SEO & Preparing for Google’s Mobile-First Index

In recent months, we’ve touched upon the importance of ensuring that your website is mobile responsive several times – and with good reason. Today, mobile devices account for almost 60 percent of all searches made. What’s more, the way people are searching is rapidly changing with up to 30 percent of people now using voice search to receive faster answers to questions. Because of these changes in browsing habits, mobile optimisation is happening fast and if your business fails to keep up, you could end up losing potential customers due to your search engine rankings dropping or customers growing tired of your site delivering a poor user experience. Preparing for the inevitable dominance of mobile search isn’t just about having a responsive website however, it also comes down to developing a solid SEO strategy which is tailored around Googles impending mobile-first index.

What is the mobile-first index?

In its simplest form, Google’s search engine index is made up of a collection of pages, images, videos, and documents which Google has discovered whilst crawling the web. These pages are then stored in a database so that Google can locate the content easily and quickly when a search is completed. Up until now, Google has crawled the desktop version of websites. At some point next year though, the world of SEO expects that Googles mobile-first index may be pushed out, resulting in Google looking at the mobile version of your site rather than the desktop version.

How does this impact SEO?

The expected mobile-first index is set to transform the world of SEO and at Netbiz Group, we couldn’t be more excited! The world of SEO is always shifting but with the increasing popularity of voice search, keywords are becoming longer and more natural. This means that strategies need to change, and copywriters need to adopt a conversational tone to echo the query of customers. It’s always been important to produce relevant, useful content which actually speaks to consumers but now as searches become more specific and direct, the importance of this is heavily increasing.

From a technical side, it is also now vital that your site delivers a user-friendly experience for small screens and that it has a fast loading speed – after all, studies suggest that 40 percent of people abandon a site if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. Navigation menus also need to be simple and direct, and content needs to have an attractive layout which is easy to skim read. A greater significance is also being placed upon local search with nearly half of all mobile users browsing the web for local businesses and services.

Mobile Friendly SEO by Netbiz Group

Clearly, big changes are on the horizon in the world of SEO and it is important that your business adopts a strong SEO strategy to stay relevant. The good news is that at Netbiz, we have a team of SEO gurus on hand who, from day one, will make your success their main priority through a combination of onsite and offsite SEO tasks. Every strategy that we create is completely unique and we pride ourselves on always providing a professional and friendly service. To find out more about our services or what the upcoming mobile-first index will mean for your business, and indeed your website, please get in touch! We offer free SEO audits and a member of our team will be happy to answer any questions you might have.