The Mobile First Index, what, why and more importantly when!

THERE HAS BEEN A LOT OF HYPE
@jondmyers digitalolympus

NOTHING NEW REALLY!?

KEEPING US INFORMED!

Source: https://www.smartinsights.com/digital-marketing-
strategy/100-must-see-marketing-stats/
“Users who have a bad mobile user experience are
60% less likely to revisit and purchase from that
brand in future”

THE “Mobile World” AS
WE KNEW IT?
@jondmyers #digitalolympus

HISTORY OF MOBILE
WAP
HTML
1999 2007 2009 2014 2015 2017
Separate Mobile
Pages (Mobile Site
or Dynamic Delivery)
Responsive
Design
Deep App
Linking
AMP &
Progressive
Web Apps
Mobile-
first
Indexing

HISTORY OF MOBILE SEO CONFIGURATION
Desktop
Mobile
Responsive
AMP pages
Mobile first
One version for desktop devices
One to rule them all - one version designed to work equally good
on desktop and mobile
Dedicated light weight version designed for a fast loading
Dedicated mobile pages served on a separate URL e.g. m.domain
or dynamically served on the same URL
Mobile becomes the PRIMARY version.

HOW DOES GOOGLE CRAWL DIFFERENT TYPES OF CONFIGURATION?
Responsive Dynamic Separate
Mobile
Would expect Google to use both
user-agents on the same URL to
validate that the same content is
returned.
Google needs to crawl with both user
agents to validate the mobile version.
Hint: Use the Vary HTTP header!
Google needs to crawl the dedicated
mobile URLs with a mobile user agent to
validate the pages and confirm the
content matches the desktop pages.

WHAT IS MOBILE-FIRST
INDEXING?

John Mueller

Gary Illyes

“Our algorithms will eventually primarily
use the mobile version of a site’s
content to rank pages from that site, to
understand structured data, and to show
snippets from those pages in our results.”
THE MOBILE-FIRST INDEX AT WORK
-Google

GOOGLE ALLOWS YOU TO CHECK
https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly@jondmyers digitalolympus

AND GIVES YOU BEST PRACTICE
https://developers.google.com/search/mobile-sites/mobile-first-indexing#best-practices@jondmyers digitalolympus

Can it really be that easy???

Google will NOT have a separate mobile
index, it is the same single index.

Mobile-first indexing can be explained with
an analogy...

Desktop pages will be phased out where
there is a mobile alternative.

IMPACT ON WEBSITE
PERFORMANCE

EFFECTS ON SITE PERFORMANCE
Will keyword rankings be affected?

EFFECTS ON SITE PERFORMANCE
Will keyword rankings be affected?
Yes, if your mobile content is reduced
and doesn’t contain terms the page was
previously ranking for on desktop.

IN ORDER TO MAINTAIN RANKINGS
The following need to be consistent across desktop
and mobile:
Content
Metadata
Markup
Hreflang
Images
Alt attributes
Indexing rules
Canonical tags

These elements must also be crawlable
and indexable.

Does internal linking need to be
equivalent?

No, but internal linking on mobile needs to
be accessible for users and search engines.

INTERNAL LINKING ON MOBILE
Be mindful of orphaned pages, or
increased levels in site depth
which could be keeping search
engines away from your content.

“Page Parity” Please!

What about External linking and the Google
Link Graph?

Structured data will play a vital part in the
mobile-first world, and beyond.

STRUCTURED DATA ON MOBILE
“The biggest challenge for mobile-first will be understanding
the lightweight needs of the user and applying this via
condensed content. Structured data and markup allows for
disambiguation when content is not so prevalent on a page in
an unstructured form.”
Dawn Anderson
MD, Move It Marketing

This applies for ALL cases…

Be cautious of stripping back too far
for the mobile experience.

Source: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ea.game.nfs14_row
Lets talk about speed

IT IS VERY IMPORTANT!
https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-resources/data-
measurement/mobile-page-speed-new-industry-benchmarks/@jondmyers digitalolympus

WHAT DOES GOOGLE SAY?
Source: https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/about/

PERFORMANCE PER VERTICAL

PROBLEM MAY BE HERE??

HReflang

HREFLANG!!??  @jondmyers digitalolympus

IMPORTANT CHECKS
FOR MOBILE-FIRST

FOR RESPONSIVE SITES
1. Make sure important resources
aren’t being blocked e.g.
images, JS & CSS.
2. Check for legacy issues such as
existing dynamic or separate
mobile pages - these will be
indexed instead!

FOR DYNAMIC SITES
1. Check that the vary: user agent
HTTP header is in use.
2. Make sure the right user agent
is being served the correct
version of a page, whether that’s
mobile or desktop.

FOR SEPARATE MOBILE SITES
1. Guide the mobile and desktop
user agents to the correct page
version with 301 redirects.
2. Make sure your servers have
capacity to handle increased
crawl rate from Googlebot
Smartphone.

FOR ALL SITES
1. Test robots.txt files to make sure Googlebot
Smartphone can access your mobile setup.
2. Check your mobile configuration for any
display or UX issues.
3. Test mobile-first readiness by using SEO tools
that support mobile crawling.

AMP PAGES
 Google is backing the AMP page quite
hard
 Google preloads AMP pages, images,
and scripts to force them to be fast
 Not just for news: AMP added support
for accepting payments via Android
pay, opening the way for ecommerce
websites which are 100% AMP
https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/7623

AMP PAGES WORK…THE PROOF
 In A/B testing the AMP experience versus the responsive
experience with AdWords traffic, they saw a 20 to 30
percent conversion lift on AMP pages across all mobile
campaigns.
 More than 70 percent of the 100,000 ad groups in their
mobile AdWords campaigns pointed only to AMP pages.
That’s now at 100 percent.
 AMP pages from organic traffic are converting at a 100
percent lift over responsive and the bounce rate is 10%
lower.

Desktop-first optimisation and desktop-first
focus are things the past.

Mobile should be your number 1 priority.

WHEN IS IT HAPPENING???

WHAT GOOGLE SAID ON 30th APRIL

SPOTTING IF YOU HAVE SWITCHED
• Traditionally desktop
crawler would do about
80% of the crawling and
mobile 20%
• This will flip when you are
switched over!
• Monitor your logs!

ALSO CHECK WHAT IS CACHED

TO LEARN MORE
Read our comprehensive
mobile-first white paper:
http://deepcrawl.actonservice
.com/acton/media/31628/mo
bile-first-indexing-whitepaper

GO BEYOND THIS WITH PWA’s
Progressive Web Apps is:
• Progressive
• Responsive
• App-like
• And more...
Progressive Web Apps can fall
back to AMP.
• Hint… first load as AMP.
You should think about it now.
Progressive Web Apps is
THE FUTURE.

At the end of the day…

If we cant figure it out…

There is always Bing!

@jondmyers @DeepCrawl
Jon Myers
DeepCrawl
Chief Growth Officer

The Mobile First Index, what, why and more importantly when!

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The Mobile First Index, what, why and more importantly when!