What is Google's mobile first indexing?

We have seen for a while now that Google has boosted rankings for mobile-friendly websites. And now with mobile responsible for more than 58% of all traffic they have turned their focus to indexing.

Historically Google has used the desktop version of your website's content for crawling, indexing and ranking.

Mobile First means just that - Google will now use your mobile version of your website first for indexing and ranking to help their mobile users find what they are looking for.

The mobile first index is not a separate index. Google only has one index from which it serves the results.

So what it does it mean for you and your website?

Your mobile version of your website will be considered the primary version of your website.

Google are looking for "mobile parity" or "content parity" - Google wants to see that whether your website is viewed on a desktop or mobile device, the content is the same.

You can make sure you have mobile parity by having a responsive website.  A fully responsive website design is mobile optimised, gives you 'content parity'  and will ensure that your text and images scale to suit the device it's being viewed on.  You also want the menu to change (to a hamburger or accordion menu) when viewed on a mobile device to ensure they get a better mobile experience.

Along with having a responsive website you may need to review your content. Long drawn out paragraphs won't keep mobile users engaged and large images with slow load times are the enemy of a great mobile experience. Google tells us that if a website takes longer than 3 seconds to load, more than half of mobile users won't wait.