Mobile comes first

The importance of mobile and the mobile first indexing factor

Mobile is bringing about a drastic transformation in the world today. In this day and age, almost everyone owns a smartphone. Above all, smartphones are not just used for communication purposes, but for seeking information as well. In several countries, smartphones have even outnumbered the amount of personal computers. Keeping this trend in mind, now it is more important than ever to have a mobile-friendly website for building a compelling online presence.

If you still haven’t worked on making your website mobile-friendly; it’s high time to do so. It’s quite likely that the maximum numbers of visitors on your site are mobile users.

1. If you aren’t sure if your website is mobile friendly or not, you can simply take the Mobile Friendly Test here.
2. If you have been using WordPress or any other similar content management software for website building, you may have a look at the Google guide to customising your website software. WordPress now powers almost 38% of the overall websites on the internet.
3. If you have technical insight to handle it on your own, you may as well take a look at the Google Mobile SEO Guide.

Why make a website mobile-friendly?

 

 

There is no doubt about the fact that a website that is not mobile-friendly is extremely tedious to use on a smartphone. It not only disrupts the viewing experience, but also makes it difficult for the viewer to read the content on the website. The need to zoom or pinch the screen ultimately frustrates the visitors, forcing them to leave the site. On the contrary, a mobile friendly website instantly promises a great viewing and reading experience for visitors.

In Hong Kong 6.2 M of people are active mobile internet users and they spend an average of 3 hours everyday browsing the internet with their portable devices (“Digital in 2020 in Hong Kong”, We Are Social and Hootsuite Report). Having your content and your message properly displayed on mobile devices is fundamental to achieve the lead generation targets that you set for your marketing campaigns.

Mobile is integral to keep your business up and running. No matter if you are promoting or selling a new product, building your website or just blogging about the upcoming trends in your industry. Hence, your ultimate aim should be to ensure a great experience to mobile users visiting your site.

How do you start?

There are a number of factors that will determine the final results for your mobile-friendly site such as, the choice of your agency,  web developer, your business design, expertise and resources etc. For instance, check out the following example to see how the desktop version of your site can be transformed into the mobile version:

 

Generally, the existing pieces of content on the desktop version are organized to fit in a mobile friendly version of your site.

Check out the Google docs on Mobile SEO to learn more about the technical execution of a mobile site.

How much does it cost to build a site for mobile devices?

The costs associated with building a site for mobile devices might vary and depend on several factors, such as:

•     Making your site mobile friendly can be absolutely free by choosing a responsive template. When you go by a responsive template for your site, it automatically transforms the viewing experience for visitors depending on the display of their mobile device.
•     Making your site mobile friendly with the help of an agency or team of developers will cost you both time and money. But, the costs will rely heavily on how old or outdated your website is. For instance, if your site is built with flash or running on an outdated ecommerce platform, it will definitely cost you higher.

Still, the good thing about starting afresh to make your site mobile friendly is the fact that opens up scope for you to use a pre-existing template. You can go by this template and still use your existing content, saving some amount of both time and money.

What are the next steps?

•     For quick results, you can check out Customise Your Website Software for Mobile Users, if you’ve made your website using a third party web software template.
•     Take a look at the Google docs on Mobile SEO for more insight on the implementation process of mobile website.
•     If you’re looking to create a mobile-friendly site, go for a responsive web design template. Check out the Google docs on Mobile SEO or visit Web Fundamentals.

The Mobile First Indexing Factor

A good mobile website and experience is essential to reach your SEO goals and maximise the value of your organic traffic.

Why that?

Because of Google’s mobile first indexing factor. Mobile-first indexing simply stands for the fact that in most cases, Google makes use of the mobile version of content for the purpose of ranking and indexing. Where earlier, the desktop version of a site was the centre of evaluation for analysing the significance of a site in relation to the query of a user; indexing has now shifted to pages with smartphone agent.

Ever since 1st July, 2019, Mobile-first indexing has been enabled by default for new websites. The already existing and older websites will be analysed as per the best practices detailed in this guide. Each time a site is moved to mobile-first indexing, the site owners are informed via Search Console.

You must understand that mobile-first index is not a new or different index used by Google. There is only one index that Google uses to show to users, irrespective of whether it’s a mobile URL or a desktop.

Why are we talking about this important SEO factor just now?

Google has announced that from September 2020 ALL THE WEBSITES with no exception will be moved to mobile first indexing.

Let’s follow up on this together 

It’s time to take action then. Do you think that your mobile is not totally mobile optimised and you are interested in improving your website performance in Google organic search rankings? Would you like to know how to implement the best mobile practices to boost the results coming from your advertising campaigns in Google and Facebook?

As a leading digital marketing agency in Hong Kong we are committed to help our clients to get the best ROI coming from their organic/paid marketing campaigns targeting mobile users. Let’s have a chat to see how we can help you to increase your website performance.