As you know, the entire online world is becoming more and more oriented toward mobile devices. But here’s something you probably did not know: in early 2017, mobile devices already accounted for more than 55 percent of all web traffic. That is already superior to desktop-originated traffic, and the tendency is only to rise even more.

Aware of this fact, Google decided that a change of content indexing was in order. While traditional desktop websites are just as meaningful as before, it makes sense to give more emphasis to mobile designs since they are responsible for the bigger slice of the cake, so to speak.

However, the search engine’s switch to mobile-first indexing did not occur just yet. The company decided that they shouldn’t launch the update until mobile-first search results were superior, or at least equal in quality to current results. This is called being “quality neutral”.

The launch was initially scheduled to 2017, but now the forecast points to 2018. Meanwhile, you still have time to get ready for the change, if you haven’t done so yet. Let’s see what you can do as a web developer, and particularly as a Magento developer, to improve your rankings when mobile-first indexing takes place.

Mobile-Responsive is The Way to Go

In order to make sure that you provide a consistent experience to your visitors and that you do not suffer when the switch occurs, a mobile-responsive website is a way to go.

A responsive design essentially means that the components that make your web pages are automatically resized and repositioned depending on the device you are currently using. This means that the page’s content, which is a crucial part of search engine rankings, will not change from a desktop to a mobile terminal. Google’s bots will basically see the same thing.

As you know, the entire online world is becoming more and more oriented toward mobile devices. As you know, the entire online world is becoming more and more oriented toward mobile devices. But here’s something you probably did not know: in early 2017, mobile devices already accounted for more than 55 percent of all web traffic. That is already superior to desktop-originated traffic, and the tendency is only to rise even more.

Magento already has some mobile-responsive themes available that help you quickly create a mobile-friendly web store. You should always strive for a pleasant mobile experience. In fact, we should say that even before this change was announced you should already be putting a lot of emphasis on this matter. However, this is even more important now.

If you are building your Magento web store from scratch, don’t think of your website as a desktop-oriented one that strips down or resizes its content when viewed on a mobile screen. Instead, try to think of it as mobile-first oriented and go from there, since this is what will actually happen when the switch is done by Google.

Keep Your Mobile Website Content Up to Date

Alternatively to a responsive design, you may have two different versions of your website, a desktop version and a mobile version. This approach is not as good as the former, for several reasons. First of all, in practice, you’ll have two different websites to maintain, which gives you twice the amount of work.

Second, if you have a separate mobile website, chances are its content is not the same as the desktop website’s content. For example, some of the text is omitted in order to fit mobile screens better. If you are doing this, your rankings will be affected when the switch to mobile-first occurs, because the content that is exclusively on your desktop website will no longer be taken into account.

If you really must have a separate mobile website, then make sure it has all the important content from the desktop website. Also, you should add and verify your mobile website with Google Search Console.

Optimize Mobile Performance

The performance of your mobile web store is another aspect that, while already important, will gain even more relevance with the launch of mobile-first indexing.

First, let’s see how this factor already has an impact on your website conversions. We can all agree that pages that are slow to load provide an unpleasant experience to visitors and make them less likely to return.

But even more significant is the fact that many users won’t give the website a second chance if the first page takes more than 3 seconds to load. People expect fast results and they quickly lose patience, so they’ll just abandon your store and go look somewhere else.

Taking this into account, you should already be focusing on optimizing your web store’s mobile experience. For Magento developers, some tips you can follow are to use open web fonts, which are lighter, load priority content first to create the illusion of a lightning-fast design or use third-party modules that accelerate your mobile pages, like AMP extensions.

AMP, short for Accelerated Mobile Pages, is a project from Twitter and Google to make faster mobile pages. You may have noticed this already as a lightning bolt symbol next to some Google search results. If you find this symbol it means that the website has agreed to join this project. When you open it, you won’t open the actual website but a lighter copy on Google’s servers that will load a lot faster. The AMP project shows how seriously Google takes fast and lightweight designs.

Now, when mobile-first indexing takes place, page load speeds will actually influence the rankings. This makes it even more important to make sure your mobile web store responds quickly. If you haven’t done so already, you have some time to improve this before the change occurs.

No Mobile Is Better Than a Bad Mobile

As said by Google itself, it is best to only have a desktop version of your website rather than having a broken or incomplete mobile version, which can seriously hurt your ranking. If you are considering a separate mobile design, take your time to do it right and launch it only when it is ready.

We cannot be sure when mobile-first indexing will actually take place. It is scheduled for the first quarter of 2018, but it may change again. Either way, you now have some time to assess the current status of your mobile web store and consider your next steps. If you hadn’t focused on the mobile experience before, now is the time to do it.