The mobile first search index is happening, so what does that mean for your existing web content? How does Google's mobile first index affect SEO?

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Carolyn Shelby
Director, SEO at tronc,Inc.
Organic, technical, enterprise, and news
20+ years experience

3. @cshel #SEJSummit
Even if most of
your traffic is
desktop, focus on
MOBILE first
The mobile content
IS the content now
Speed and https
more important
than ever

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Oh no! Our mobile
version is heinous.
What am I going to do?

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What we used to do is now wrong
Desktop content is no longer used to calculate
relevancy, the mobile experience is now primary.
Mobile content – titles, meta desc, etc. –
takes precedence.

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Reasons to be concerned
• If you have no mobile site at all.
• If your mobile site contains FAR LESS content than
your desktop site.
• If your mobile site has been heretofore treated as
an after thought.

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Options for a Mobile Solution
• Responsive
• Stand alone mobile site
• … but we have an app!

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SEO is still SEO
• Meta data should match between the two versions.
• Content should be as close to the top of the page as
possible.
• Responsive sites should “collapse” in the correct order.
• Mind your load times. Excessively large images, scripts
and other items that aren’t visible in the mobile view
anyway, etc.

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Poor placement
when “collapsing”

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Fancy, but
practically useless
at this size

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On the desktop,
this looks okay.
Here, it looks like
there weren’t
enough listings to
populate the field.

13. @cshel #SEJSummit
Do not make users scroll eternally
to get to the content
Make sure navigation in both views
connects to the same content
Ads should not overwhelm the
small, single column mobile version
Any scripts or functionality must
work in both mobile and desktop.

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TOOLS TO HELP YOU IMPROVE

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Check functionality and UX on all
devices.
Beyond that, your usual SEO tools
should be fine.

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Tools for Page Speed and Load Times
• Google PageSpeed Insights
https://testmysite.thinkwithgoogle.com/
– Follow guidance for both mobile and desktop
• Many SEO tools pull in PageSpeed and Yslow into
their auditing tools.

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Conversations to have…
• Fonts based on ease/speed of load vs what the designer
used in the photoshopped mock up?
• Content to suppress on the mobile site? (Using detection
to deliver only the pieces necessary to the UX)
• How many different tracking tools do you need? How
many customer analytics/behavior monitoring beacons?

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More Speed and Performance?
For more performance and
speed advice (which is very
applicable to mobile first),
see my talk from last year.

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Twitter @cshel
Linkedin linkedin.com/in/cshel
Google+ +CarolynShelby

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Even if most of
your traffic is
desktop, focus on
MOBILE first
The mobile content
IS the content now
Speed and https
more important
than ever