For some time now, Window & Door has covered how the mobile experience of a website is just as critical as that on a desktop computer. As mobile devices have increasingly become the main way potential customers search for products and services, it is imperative that a site's design and operations be optimized for these devices.
This is more important than ever with the imminent implementation of Google’s mobile-first index, which it reportedly has been ramping up in the last few months, and will continue to do so in the coming months.
Benign as the name might sound, the mobile-first index is huge. It means that Google will no longer view web pages from the desktop user's point of view. It will now crawl the web as a mobile user, treating mobile versions of each page as the primary page to index. Even those that have amazing search-engine optimization for the desktop version of their window and door site won’t get the premium rankings they’ve seen unless they optimize for mobile.
Now, for websites to rank highly on search engine results pages, pages need to load very quickly on a smartphone. They also need to be easy to read and navigate, and the content needs to be just as easy to find and read as it is on the desktop site.
While Google indicated the change will slowly roll out over the next few months, according to an article on Search Engine Land, the time to make your site mobile-friendly is now. Focus on mobile optimization to give your site a competitive advantage when Google's "spiders" (the programming that finds your content on the web, evaluates it, and determines your ranking in local search) get to work.
The first thing to do is a comprehensive audit of how your website works on mobile devices. Does it load quickly? Is the navigation clean and easy? Mobile sites that are simply the same as the desktop version should instead consider employing responsive web design that looks and works great on a smaller screen. It's time to get to work.
