Why Having A Mobile First Website Is More Important Than Ever

We’ve mentioned before how more people are browsing the internet and completing Google searches on mobile devices than on desktops, and how this number continues to grow. But Google recently began another initiative to serve people a better mobile experience when using Google search. This initiative is being rolled out now, but won’t be fully in effect for a few months.

In some cases, website designers create two versions of a website: one is served to a searcher if they are using a desktop computer, and another is served if they are using a tablet or smartphone to search. These two separate sites often have different amounts and types of content on them, which means Google has two different places to look and two options to serve people. And for the most part Google will serve the desktop site in search results, which can cause confusion once the searcher arrives and the desktop content doesn’t exist on the mobile site.

Why Is This A Big Deal?

Google is solving this by beginning to index mobile-websites first, meaning if a mobile site exists, they will prefer this over the desktop site, even if the searcher is on a desktop computer.

If you have a separate mobile and desktop site, and your mobile site doesn’t mirror your desktop site perfectly, you’re going to need to do some work to keep your rank in Google search results.

Wait! Don’t Panic.

Don’t go and call your web designer just yet. In fact, if we are your web designer, you’re good to go as all of our websites are what we call ‘responsive’, which means they are one unified site which adapts to fit whatever screen it is displayed on, whether desktop, mobile or movie screen. Responsive websites have nothing to fear with these changes.

If you don’t have a responsive website, you may have a great web designer who is keeping your mobile and desktop versions of your site up-to-date and in sync. You’ll want to get in touch with them to find out if these changes will affect you, and you’ll want to verify by looking at and using your site on both a desktop and mobile device.

If you don’t have a mobile website or a responsive website, you’ll definitely need to do some work to optimize your site to be mobile first, which means it should be built first to serve those on a mobile device and then desktop visitors.

If you’re not sure how your site is faring, click here to see if your site is mobile-friendly.

If you’re worried about how your site will do as Google continues to implement changes to make the web more mobile-centric, contact us and we’ll be happy to talk you through some different approaches you can take.