Now that you know how many people all over the world are using a smartphone to do the same things we use a desktop/laptop computer to do, you need to make sure that the website content you are creating looks and works well on a mobile device.
IS YOUR WEBSITE MOBILE FRIENDLY?
Being that Google was aware that mobile usage would continue to grow, and requiring all websites be Mobile Friendly, they knew that their ranking algorithm would need to change. Now if your website content does not work well on a mobile device, Google will not rank you high in search results.
According to the Google Webmaster Central Blog, Google has been refining their ranking algorithm since 2015 to reward websites that are Mobile Friendly. Websites that are not will see their rankings drop and even be missing from the SERPs when viewed from a smartphone.
However, before your website content can get ranked it first needs to be indexed, and Google has been testing its new way of indexing for some time now. Starting in July 2018, Google will slowly enable Mobile-First Indexing for websites that are the most Mobile Friendly first.
This has nothing to do “directly” with how you will be ranked, but if your website cannot be indexed in this new way, it could cause some problems down the road. How will this new way of indexing affect your SEO? I will explain more on the next page.
NEXT UP = What is Mobile-First Indexing and what you need to do?
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I would suggest that you do not hold your breath for the release of my next tutorial. You will turn blue and pass out. lol
Seeing how that information is even new to me, and I have to make sure the notes I took at dinner the other night make sense, it will most likely be a couple weeks before I publish that one.
This is very helpful information. I knew that smartphone use was increasing but I didn't think it was that popular yet.
Tried and True
Elaine
This is why Google now ranks us based on how well our websites perform on the smaller screens of mobile devices.
Maybe I missed this, but you can also see how your web site does
using this Google tool
https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/
Will give you an idea of mobile and desktop performance
As I stated in the above tutorial, WA already has this Google PageSpeed Insights tool fully intergrated into the Site Manager for each of our websites.
WA members do not need to go to Google to access the testing tool. They only need to go into their SitePlus Details section in Site Manager and can easily test every page and post on their website.
