The importance of SEO for mobile coupled with how mobile friendly your website is, and it’s impact on SEO and your website’s placement on search engine result pages (SERPS) for mobile has been understood by SEO professionals for some time.
Barry Schwartz of Search Engine land spoke of mobile indexing way back in early 2016 so it is no surprise that is now embedded in Googles approach.
In the US alone smartphone ownership is at 77% (up from 35% in 2011). No prizes for knowing why, Apple and Samsung have gained owenrship of our eyes and hands in the last 6-7 years. App developers and savvy website owners have rushed to deliver the best experience to these users.
Google have also told us that they now see more mobile searches than desktop as far back as 2015. It is now 2018 so don’t ignore mobile.
Google’s page speed tool has for many years given separate results for mobile and desktop.
It is also accepted that there are between 100 and 200 components that do influence your site’s ranking but mobile is now one of the bigger hitters in the SEO battleground. And it is going to be a battle as SEO consultants, web designers and developers sharpen their skills even more in the efforts to not just present not just the best user experience (expected) but one that Google will reward in improved rankings and the corresponding click through.
The mobile landscape has become even more interesting in their March Google Webmaster blog post
They speak to mobile indexing and how the shift to presenting mobile-friendly sites content first. It also clarifies whether AMP site content is indexed over non- AMP (it isn’t) and overall clarifies, even more, the SEO approach to mobile search.
They do not say that a mobile-friendly site will do better in SERPSs but at the very end of the posts is (among others) a very interesting comment
As always, ranking uses many factors. We may show content to users that’s not mobile-friendly or that is slow loading if our many other signals determine it is the most relevant content to show.
So mobile is a strong signal, not the most dominant but ignore it at your peril. Let the battle begin.
Read the full Google Webmaster article here
