
SEO Specialist
SEO Specialist Notes for Mobile-First Indexing
These days, most consumers prefer to use their mobile devices when searching for products or information online. For such reason, many online businesses are putting great efforts into improving the quality and ranking of their websites so they can earn catch the attention of more customers. SEO specialist rank high on Google for mobile-first indexing because they are making mobile content their top priority.
Through mobile-first indexing, Google prioritises the mobile version of websites when it comes to crawling, ranking, and indexing over desktop versions. But what can you do to ensure that you provide the best experience to your users through mobile devices? Listed below are notes to follow and remember for the mobile-first indexing.
Hire a WordPress Developer to Make Your Site Mobile-Friendly
Perhaps you have a custom-built WordPress theme or site and can’t move to a new WordPress theme. To guarantee that your website is mobile-friendly, hiring a WordPress developer is recommended by almost every SEO specialist company. This could involve moving your site to a new framework or even refactoring all your base code. Make sure to get an estimate from a couple of places before proceeding. Depending on your site, this could be a small or very large undertaking
Use a WordPress Mobile Plugin
Having an SEO specialist utilise a WordPress mobile plugin is also feasible. While we recommend this as a last resort, it can be one of the easiest ways to ensure your site is mobile-friendly right away. With so many plugins that you can download today, finding the right one for your website certainly won’t take a lot of time.
Implement Google AMP
If your WordPress website still loads slowly, carrying out Google AMP is advised by numerous SEO company. Google AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages Project) essentially offers a way to serve up a stripped-down version of your current web page without all the things that slow it down, such as JavaScript, bloated CSS, etc. There are third-party plugins that now make this process easy.
Don’t jump the gun
Ticking the mobile-friendly test passed box does not a mobile-ready site make. When the mobile-friendly update happened last April 2015, a lot of websites made mistakes because they made little to no effort in improving their websites. They only did the bare minimum to not get a ranking drop. This negatively impacted the overall experience of users. Google has said that it is better to not sacrifice a fully functional desktop-focused site and wait to roll out URLs that provide a positive user experience for mobile visitors rather than rushing and producing something substandard just for mobile-first indexing.
Think about ‘information overload’ in an over-connected mobile-first world
Can you say the same things or meet the same informational need (i.e., provide ‘substantively’ the same) in a shorter, more concise way?
Here, the use of executive summaries, TDLR, table of contents, named anchors which jump quickly to the important sections of the page or back up to the top quickly will all add to user delight. Doing this might skyrocket you to the top slot in voice search queries.
Flash is a total no-no
Completely avoid presenting content to users on mobile devices which requires Flash to be installed as mobile devices do not support this. Try to combine HTML5 and JavaSript or CSS3 to help you find an alternative way. Many of the features Flash have provided can be at least in part emulated or entirely replaced by these newer markup and coding technologies.
Speed up your site
There are several tactics to focus on to be ready for the mobile-first index. A lot of SEO specialist agency suggests starting with site speed if one wants to improve overall user experience on mobile.
Consider the checkout process on mobile
According to Think with Google, 85% of customers start a purchase on one device and finish it on another (or in-store). How can we move beyond that and create a better checkout process on a mobile device? Making a more efficient checkout process on mobile devices greatly helps in speeding up your website as recommended by an SEO agency.
Don’t block CSS, JavaScript, or images
Blocking CCS, JavaScript and other images were useful when mobile designs first appeared. Some of these elements could often lead to slow loading as well as display issues, and it made more sense to hide them from GoogleBot on mobile.
Nevertheless, nothing is constant. Smartphones are, in many cases, more powerful than the computers owned by users. They have faster processors, more memory, and more capacity to deal with anything we throw at them.
GoogleBot can now manage all of these factors. So if they can handle it, make sure you show them everything. That way, Google can categorise your content and rank it appropriately.
Optimising your business website for both desktop and mobile experience requires a lot of attention, even if you’re doing it with the best SEO UK expert. But considering the greater demand for mobile search, it’s important to have a responsive website. So if you want to get ahead of your competition, it’s recommended to invest in a mobile website as early as possible. Another great thing is that this might even give you more time to perfect your mobile website. And as Google is becoming stricter with its mobile-first indexing, you should perform the best strategies available to ensure that your website’s rankings won’t drop. Just remember the notes of a top SEO specialist as mentioned above.