What does “Mobile First Indexing” mean and why this should be kept in mind when designing your website

Introduction

Sometimes when we call a web design agency we will have a really good idea of how we want the website to look.

That’s to say we may want a slider, or perhaps a video showing your offices and your staff at work.

And from a design perspective, well that may look good, but if you were to ask most digital marketing agencies what they now believe is one of the most important factors when designing a website, and they are bound to say making the website work as well as possible on mobile devices.

And by mobile devices we mean your smartphone or tablet.

And yes some web designers will state your website is “Responsive”– but within this article we will look at whether this is enough.

 

What does Mobile First Indexing actually mean?

Mobile First Indexing simple means that the mobile version of your content is what the search engine uses in order to rank your site.

So traditionally a website would normally be desked mostly for desktop, and perhaps a very basic version of the website was then created for mobiles.

However, this has all changed, your web site design company must now consider mobile as the most important in terms of its design, that’s if the business wants to implement SEO.

So, what does this all mean? Well, it means you could invest a fortune in terms of having a fancy website built, but if the mobile version is not up to scratch then its unlikely to rank well on Google.

 

Has my website moved over to Mobile First Indexing?

Now a lot of businesses will be wondering, has my website moved over to Mobile First Indexing?

And you can check when your site was moved over to the mobile index by checking your Search Console account and selecting “settings”.

How should this alter my websites design

A good design is important, however what’s really crucial is that your website designers really put great emphasis on making sure that your mobile version of your website is easy to use, has enough information allowing it to be read by Googlebot, that the website has schema and that it loads fast.

 

Mobile friendly

Your website should therefore be mobile friendly, however this is just for starters, your digital marketing agency should make sure that your website is then optimised for mobile devices.

So this is where SEO and web designers need to work together.

 

AMP

You may wish to consider using AMP accelerated mobile pages, especially for your companies news section, to make sure that blog posts for example can load quickly.

 

Fast

You should make sure that your website is fast, use Google’s Page Insights speed testing tool to check this.

Don’t over complicate

Sometimes some customers come to our web design company and want a really complicated website, however as we explain that the more complicated the home page becomes in terms of adding lots of detail, the slower the website becomes.

Therefore it’s a balance between good website design, but also making sure the website loads quickly and most SEO companies believe that in the future speed is going to become more and more of an important ranking factor.

How our website designers can help

If your business needs a high-quality yet affordable website, then why not call us?