Gain insight into Mobile-First Indexing and learn how to optimise your website for mobile users to improve SEO and visibility in search results.
Danni Jessen
In recent years, Google has gradually moved towards what they call mobile-first indexing. This means that Google crawls your website as if it were being accessed from a mobile device and evaluates it accordingly. In other words, it is now more important than ever to ensure your website is optimised to work seamlessly across all types of devices – otherwise, you will notice a negative impact on your performance in Google search results.
Google has announced that from March 2021, they will consistently use only their smartphone crawler.
In this blog post, I will cover the following:
As you have hopefully heard many times before, more than half of all internet traffic now comes from mobile devices. In fact, 51.33% of all global internet traffic is from mobile devices, and this figure is only set to rise. If this is not enough to convince you that your website should be mobile-friendly, Google has also announced that they will consistently crawl websites as viewed from mobile devices. Therefore, it is essential to ensure your website offers the same functionality, regardless of whether it is accessed from a computer or a mobile phone.
Google recommends using a responsive design – this means the content and layout should be as consistent as possible across all devices. In addition, Google advises against using solutions such as m.dot domains.
An m.dot domain is when the mobile version of a website is accessed via a subdomain, rather than the same domain used for desktop. For example, it might look like this:
Example of a standard domain
Example of an m.dot domain
The best and easiest way to set up your site for mobile-friendliness – for you, your users and Google – is to use a responsive design on a single domain. This ensures that titles, meta descriptions, text and other content are identical across all devices, so you only need to make changes in one place. With this approach, you can be confident that the content Google sees is exactly the same as what your users see, giving you the best chance of being ranked correctly.
I could go on all day if I were to list everything you need to be aware of. That is why I have selected four key areas that I believe are among the most important.
As always, speed is a crucial parameter, and with these changes, it plays an even more decisive role in achieving a high ranking on Google. The only real difference between speed optimisation for mobile versus desktop is that connections are typically slower on mobile. In reality, you should not do anything differently from what you have done so far – just be even more meticulous.
Some specific measures to improve your speed on mobile devices include:
LazyLoad is one of the many current measures that, without question, is now a necessity for anyone with ambitions for their online business. LazyLoad ensures that a website’s images only load when they appear on the user’s screen. Imagine you have a category page with 22 product images, all of which are loaded regardless of whether the user scrolls down to see them or not. This consumes the user’s mobile data and can therefore negatively impact your rankings.
Compressing HTML, CSS, JavaScript and images can significantly reduce your website’s loading time. Compressing these files means the user does not have to download large files when loading the page, resulting in a faster experience. This is especially important for mobile devices, as either the device, the connection, or both are typically slower than on desktop computers.
Example of a good speed score with LazyLoad and compression
Technical/on-page SEO should now be based on your mobile version. I often see people omitting certain sections from the mobile version, as they are not considered relevant and are believed to hinder the user experience. While this is understandable, it should now be incorporated into the design process. For example, you should not remove the text above your product overview, but rather move it below. Another example is breadcrumbs not being included on the mobile version. This has a major impact on internal link structure, so it should always be avoided.
Example of the correct use of breadcrumbs on mobile
If your website uses a lot of pop-ups to collect newsletter subscribers, promote campaigns or for other purposes, you should be very cautious. There is still no definitive answer on how pop-ups affect your rankings, but one thing is certain: they do not make it easier for Google to crawl your content. We therefore recommend using a maximum of one pop-up per page. This does not mean you cannot use pop-ups for different messages overall, but limit yourself to one at a time.
It is also important to ensure your pop-up does not disrupt the user experience. For example, avoid pop-ups that cover the entire screen and prevent users from seeing the page content. There are cases where this has negatively affected SEO because usability suffered. This will become even more relevant when Google releases the new algorithm update in 2021 called Page Experience Update.
There are some common errors I often see when reviewing client websites. For example, the menu on mobile devices is unclear, or the menu differs across devices.
Firstly, it is important that users can easily navigate the menu, and that it is not overloaded with irrelevant items. A classic solution to this is the so-called burger menu. A burger menu makes it easy to provide an overview of your main products/services, while allowing users to simply and clearly dive into subcategories.
Secondly, it is essential that the menu contains exactly the same content across all devices – in other words, there should only be one menu. This is directly related to having a responsive design, ensuring users can navigate your website regardless of which device they are using.
Example of a correctly set up burger menu
This was a brief overview of what mobile-first indexing is about, along with some key points you should pay attention to. Remember, this is only a small fraction of what you need to consider. If you have any questions about mobile-first indexing or would like our input on whether you are ready for the update in March 2021, you are always welcome to contact us on 70 44 42 89 or email us at hej@wemarket.dk/coukxx.
Why responsive design is more important than ever
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