The mobile-first world will be a big shift for consumers and businesses. We are used to having search results based on desktop sites. For many of us, we still think of a website as a desktop product. The reality, though, is that most people use a mobile device (phones or tablets) to surf the web.

To have the best user experience, we need to shift to a mobile way of thinking. Google know this fact, which is why they are changing to a mobile-first indexing. Now, is the time to change that mode of thinking and think mobile!

Worried that you don’t have enough time? Don’t fear. Google itself is taking a slow approach to rolling out the changes. On the Official Google Webmaster Central Blog, the company announced the long awaited roll out.

Mobile-First Indexing Begins

What is mobile-first indexing? Basically, it is indexing the mobile site instead of a desktop site. For those using a responsive site, the change will have little impact, but for those who have a streamlined mobile site, this change could have a large impact on how your site is seen by Google.

…our crawling, indexing, and ranking systems have typically used the desktop version of a page’s content, which may cause issues for mobile searchers when that version is vastly different from the mobile version. Mobile-first indexing means that we’ll use the mobile version of the page for indexing and ranking,…

If you are not prepared for this change, then your SEO strategy could be hindered. Luckily, most sites do not have a streamlined mobile site anymore, but there are some that still do. It is these sites that need to make sure the targeted keywords and content are well represented on a mobile site.

How It Will Be Used

In the article, Google stresses that mobile-first indexing isn’t about ranking. So, if you don’t have a mobile site or a poor one, you don’t have to worry about your ranking. The blog states,

Sites that are not in this initial wave don’t need to panic. Mobile-first indexing is about how we gather content, not about how content is ranked. Content gathered by mobile-first indexing has no ranking advantage over mobile content that’s not yet gathered this way or desktop content.

However, I will not be surprised if this changes in the future as we continue our shift to mobile devices whether this next quote is a hint or not.

Having said that, we continue to encourage webmasters to make their content mobile-friendly. We do evaluate all content in our index — whether it is desktop or mobile — to determine how mobile-friendly it is.

Next Steps to Take

As I mentioned earlier, if you have a responsive site or a mobile site, you do not have make any significant changes at the moment. For those that have desktop only websites, you may want to consider changing to a responsive site. With a responsive site, you will still only have one site to update.

There are other steps that you can take to make sure that you are creating mobile-friendly content.

• Increase your page speed. Use a CDN (content delivery network) and compress images.
• Consider the using AMP, or Accelerated Mobile Pages, to increase page speed for mobile
• Use easy-to-read content with short paragraphs, bullets and sub-headings.
• Have a clickable phone number on your website to allow visitors to call you.
• Avoid flash elements.
• Use a larger font.

While these steps are not all inclusive, they will go a long way in making your site more mobile-friendly.