Google uses mobile-first indexing to determine organic rankings. It will look at the mobile version of your site before crawling and indexing your content.
The Basics of Indexing
In order for your website to be indexed on Google, it is crawled by the search engine bots that read and store the information on your website.
Google is storing all the information found on your website in its index, kind of like a library.
Mobile-First Indexing
If you monitor the traffic on your website, you will see that majority of visitors are using mobile devices. This caught Google’s attention years ago.
Google now crawls your website with their smartphone agent first to experience the mobile version of your website. This helps Google decide how to index and rank your website.
If your site isn’t mobile-optimized, your organic rankings will drop. That means people might never find your business.
Mobile and Desktop Views Need to be the Same
Google wants your website to provide users an identical experience on mobile and desktop.
If you show less content on the mobile version of a page than the desktop version – on purpose – there’s a good chance you will experience a drop in traffic and website visits.
The reason? Google’s bots can’t gather all of your information if you hide content from smartphone agent – the bot that crawls your site first.
Google recommends that your primary content on a user’s mobile view is the same as their desktop view.
Responsive Web Design for Better Indexing
Remember, Google uses the content on your mobile site for indexing.
Make sure that your mobile site has the same content as your desktop site.
To be competitive on Google, your website must be mobile-friendly with a good user experience for every device.
The best way for you to follow the mobile-first trend is to make sure your website uses a responsive design.
