search Console?

Since the shift to mobile first indexing, many may have forgotten about the “mobile usability” feature on Google’s Search Console.

Checking this feature can provide vital information about how well your website is performing for mobile use. Google particularly focuses on two elements.

• Content wider than screen
• Clickable elements too close together.

Check to see if your website is suffering from any of these issues and follow the instructions Google provides to get them fixed.

Site Speed

This is probably the most obvious, how it is still surprising how many sites suffer form slow load speed.

Three simple and quick things you can do to instantly help with site speed is to:

• Compress Images:
This can be done automatically using the Smush plugin. Essentially, the tool reduces the size of each image automatically while retaining image quality.
• Minify & Combine Files (CSS, HTML & JavaScript):
Autoptimize plugin can do this automatically for you too. It can aggregate, minify and cache scripts and styles, plus much more.
• Prioritize Above Fold Loading:
Yet an other useful plugin is Lazy Load that is designed to load only images when they are visible in a user’s browser. Therefore, any images that are below the fold do not load until necessary, saving in big load up time.