How to Improve Your Rankings with Mobile-First Indexing

SEO is all about one thing — helping the right people find the right stuff online.

This has been my obsession for more than ten years now. I want to figure out the best ways to do just that.

Not many people realize this, but a few years ago, I felt like I had hit a wall in my knowledge of SEO.

I had spent years trying to figure it all out — the algorithms, the linkbuilding, the content optimization, the technical optimization.

I felt like I had a good handle on things. Sure, I could always be improving on my knowledge.

But honestly, it was quite discouraging.

It was kind of like the feeling you get when you graduate college or high school. You’ve waited so long for this day, and then you’re like “Oh, so this is what it feels like?”

It wasn’t that I had mastered everything about SEO. It was just that I knew most of what there was to know.

End of story.

Boring.

Discouraging.

And then, BOOM! Everything changed.

I should have seen it coming. Mobile was dominating, and finally, Google pulled out all the stops.

SEO changed forever.

There have been several huge SEO changes over the years. We all know about Panda and Penguin, but the big consumer-facing changes may have an even bigger impact — like Google’s Knowledge Graph.

The biggest change of all, however, has been the mobile revolution.

That’s when my SEO knowledge went from, “I’m comfortable with this stuff” to “I have no idea what I’m doing!”

Google announced its mobile-first index in November 2016 because they were trying to solve a problem.

Most people were using Google on their mobile devices, but Google’s ranking systems were based around the desktop.

The solution — mobile-first indexing — changed the world. We’re never going back to the days of optimizing search for desktop only.

So what does this mean for you? As it turns out, there are a lot of implications. You might have to make some serious changes to your site if you want to even have a shot at ranking well.

In this article, I’ll go over exactly what the mobile-first index is, what it looks for, and how you can rank well by keeping it in mind. [click to continue reading...]