Google announces: indexing for mobile-only
This process already started in 2016. Google scanned websites and established their ranking inside the search pages according to their characteristics. One of the preferred features was the presence of a mobile version. In recent years, this Google feature developed more and more: mobile-first indexing has reached a percentage of 70%. According to what announced by Big G in its blog, in September this mode will be used on the 100% of websites.
This is due to users’ preference for accessing content from mobile devices. By now only those who works in office are surfing from computers. In addition, recent years have seen a boom in mobile apps, and every medium and large size brand has a custom one that makes it easy to buy and navigate.
What does all this mean? The indexing of any website will be determined by its mobile version. Websites that are not responsive and do not have an optimized mobile version are going to be penalized by Google and their pages will not enter the SERP.
One of the new features is about mobile versions that rely on a different URL (i.e. mobile.domainname.est or m.domainname.est). Google recommends to avoid this mode as it confuses both users and search engine crawlers. The best practice is therefore a responsive design.
As an agency we were ahead of this: all the websites we built for our customers are responsive, and the mobile version is optimized for different devices. So for us, it’s about continuing the work we started a long time ago.
For those who do not have an updated website, this is the right time to catch up. The forced period of productive and commercial stand by can become a good opportunity to review outdated websites not easily accessible from smartphones and tablets.
The importance of good indexing, that includes a good SEO analysis and setting, becomes more evident over time. The ordinary attention of a person on the web is 8 seconds, and this shows that is unlikely that they browse many search pages to find what they are looking for. More likely, they are captured by the website of some well-indexed competitor on the first page of search results. Not seeing the website on the front pages of SERP means losing a lot of potential customers.
But that’s not the only thing you could lose. For companies that use SMM campaigns, Pixel, a powerful Facebook tool, can track all the visits to your website. By not receiving visits, the website also loses the possibility to push potential customers who, at first glance, did not want to perform relevant actions, such as filling out the contact form to ask for information and/or quotes, or purchase items.
In a recent article (read the article here) our CEO, Francesco Gobbato, wanted to highlight that often the moments of great difficulty give the opportunity to work on yourself and your company. To reinvent yourself under a new light and rediscover your potential, which in the everyday life frenzy has been forgotten or set aside.
Once again, we want to consider this situation in this way. We want to think of this as a temporary period, however difficult, from which one can learn to grow again.
