What’s the impact of mobile-first indexing for my SEO?

It has been a few years since mobile-first indexing was introduced. Mobile-first indexing refers to Google crawling the web using a smartphone (Googlebot).
From Google analysis, most sites shown in search results are prepared for mobile-first indexing, and 70% of them have already made this transition. To simplify, we will be switching to mobile-first indexing for all websites starting September 2020. During this transition, we will continue moving sites to mobile-first indexing when our systems recognize that they are ready for the change.

What can I expect when Googlebot crawls my site?

When we switch a domain to mobile-first indexing, you will see an increase in Googlebot’s crawling while we update our index to your site’s mobile version.
Depending on the domain, this change may take some time. After a site moves to mobile-first indexing, we will occasionally crawl the site with the traditional desktop Googlebot, but most crawling for search purposes will happen through our mobile smartphone user-agent. The specific user-agent name used will match the Chromium version used for rendering.

How can I check to see if my WordPress site has mobile-first indexing?

Using the search console, there are two easy ways to check for mobile-first indexing. The status is shown on the “Settings” page and in the “URL Inspection Tool” when checking a specific URL for its most recent crawling.

Should mobile content be identical to my desktop version of my website?

Our advice to help ensure websites function well for mobile-first indexing continues to be timely and relevant for new and existing sites. We recommend the following best practices:
1. Show the same content (text, images, videos, links)
2. Display the same metadata (titles and descriptions, robots meta tags)
3. Ensure that all structured data is the same.

Check that the three best practices listed above are followed when a website is launched, or significant portions are redesigned. In the URL Testing Tools, you can easily check both desktop and mobile versions directly. If you use other tools to analyze your website, such as crawlers or monitoring tools, use a mobile user-agent if you want to know what Google Search can see when they view your website.
Mobile-first indexing has come a long way in a relatively short time. It’s encouraging to see how the web has evolved from desktop to mobile, and how webmasters have adapted to allow crawling and indexing to make it easier for users to explore and experience the Internet.
If your site’s ranking has dropped and you are not sure of your ranking’s status because of Google’s new algorithm update, please contact our digital marketing team experts.