Where are you currently reading this article from? Wait, let's guess! Probably via a mobile device… Although we don't say this, internet usage statistics around the world say it. The figures announced by We Are Social every year show that we prefer to access the internet from mobile devices, which has increased in recent years. According to the 2018 report, 52% of web traffic worldwide is only on mobile phones, while desktop and laptop traffic remains at 43%. Therefore, this situation also affects our experience with search engines, which are among the sites we visit most frequently. Expressing the importance it attaches to user experience at every opportunity, Google aims to offer a search experience that meets the needs of mobile users with mobile-first indexing.

What is Mobile First Indexing Checklist?

Mobile-first indexing, translated into Turkish as mobile-first indexing, was first announced in 2016. In this first announcement, Google stated that it started working on mobile-first indexing, and in March 2018, after a year and a half of testing and development, Google officially announced that it started to carry the most suitable sites for Google mobile-first indexing.

Previously, Google used to rank in both desktop and mobile search results based on the desktop performance of pages. With mobile-first indexing, this has changed to relying on mobile sites in search results. Whether the search is done on desktop or mobile devices, Google now prioritizes the pages that most accurately apply mobile SEO guidelines in the search results it will provide to users. So now Google uses mobile versions of web pages as the primary index, focusing on improving the experience of the majority of mobile movers.

Why is Mobile-First Indexing Important?

Above all, it aims to improve the mobile-first indexing user experience. In terms of SEO, this means that you should now focus heavily on the mobile version while optimizing your site. As in the past, doing all your SEO work on the desktop version may not be enough to get the results you want in the search results. For mobile-first indexing, you need to focus on mobile SEO and even put the mobile version of your site first.

Currently, Google only considers sites that offer the best mobile experience as mobile-first indexing. Sending notifications via Search Console to the sites it has moved to mobile-first indexing, Google states that site administrators who receive this notification will notice that Smartphone Googlebot visits are getting more frequent in their browsing statistics. In addition, it is noted that the mobile versions of these sites, which will rise to the top in mobile searches, will also be listed in the search results. If you have received a message starting with "Mobile-first indexing enabled for…" on Google Search Console, you can understand that your site will be subject to mobile-first indexing.

When Google completes its mobile-first indexing transition, we can say that sites that lag behind in mobile SEO will also lag behind in search results. Mobile-first indexing, which will cause a loss of ranking to sites with poor mobile SEO optimization, no matter how good their desktop performance is, is an important opportunity for site owners who make the necessary arrangements. Especially in e-commerce sites, mobile-first indexing will bring more mobile traffic and positively affect direct sales.

Is Google Indexing Mobile First?

In its latest announcement, Google stated that, for now, it has only moved sites with mobile best practices to mobile-first indexing. Following Google's best practices, you can prepare your site for the mobile-first indexing period. Here are the tips given by Google itself for a successful mobile-first mobile-first indexing-focused SEO:

Mobile Compatibility

If your site is still not mobile-friendly, unfortunately, you have no luck. Mobile compatibility, which is among the most important SEO rules, is also indispensable for mobile-first indexing. If your site only has a desktop version, users will see the same version on mobile as the desktop version. However, since your desktop site will not provide a good user experience on mobile, users will quickly leave your page. This will cause the bounce rates to increase, which will directly affect your rankings negatively.

Dynamic Service

In the case of dynamic serving, which is based on showing different versions of your site on different devices, Google still lists the version that is best for the mobile experience. Since it will be acted on a single URL here, there will be no problems such as loss of ranking. However, as in mobile-specific sites, it should be the same as the desktop site content shown to different devices. In addition, if you prefer dynamic serving, you should also pay attention to the use of canonical URLs to avoid duplicate content problems.

What Should I Do About Mobile First Indexing?

The first and most important thing to know is that panic is unnecessary. So far, this change has only been made available to websites that Google considers "ready." According to Google's latest guide on the subject, if your website is responsive or the same across desktop and mobile versions, you might not need to do anything different (assuming you're happy with your current ranking!).

That said, even on a fully responsive site, you'll want to prioritize mobile page speed and load time and ensure that images and other (potentially) dynamic elements are properly optimized for the mobile experience. In mobile-first indexing, tabs, etc., due to space limitations. Note that collapsed or hidden content will not be treated differently from visible content.

If you have a mobile site, you may want to check the following:

Content: Make sure your mobile version has high-quality, valuable content on your desktop site. This can include text, videos, and images. 

Structured Data: You must add the same structured data markup to both mobile and desktop versions of the site. URLs shown in structured data on mobile pages must be the mobile version of the URL. If structured data is not essential or pertinent to the specific content of a page, don't add it.

Make sure the titles and meta descriptions on both versions of every page are same. You may wish to optimize your smartphone titles for fewer character counts, but make sure the same content and associated keywords are included. Note that the official recommendation specifies "equivalent" rather than "same"

Hreflang: If you use the rel=hreflang pattern for internationalization, your mobile URLs should have hreflang annotations pointing to the mobile versions of your country or language variations, and your desktop URLs should have hreflang annotations pointing to the desktop versions.

Social Metadata: Both the mobile and desktop versions should have OpenGraph tags, Twitter cards, and other social metadata.

XML and Media Sitemaps: Make sure all links to sitemaps are also accessible on the mobile version of the site. This also applies to robot directives (robots.txt and meta robot tags on the page) and could potentially even rely on signals such as links to your privacy policy page.

Search Console Verification: If you've only verified your desktop site in Google Search Console, be sure to include and verify the mobile version as well.

Application Indexing: If you have created the application index for your desktop site, then you can find the mobile version of the site with application association files, etc.

Server Capacity: Make sure your main servers can handle the increased browsing speed. (This only applies to sites like m.domain.com, whose mobile versions are on a separate host.)

PBX Tags: If mobile PBX tags are currently applied, you don't need to change this app. They should remain as they are.

With mobile-first indexing, there is only one index (the same index that Google currently uses). The change to mobile-first indexing does not create a new "mobile-first" index or create a separate "mobile-first index" with the "desktop index" remaining active. Instead, it changes how the content is added to the current index. 

If you don't have a mobile version of your site and your desktop version isn't mobile-friendly, your content may still be indexed; however, you may not be good at ranking by mobile-friendly websites. This can negatively impact your overall ranking in desktop search and your mobile search results as it will be perceived as having a worse user experience than other sites (the browser will be a "mobile" browser).

If you have an indexed desktop version, it won't clear your desktop content from the current index, and start fresh with your thin mobile-only website indexed. But the more confident you are that your mobile version contains all relevant and valuable content, the more likely it is to continue to rank well, especially since they reduce the crawling of the desktop versions of websites.

However, you'll still want to monitor both, as you'll potentially continue to see ranking results ranging between mobile and desktop search results. Despite the fact that Google currently favors the desktop site when determining results, you should still keep an eye on mobile rankings because they might change from desktop rankings depending on user behavior and other aspects.

The gist of our view of mobile-first indexing today is that there is nothing to panic about. If you run separate mobile and desktop pages, you shouldn't have any major issues unless your mobile optimization strategy needs an update. Either way, even if you don't expect anything to change after the migration, it's a good idea to run the necessary checklist before enabling mobile-first indexing for your site.