Mobile-First Indexing is a big change in the world of SEO.

However, you might not know what Mobile-First Indexing is – or how it even relates to SEO.

Thankfully, it’s actually not a difficult concept to grasp.

In fact, if you keep reading, you’ll learn exactly what Mobile-First Indexing is and how you can use it to improve upon your existing SEO efforts.

Let’s begin!

What is Mobile-First Indexing?

The concept of Mobile-First Indexing is actually quite simple.

It essentially means that Google will now look at the mobile version of a page first, when determining how well it should rank.

What might surprise you here, is that this applies to both mobile and desktop website search results.

Here’s a segment that comes from Google’s official statement on the matter – 

Here’s a great chart that helps bring some light on how the whole process works.

As you can see, with Desktop-First Indexing, Google would initially check the desktop version of your site and the mobile version would be an afterthought.

Now it is the other way around.

Meaning they check the mobile version first – and then the desktop version.

The key takeaway here, is that you need to consider the mobile version of your site, the primary version of your site.

So why would Google even consider making a move like this?

Well, it comes down to the fact that more and more people are now accessing the search results from a mobile device.

A study from 2016, found that over 60% of searches took place on a mobile device. That number has likely risen since then.

When you consider that stat, it becomes clear why Google would make a move like this. If they’re not catering to the mobile users, they’re ignoring the user experience for over half of their users. This is a problem – hence the introduction of Mobile-First Indexing.

What’s the Impact on SEO?

It’s easy to overcomplicate how much Mobile-First Indexing can impact SEO. But it’s going to be familiar territory in a way.

Something you need to keep in mind here, is that Google is only just starting to roll this out. This means that Google will treat this like an experiment in the short term. Therefore, don’t feel as though you are under a lot of pressure to make changes.

First things first, you need to make sure your website has a mobile version.

If you do not have a mobile version of your website, the algorithm will take note of this. Your rankings will potentially be harmed as a result.

Of course, this is all going to be relative, as it will depend on what your competitors are doing. To avoid anything unfortunate, though, you should assume they’re doing everything they can to improve their SEO efforts.

If you’re using a ‘responsive theme’ for your website, you likely won’t have to change anything. A responsive theme, is when the theme adjusts its design, to suit whatever device is being used to access the site.

The same applies if you’re using a dynamic serving site. This is where the server delivers a different site, depending on what device is being used.

Note: We’ll talk about this in more detail later, but if you are using this setup, make sure your mobile site is high-quality. The content on your mobile site should be on par with what people can expect when visiting the desktop version of your site.

Both of these statements are backed up by Google’s own content – 

Of course, if you don’t have a mobile version of your site, you will need to make some changes.

Perhaps the easiest way to get this sorted, is by investing in a responsive theme. There are many websites that will provide you with a good looking responsive theme, for under $100.

Content on Mobile Site = Content on Desktop Site

You also need to make sure that the quality of the content on your mobile site, is the same as what would be found on your desktop site.

As you probably know, Google values high-quality content. Don’t expect Google to cut you some slack, just because you have good content on your desktop but not on your mobile site.

You also need to make sure the structured data is taken care of.

Make sure the structured data for your desktop site is the same as what you’d find for your mobile site.

You can verify that this is done, by using the structured data tool, provided by Google.

You also need to make sure the Google Search Console is aware of your mobile site.

If you have not done so already, you need to login to the Search Console and verify that you are the owner of the mobile site.

You should also check that Google is able to index your mobile site.

You can do this by using the ‘Robots.txt’ testing tool. Using this tool is important, because even if you have a mobile site, it won’t matter if Google isn’t able to access it.

You also need to make sure that the mobile version of your website loads quickly.

Google recently announced that they’re going to consider ‘page speed’ when ranking mobile websites.

Here’s a segment of what they have to say on the matter –

You can use the PageSpeed Insights tool to help you figure out how fast the mobile version of your website is loading. This tool is especially helpful, because it will also give you suggestions as to what can be done to improve things.

In any case, these are just a few suggestions as to how you can prepare for this update. There’s no telling what else Google might suggest. Because of this, you should keep an eye on their blog, to make sure you do not miss any crucial pieces of information.

You should also monitor their best practices section, of which is dedicated to Mobile-First Indexing.

Conclusion

The SEO landscape is always changing. Today it is Mobile-First Indexing – but tomorrow it will likely be something else.

In this post, we have taken a look at some of the steps you can take to prepare for this update. It can all be a bit overwhelming at the moment. However, remember that Google is only just starting to roll this out – so you have plenty of time to make the required changes.

What matters most, is that you do things the right way. Otherwise, you’ll end up making a few expensive SEO mistakes, that will hurt you rather than help you.

Best of luck!

The post Mobile-First Indexing: how will it impact SEO in 2018 (and beyond) appeared first on Serped.com.

Achieving a top search engine ranking isn’t easy.

So it makes sense that you’d want to figure out how you can keep a high ranking, once you achieve it.

In this post, we’re going to take a look at what it takes to maintain a high keyword ranking.

We’ll take a look some of the quick strategies you can put into action right now, as well as some tried and tested practices you’ll want to engage in over time.

By the end of this post, you’ll know what it takes to maintain keyword ranking, so that your hard work doesn’t go to waste.

Let’s begin!

Keep your content current and relevant

One of the simplest steps you can take to maintain a high ranking, is to keep your current and relevant.

If your web page is not up to date, it means that the people who click on the page will find the information irrelevant.   

As a result, they’ll likely click on the ‘back button’ as soon as they discover that the information is not current.

There’s reason to suspect that Google can tell when people click on the back button quickly, after clicking on a listing within the search results.  

If people are quickly clicking the back button, this is going to reflect badly on your website, potentially impacting how high it ranks in the search listings.  

So what can you do to ensure your content is current and relevant?

Other than making sure the information is still relevant, you can also add other forms of media to your page.

That might mean adding more images or even videos, of which help further explain the content on the page.

You might even want to update the statistics on the page.

Be sure to check into your webpages every couple of months, to ensure that everything is up to date.

In some cases, you may even want to write in the Title Tag, that the information is up to date, as shown below.

Make sure your web page is optimized

There are a ton of ways you can optimize your web page/website.

But the most part, there are two things you really want to focus on, when it comes to web page optimization.

1. Making sure your website loads quickly
2. Making sure your website looks good on a mobile device

If you want to reduce the amount of time it takes for your website to load, there are a couple of things you can do.

One, is to use the PageSpeed Insights tool provided by SERPed.net.

This tool is helpful, because it will analyze your website and tell you exactly what needs to be done to improve the speed of your site, so that it is inline with what Google expects.

Here are some of the improvement suggestions provided by the tool.

Focus on attracting more inbound links

As you might’ve guessed, one of the other ways you can maintain a high SEO ranking is by increasing the number of links pointing to your high ranking pages.

Now, if you rank highly for a specific keyword, you’ll tend to find that your content naturally attracts more links.

However, that doesn’t mean you should just take things easy.

You should consider reaching out to people, so that you can let them know about your content, in the hopes that they’ll link to it.

One way you can do this, is by finding the people that are linking to content that is similar to yours, and then let them know that you’ve created something similar.

You can do this using the SERPed Chrome Extension.

Using this SEO browser extension, you can find out who is linking to a particular site.

Just perform a google search that will bring up content that is similar to yours — and then analyze the links pointing the such content.

You can then use a tool like Amazon Mechanical Turk, to quickly find out the email addresses of the people linking to the web page(s) in question.

Once you have their email address, you can then reach out to them and let them know about your piece of content.

It can also be a good idea to reach out to people, based on whether or not they’ve shared content similar to yours.

You can identify people who’ve shared similar content, with the help of Buzzsumo.

To do this, go to Buzzsumo and type in a keyword that relates to your piece of content.

You’ll then see content that is similar to yours. You then just need to click on ‘View Sharers’ to find the people who’ve shared this content.

Note: You’ll need a premium version of Buzzsumo to do this. There is a free trial that lasts 14 days, however. Purchasing Buzzsumo can be a good idea, since it also gives you the chance to identify backlink opportunities too.

Whilst all of this can seem like tedious work, putting in the time to do this can really help boost/maintain your rankings.

Start building more internal links

Another thing you can do, is build more internal links.

This might sound complicated, but essentially what you’re doing here is linking more of your pages to one another, within your site.

The easiest way to do this, is to link to any related pieces of content you might have on your site, when you’re writing/editing an existing piece of content.

Here’s an example of an internal link:

As with everything else we’ve covered here — be sure that you don’t overdo this.

Going over the top here, can often lead to a negative impact on your SEO, as it will raise a red flag with Google.

Conclusion

In this post, we’ve taken a look at some of the tactics that you can use to maintain keyword ranking for your top keywords.

If you can, try to incorporate all of these tactics into your SEO strategy.

Whilst it can be a lot of effort to do so, it’s this kind of hard work that will help you maintain your high rankings.

If you feel overwhelmed, though, don’t worry.

Just pick one tactic we’ve covered in this post, execute it thoroughly — and then move onto the next tactic.

Good luck!

The post How to Maintain Keyword Ranking Once You Reach the Top in Google appeared first on Serped.com.