It’s been nine months since Google announced its first rollout of mobile-first indexing, and about six months after Search Engine Journal reported the first massive migration of sites.
Then, in mid-December, Google wrote on their Webmaster Central Blog that they were using mobile-first indexing for over half of pages shown in search results globally. That’s certainly an achievement given that Google’s grown by over 100 trillion pages in just four years. However, it still leaves a significant chunk of sites in lurch.
So what is the current e-commerce business landscape for sites that haven’t been moved yet? Should they panic, sit still, do something about it? The answer is surely the latter, but what specifically can be done? Let’s dive into key areas e-commerce stores need to focus on to improve their SEO and become the next candidates for mobile-first indexing. Or you can use Scraping Tools.
The Perpetual Need for Speed
Per Google, it takes around 15 seconds to fully load a mobile landing page. This is followed by the oft-cited stat that half of mobile site visits will disappear if a page takes longer than three seconds to load. But the caveat here is “fully load.” A page could take 15–20 seconds to load, but how it performs really hinges on how long it takes for the above-the-fold visual content to appear, which Google says still takes more than five seconds for 70 percent of mobile landing pages.
If these stats should indicate anything, it’s not that page speed stats are confusing and misaligned, but rather the simple fact that longer page loading means higher bounce rates, more frustrated users, and less overall engagement. For mobile users, the effects are amplified. While improving your site speed isn’t directly linked to being seen as “ready” in Google’s eyes, it should be a primary business concern to address immediately.
Non-Responsive Web Design Issues
Many of the sites that haven’t been transitioned are using non-responsive designs, and have two specific issues on their mobile pages: a lack of structured data and missing alt text. Stores that have these elements on their desktop pages are shooting themselves in the foot by neglecting their mobile pages.
Structured data allows Google’s spiders to better understand the content on web pages and display them in custom ways like breadcrumbs, star ratings, knowledge graphs, and enriched search results to improve the mobile search experience. If you want to see the current state of your pages’ structured data, use the Structured Data Testing Tool.
The other culprit, missing alt-images, is an easy problem to rectify. Use an audit tool like Screaming Frog or Netpeak Spider to quickly scan your entire site and highlight your missing metadata, including alt text. Additionally, you can check any individual page by looking for “img” in your mobile page’s source code and seeing if it includes a “alt=” code with a brief description.
Store with Poor Page Designs, Usability Issues Will Suffer
OK, so this was probably the case anyway, but now that Google is displaying mobile pages in search results by default, the importance of aesthetically pleasing, user-friendly page designs has heightened once more. When tweaking and evaluating your store’s page design, always critique through the lens of a mobile user. Desktop shoppers will continue to stay relevant, but sheer screen size ensures those users will have smooth shopping experiences. The same cannot be said for poorly designed sites on mobile screens.
Smaller screens to fit all your store’s information puts a greater importance on using white space effectively. This is particularly important for clickable elements like buttons and contact forms. Stores that serve cluttered mobile pages are certainly suffering the consequences. Unsure exactly how your store’s mobile experience plays? Use Google’s mobile-friendly web page test tool to grade your mobile pages. Take some time to browse your store yourself, too. The smaller your phone screen, the better.
Implement Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
Google AMP is an open-source project for publishers to improve the mobile-accessibility and user-friendliness of their site. Google has said in the past that AMP is not a ranking factor. But seeing as it aids user experience and improves page-loading speeds, it’s hard to imagine AMP isn’t sending positive SEO signals to Google’s algorithm. After all, how users engage with your site in general plays a huge role in your organic rankings. Whether AMP leads to any noticeable SEO improvement or not, stores that participate in AMP will clearly be on the good side of history when looking back.
Mobile-first indexing seems like a big change, but at the end of the day it’s just one more step to improving user experiences, and e-commerce owners should be on board with that. Ensure you have fast-loading, easily crawlable pages that implement AMP. And while it might not directly interfere with your mobile pages being indexed, usability is of equal importance long-term.
