The thought of capturing all the knowledge in the world and placing it in the palm of a hand seemed like a dream, until a decade ago. The Smartphone revolution marked the beginning of a new age in the digital world. With more and more people using their mobile phones to search the web, search engines like Google and Bing are slowly changing the way websites are indexed and ranked. In this ever-changing scenario, your company or your business will fall behind if you do not optimize your technical SEO approach. This blog will give you a general overview of the concept of mobile-first indexing, along with the best practices you can use to create a totally responsive site.

What is mobile-first indexing?

The Google search algorithm takes into account various factors while determining the rank of a website. Today, the mobile version of your website is one of the most important ranking factors in SEO. Ever since the number of mobile internet users began to grow, Google began to focus on the mobile version of the content of a website rather than the desktop version. The mobile version became the baseline for Google's crawling of the web. Mobile-first indexing basically means that Google will use the mobile version of your website's content to rank pages.

Since Google announced its shit to mobile-first indexing for all websites, you will need to optimize your website if you want to maintain or improve your ranking. You can work with an SEO company to monitor crawl bot traffic to your site and create mobile-friendly content to secure a rankings boost. Any SEO strategy that does not adopt a mobile-friendly approach is doomed to fail. It is abundantly clear that mobile-first indexing marks an important shift in Google's indexing and ranking approach. It is important to note that mobile-first indexing does not in any way disregard the desktop site. A desktop-oriented site will still be indexed and ranked to give relevant results to a user, whether they are using a mobile or a desktop.

Mobile-first indexing best practices

After Google announced that mobile-first indexing is enabled by default for all new websites, many companies began searching for the best SEO Company to help them update their digital marketing strategy and gain more visitors. If you are looking to make the most of Google's shift to mobile-first indexing, here are some helpful tips you can use for technical SEO:

Same Meta robots tags: One of the best practices for mobile-first indexing is to make sure you use the same Meta robots tags on your mobile site as well as the desktop site. If the Meta robots tags on the mobile site are different from the desktop site, Google will find it difficult to crawl and index your page.

High-Quality Content: If there is a significant difference in the content published on your mobile site and your desktop site, Google will not be able to retrieve the necessary information to rank your page. You can work with experienced content writers to ensure that your mobile site contains the same content as your desktop site. When it comes to content, you need to pay particular attention to the visuals of your website. The use of small or low-resolution images can have a negative impact, especially on the mobile site.

Review Your Structured Data: The use of structured data is an essential aspect of SEO. Whenever you use structured data, you need to make sure the data is present on both versions of your site. One of the most important things you need to look out for is to check if the URLs in the structured data on the mobile version of your site is updated to the mobile URL. In case you use the Data Highlighter tool, you need to keep checking for extraction errors and fix them as soon as possible.

Ad Placement on Mobile Phones: The main reason why users prefer to access the internet on their smartphones is that it is convenient and easier to navigate. However, if your mobile site is cluttered with ads, it will lead to a bad user experience that can disrupt traffic. If you do not accurately place the ads, you may harm your mobile page ranking. There are a number of top-class companies that offer the best SEO services to help you match the Better Ads Standards prescribed by Google.

How to Improve Rankings with Mobile-First Indexing?

Since mobile-first indexing is still in the early stage of deployment and experimentation, the good news is that you have time to learn more. If you find yourself overwhelmed with all the technical aspects of Mobile-First Indexing, take a step back and relax. Here are some simple tips you can use to improve your rankings with Mobile-First Indexing:

• Work with a top-rated digital marketing company and create a business website using state-of-the-art responsive web design.
• Modify your website content so that it looks good on a mobile phone. As far as possible, avoid lengthy articles or blogs on mobile sites.
• Create diversified content that includes both audio and visual features. Research shows that multimedia content performs well in mobile environments. 
• For the sake of internet security, you need to make sure both versions of your website and verified in Google Search Console.
• Check the servers to ensure that the mobile site has enough capacity in case there is a large spike in the crawl rate.

The most important thing you need to do is to pay attention to any updates around mobile-first indexing. You can look for an SEO company and get in touch with experienced SEO experts to learn more about the latest development related to mobile-first indexing.

Conclusion

The facts do not lie. Numerous studies have found that mobile internet use makes up 51% of total internet use today. Given the current shift in user trends businesses can companies cannot afford to live in a desktop-first world. The bottom line is quite clear; every time you think of technical SEO, you need to think of mobile environments first.