Indexing is a process where the server crawls through the website. It fetches every page that it finds and stores a list of keywords that are found in the website, in the server’s database. These keywords are then used to find the pages on that website, when a user performs search operations. Recently, Google announced that they are switching to a mobile-first index, which means that Google will be indexing the mobile versions of pages and not the desktop as its primary index. Formerly, Google had only one index. It was focusing only on the sites built for desktop computers. As the number of people who started browsing the websites using mobile phones outpaced the number of desktop users, Google shifted its focus to mobile users. In fact, this is a huge change and site owners can prepare their websites to be adaptable to the Google mobile-first index.
Getting Ready for Mobile-first Index
- Responsive Web Design – The design and development of a website should respond to the user’s behavior and environment based on screen size, platform and orientation. In other words, without having to pinch or scroll horizontally, your website should perfectly fit into the screen of a desktop, laptop, tablet and mobile phone. This makes your web page look good on all devices. It can be done using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and HTML (Hypertext Markup Language). Therefore, if you have a responsive website, then you don’t have to do anything more to be properly indexed for mobile.
- Progressive Web Apps (PWA) – It is a brand new concept and considered as the future of mobile apps. It provides an enhanced experience to users. It was originally proposed by Google in 2015. It is a new software development methodology that utilizes modern web capabilities to deliver an app-like user experience. They evolve from pages in browser tabs to immersive, top-level apps, maintaining the web’s low friction at every moment. The key benefits of progressive web apps are that
- They function well in both offline and online mode.
- They are designed to look and feel like mobile applications, allowing users to operate in familiar settings, while having the full functionality of websites with dynamic data and database access.
- They work faster, which can lead to improved user experience and retention rates.
- They can be installed quickly on the device.
- They are easy to use.
- Developers are not required to submit the progressive web app to app stores and wait for the approval.
It is highly recommended to use progressive web apps to invite links to your mobile content and over indexing mobile queries. It can also make the content more relevant to take advantage of this upcoming mobile transformation.
Professional web designers in an established SEO Company can help you to make your website all set for mobile first indexing. They can also provide you affordable, professional SEO services to make your business website prominently placed on leading search engines. This will help your website to reach your targeted audience, gain web traffic, and increase your online reputation. With world class quality, efficiency and security in the services they offer, they can assist worldwide clients in managing their business processes. Their experienced as well as expert SEO executives can guide you through every step of the SEO process. Moreover, they can deliver you with consistent results and great customer service.