Google has announced that it will start rolling mobile-first indexing algorithm updates for the entire web this September. But what does that mean? Will it impact your website? What should you do to save your website’s ranking? Don’t worry, we got you covered, and we will answer all these questions in this article.
What is Mobile-First indexing?
In 2018 Google had announced that they are going to start the rollout of the mobile-first indexing algorithm update, which initially impacted the mobile rankings of websites. But now Google has announced that the update will now be rolling out for the entire web from September 2020, which means that Google will downrank all the websites that are not mobile-friendly and will also take it into consideration while ranking your website.
Will the Update Affect Your Website?
Well, the answer is yes. If you don’t have a mobile-friendly website, you will be impacted by the rollout of the update.
This is because most people use their mobile devices these days for browsing the internet. Thus, it makes sense to Google that a website that is ranking on the number 1 position must provide good user experience to people even if they are using their mobile to browse that website.
What Should You Do?
The following are things that you must do to protect your website ranking from being affected by the mobile-first indexing algorithm update.
Don’t Panic
The first thing that you must do is don’t panic. If your website is mobile-friendly, your ranking would not be impacted. After all, this update will affect only those websites that are not mobile-friendly. However, if your website is not optimized for mobile, then it’s time that you make it mobile-friendly. It might look like a big task, but it’s not and can be done by your website developer very easily.
However, if you have a WordPress website, you don’t have to panic at all because all the sites built using WordPress have a responsive design, which means your website automatically adjusts itself based upon the device that is being used for visiting your website.
Take Google Mobile-Friendly Test
The next thing that you must do is take the Google mobile-friendly test for your website. When you take the Google-mobile-friendly test, Google scans your website to see whether your website provides a great user experience when visited using mobile or not. Once the test is completed, it will show areas of your website that can be optimized for making your website mobile-friendly.
Once you have implemented all the suggested changes, retake the test to make sure that your website has been optimized for mobile.
Think About UI
Another thing that you can do to make sure that your website is not impacted by the mobile-first indexing update is to redesign your website’s UI for mobile. Make sure that your website is not only mobile-friendly but is easy to navigate to because if it’s not then, you will surely rank low on the Google SERPs and may lose lots of potential traffic and customers.
Write Mobile-Friendly Content
The last thing that you must do to make sure that your website does not get affected by the mobile-first indexing algorithm update is to make sure you write mobile-friendly content that can be easily read without any problem on mobile. Why is this important? Well, the answer is the small screen of mobiles, which might make the reading of content on the websites very difficult, especially if the content is not mobile-friendly.
How to write mobile-friendly content? To write mobile-friendly content, make sure you write small sentences and avoid writing long paragraphs, which might be difficult to read on mobile.
If you do this, you will not only protect your website from getting affected by mobile-first indexing but will also help you in giving a great user experience to your website visitors.
Conclusion
Google’s mobile-first indexing is not a new update that has been released by Google, and you can easily protect your website ranking by following and implementing these simple tricks that have been discussed in this article.
What are your views on Google mobile-first indexing? Do let us know about it in the comment section below.
Jackson Henry. I’m a writer living in USA. I am a fan of technology, arts, and reading. I’m also interested in writing and education. You can read my blog with a click on the button above.
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