Smartphone Mobile-First Indexing is a Detail no SEO Marketing Campaign Should Forget
Few people out there aren’t carrying around a smartphone on their person when they leave home. This just goes to show how interconnected the offline and online world is. For digital marketing, this has also opened up whole new avenues for brands and websites to explore.
Mobile Internet use surpassed desktop back in 2014, believe it or not. A few years after that, Google made the decision to adopt mobile-first indexing in their SEO algorithm. Mobile-first indexing means that sites that are equipped to be mobile responsive will rank higher than sites without this ability.
Prior to this switch a few years ago, Google valued desktop websites more however as the usage trend has changed, the algorithm has had to adapt. So what does this mean for your website – well, if you have an SEO digital marketing strategy and your site is not mobile responsive, you may be wasting your money.
There’s no excuse not to have a mobile responsive website in this day and age. If you don’t, all efforts for organic traffic through Google is being sabotaged. As a user, see it from their perspective.
Who wants to go to a blog on their smartphone only to see that it’s in its desktop version – no one. They have to use their fingers to zoom in just to read it, and then scroll back and forth, line by line just to see it.
Who wants to go to their favourite eCommerce online shopping page to see that on their mobile phone, it’s in desktop format – no one. By not going mobile responsive, you’re cutting down on the amount of people who could and would otherwise become customers of yours.
A mobile responsive web design adapts a website’s presentation to meet the size of the screen it’s being viewed on. It’s nothing new and has been around for decades, primarily via CMS platforms. In terms of how this impacts your SEO strategy, even if you’re doing everything right, you’re still not getting ahead of any competitor if you don’t have your pages smartphone adaptable. Although one’s personal preference may be desktop, there’s probably more smartphone users coming to your site than people on desktops.
Fortunately, a lot of the digital marketing and SEO world recognize the importance of mobile-first indexing. It’s usually one of the first things checked. Is a website mobile responsive – if yes, excellent, move onto the next SEO strategy? The thing about SEO is that it’s never just one thing which will get you to the first page and then, to the top of the first page of Google. It’s a lot of small things. Alternatively, if a website wants to get dropped from its first place ranking or a first page position, all it can take are a few small errors in design or approach.
What does the future of SEO hold? No one knows. It all depends on the user. Presently, we know users have moved to smartphones inspiring a mobile-first index which can’t be ignored. If you’re serious about ranking high with SEO, give Unlimited Exposure a call and let us help get you to where you need to be. SEO is very competitive. You don’t have to do it alone. Alongside dozens of other strategies, when you optimize for mobile, you’re putting in the work to rank higher. Contact us to learn more.
