Maybe you own an online business or a blog, and you are trying hard to make it successful and with steady growth.
Pursuing your competitors and outranking them can be frustrating if you are not using your resources completely.
As you already know the number of mobile devices is increasing rapidly, that are used for performing routine search queries.
So the majority of your potential buyers would be mobile users. Unfortunately, mobile SEO is completely different from the SEO methods you normally follow for any blog/business.
In simple words, you have to upgrade your mobile SEO if you want to stay in the game.
But how? Let’s find out!
What is Google’s Mobile-First Index? How To Improve Your Mobile SEO In 2021!
After the recent updates in the SEO industry mobile SEO is one of the most trending topics at the moment. And the most surprising update was from Google known as “Google’s Mobile-First Index”.
As soon as it was officially announced by Google, the SEO professionals were in shock for a moment to think that it would create such a huge impact on the industry.
But why though?
Is the mobile-first index that difficult to implement?
How to use it for ranking at the top SERP positions?
we got you don’t worry! in this article we are going to discuss Google’s mobile-first index in detail, along with some tips that can help you improve your overall mobile SEO.
What is Google’s mobile-first index?
The traditional Google crawlers were more focused on crawling the desktop version of any site. But from March 2021 Google has announced to upgrade their indexing and crawling methods.
Relying more on the mobile version of any site instead of the desktop version, Google has started indexing the mobile version landing page of any particular blog.
And evaluate the content quality, trustworthiness, and related stats accordingly, in simple words the “Google Mobile-First index” will change the SEO industry completely.
As the name implies, “Mobile-First Index”, this system targets the mobile version of any site, that wants to get ranked in the top SERP positions. And everybody wants to rank at the top!
The problem with desktop sites
Unfortunately, there are many sites on the internet that only support desktop users. So if someone wishes to browse through their content, a PC is required for the best experience.
To overcome this drawback of traditional blogs, Google has decided to remove such desktop-only blogs and their content completely from their SERPs.
Any related media files will also get removed automatically, Sounds terrible right?
Well, it’s not that big deal if you are willing to perform a few changes to your blog. That could save it from getting excluded from the normal blogs in the SERPs.
All you have to do is make your site mobile-friendly/responsive for every mobile device. For doing so, we have created a complete informational guide to walk you through this problem as quickly as possible!
Mobile-First indexing, Is it important?
First things first, if you don’t have any idea about Google’s mobile-first index, it’s important to understand how it works, and why you should focus more on this new update.
Because not everyone is ready for such changes in the ranking system, so it’s like a double-edged sword with negative and positive outcomes.
If you manage to tackle these changes and convert this into an opportunity to grow your business/blog quickly, it can be really useful.
While in the worst case, your rankings can start dropping very quickly, if you have not updated your content accordingly.
Because when a regular Google crawler will visit your site and crawl through. If your site isn’t mobile-friendly and responsive enough, the crawlers will automatically stop the crawling and indexing process!
How to optimize your blog according to the mobile-first index?
So what precautions you should take to tackle such updates and grow your blog along with them? If you have already optimized your blog for mobile devices then it could be much easier for you to follow the complete process.
WordPress users are lucky to have a simple interface for changing the look of their blog anytime. As they can choose and use the most compatible themes just after installing them.
It’s very convenient to customize the design according to your requirements by using the theme editor from WordPress.
Yet it doesn’t mean that you can not optimize your blog if you are not using WordPress as your primary platform.
Let’s go through some important steps that will help you convert the blog into a mobile-first index compatible version.
1. Make it responsive!
Being responsive is one of the most important features for any popular blog out there. It plays an important role when your blog is loaded onto devices with different screen resolutions.
And transforms the user interface accordingly, so the person visiting your blog for the first time will get the best possible user experience. Resulting in an increased screen time and lower bounce rate for the blog.
If you are using WordPress then choosing a responsive theme for your blog would be the best option.
But if you are using a platform other than WordPress then, hiring a web developer would be a better idea to make your blog responsive.
2. Optimize your media files
You may not pay much importance to media files and their details.
But trust me using quality media files with proper captions and size perform way much better compared to any random files you are using.
Optimizing the media files on your blog can help you perform better at overall mobile SEO competition, also allowing you to perform better brand promotion if you prefer to use professional images for your content.
Consider using compressed images and keep the size identical on every article to make it easier for the crawlers to index your images too.
3. Usage of AMP
Accelerated Mobile Pages ( AMP ) is a very popular service used by many professional bloggers for a long time. Mostly conveyed through an AMP plugin in WordPress.
To enable this feature on your blog, simply visit the plugins section and search for AMP.
Afterward, you can install it on your blog to improve the mobile compatibility, and represent a simplified version of your blog with less CSS and design.
But the limited number of platforms this service supports can be a problem for other bloggers who are not using WordPress.
4. Improve page loading time
The average page loading time considered to be more effective for better rankings can be achieved with AMP. Allowing the mobile version of your blog to load in a mere 1 second!
But sometimes you can run into unexpected problems that even with AMP your blog may load slowly.
In such a situation either you’re using AMP or not adjusting your theme and resources a bit can help you a lot.
Like using compressed images, decreasing the number of Ads you usually show to your audience, etc.
5. Monitor & improve mobile performance
If you have never before thought about the mobile SEO of your blog, simply visit Google page speed insights and enter your blog’s URL to analyze it completely.
It will display everything you need to know about your blog’s performance. From desktop performance to mobile performance you will be able to get insights into everything.
Using this free service directly from Google can help you a lot, in monitoring and improving the mobile performance for the mobile-first index system.
It will also point out any possible errors and their solutions that can help you increase the loading speed and performance to its fullest!
Benefits of having better mobile SEO in 2021!
Improving your mobile SEO may seem worthless initially, but it’s as important as normal SEO for any blog.
Whether you have a food blog, fashion, travel, or digital marketing blog. Making your blog responsive and mobile-friendly is an essential part of making your blog successful.
Splendid user experience compared to others
Growth in average time on site
Competitive advantage over your competitors
Faster and light-weight interface
More customers!
Improvement in SEO and Google rankings
Upgrading your mobile SEO may take a while but on the bright side, your blog will be receiving all of these benefits for the long term.
Conclusion
Updates such as mobile-first index can cause you trouble if you are not completely prepared or lack the exact information to tackle such changes in the SEO industry.
However, if you consider this as an opportunity to outrank others with a few efforts. Then you can evaluate the mobile SEO at the top in terms of how much potential it holds.
Make sure to follow the instructions properly for making your site more compatible with various mobile devices. And don’t forget to mention any comments or queries you have in the comment section below.
