On December 18th, Google posted a great new article on their webmaster blog detailing how you can make sure your website is prepared for when the new index hits.
For those not familiar, Google’s current search index prioritizes desktop versions of web pages first which can cause some issues for mobile results. Now that mobile is overtaking desktop search in popularity, it is overdue for the index to become mobile-first.
Here’s a couple of the top recommendations.
For the full list, check out the blog post here.
- Make sure the mobile version of the site also has the important, high-quality content. This includes text, images (with alt-attributes), and videos - in the usual crawlable and indexable formats.
- Structured data is important for indexing and search features that users love: it should be both on the mobile and desktop version of the site. Ensure URLs within the structured data are updated to the mobile version on the mobile pages.
- Metadata should be present on both versions of the site. It provides hints about the content on a page for indexing and serving. For example, make sure that titles and meta descriptions are equivalent across both versions of all pages on the site.
Have questions? Contact us today to learn more.
