Google is a search engine giant and what Google says goes. This isn’t necessarily good or bad, but it does require businesses to stay on top of things when it comes to their website. Recently Google rolled out their much anticipated mobile-first indexing update. This could mean big things for websites that are less than mobile-friendly.
Research conducted by Google shows that the majority of internet searches have been done primarily on mobile devices since 2015. Because of this, Google will now be crawling mobile sites before desktop sites to determine rankings. For years now, Google has been asserting the importance of a mobile-friendly design. Now they are getting serious.
How Google Crawls Matters
The page rank of your website is important because the higher your page is on the search engine results, the more likely people will click on it. Google strives to put the most relevant and user friendly sites at the top of the page. This is done using bots that “crawl” pages to determine what your website is about. There are a number of ways page rank is determined according to Google’s ever-changing algorithm. Since the beginning of time (well, internet time) Google has always crawled desktop sites first. That is all changing now.
Mobile Compatibility More Important Than Ever
If you have nothing but a desktop site, Google states that it will still crawl your desktop site. The problem is that desktop sites may not rank as well in comparison to mobile-friendly websites. (See if your website is mobile-friendly) A desktop site is likely to be perceived as providing a poorer user experience and thus, your ranking within the search results could be negatively impacted.
Panicking Won’t Help. A Web Designer Will.
Pagerank is important. This is why so much time is spent focusing on search engine optimization (SEO). You don’t want to let all of that effort go to waste or let your competitors get ahead because your site is hard to navigate on a phone or tablet. Contact the experienced team at Tree Ring Digital to ensure your website is mobile-friendly and will continue to move up the page ranks.