Bulletin! Google has transitioned to “mobile-first” indexing. That means it now prioritizes the mobile versions of websites over desktop versions as it relates to ranking and indexing.

This shift in emphasis has major impact for internet marketers in search engine optimization (SEO) to maintain Google Page 1 presence plus Quality Score ranking on Google Ad accounts.

Mobile Page Speed

Page speed has been a ranking factor for desktop searches for nearly a decade. However, last summer, Google rolled out the Speed Update , the latest in many speed-related tools and technologies developed by Google to specifically target the mobile users’ experience. In Google’s words, “Although speed has been used in ranking for some time, that signal was focused on desktop searches…Starting in July 2018, page speed will be a ranking factor for mobile searches.”

The primary driver for Google to add this metric is the rate at which mobile searches have skyrocketed in less than three years. Mobile searches outshined desktop searches in 2015. Since then third-party commentators place mobile searches at well over sixty percent. With that concentration of Google searches via mobile devices, the company opted to reflect that increasing norm in its search index.

The upshot for internet marketers is to embrace the change and ensure that your website design is mobile-friendly to attract and retain mobile users’ positive experience on your website. Your review and revision to your website will likely include refreshing content to enhance the impact of SEO.

Additionally, optimizing your website to make it even faster is imperative. There are a lot of technical SEO tips and tricks you can do to continue tweaking and refining your MPS. If you have a thirst for knowledge to learn how to do so, visit Google’s PageSpeed Insight Rules for more details.

Another tool is Google Lighthouse an open-source, automated tool for improving the quality of web pages. You can run it against any web page, public or requiring authentication. It has audits for performance, accessibility, progressive web apps, and more.

That said, year-after-year, Google will continue to push the importance of MPS optimization. And the research data supports that projection. So to maintain competitive advantage, it will be continually critical to stay ahead of the curve in meeting the challenges of a constantly evolving internet marketing landscape.

Local Search Impact

A Google Moments Study found that 40% of mobile searches have local intent. Additional research reveals that well over 50% of mobile visits are abandoned when a page takes longer than 3 seconds to load! Plus you will lose an additional 10% of your visitors with every additional second of delay.

Clearly, while page speed has always mattered, now it’s more important than ever to provide folks with a fast mobile experience. This is especially critical when you consider mobile-first indexing and the scores of top ranking Google pages continue to accelerate.

Google Ads Impact

Your Quality Score is significantly influenced by your visitors’ landing page experience. In turn, that affects how much you have to pay per click. If your site doesn’t load quickly on mobile devices and deliver information deemed valuable, you’ll pay a premium or fail to feature an ad at all.

Takeaways

So there is now more change added to be aware of and react to so you prevail in your internet marketing. Hopefully, this article clarifies the latest Google Speed Update metrics and offers you a path to ensure you become and remain a superior player when it comes to mobile user searches.

Clearly, SEO to maintain Google Page 1 presence plus Quality Score ranking on Google Ad accounts is a very complex problem to solve. There are a lot of “moving parts” and no one-size-fits-all solution. Depending on your unique circumstances, there may be many things potentially involved, e.g. size of files on website, photos, graphics, website coding, compelling content, etc.

Third Marble Marketing has no pat answers. But, we are on top of the issue daily searching for answers and fixes to help small/mid-size businesses (SMB) prevail in this ever-changing internet marketing world.

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