Recently, Google announced that its algorithms will begin ranking
websites based primarily on their mobile versions, not desktop versions. Although Google’s algorithm updates have been leading up to this major switch, desktop versions of websites still ranked supreme in terms of indexing. This is big news, but don’t worry yet: Google is just now starting experimentation with mobile-first indexing on a small scale, and won’t completely switch over for a few months. This means there’s still time to make sure your website is as wonderful on a smartphone as it is on a desktop!
Here’s a checklist of what you or your IT team should do to make sure your site will be up to scratch come 2017:
- What type of configuration is your website?
-If the answer is responsive or dynamic, you’re good to go! This means your content and markup is equivalent across desktop and mobile.
-If the answer is something else, you’ve got some work to do. This means that your desktop site and mobile site have different markups and content, leading to a less user-friendly mobile version.
- Use the Structured Data Testing Tool to look at the equivalence of your desktop and mobile sites (type the URLs of both versions into the tool and compare the output).
- Verify your mobile version with Search Control.
- Make sure that your mobile version is accessible to Googlebot with the robots.txt testing tool.
This should give you a head start on making sure your website is mobile-friendly and good to go with Google’s mobile-first indexing! For for information on how to make a mobile-friendly website, check out our guide, “How to Make a Mobile-Friendly Website: SEO Tips for a Post-Mobilegeddon World.”
