Mobile First SEO: Getting Ready To Maximise Results #GpecSummit

#mobileﬁrstseo at #gpecsummit by @aleyda from @orainti
MOBILE FIRST SEO 
Getting ready to maximise results

Not a long time ago  
in a galaxy not so far away…

Smartphones have become the primary  
device to consume digital content

Very primary
Would you be willing to give up your Mobile phone?

Since 2014 smartphones have generated the  
increase of time in digital media properties

20% of ecommerce transactions are  
already done from mobile devices

#mobileﬁrstseo at #gpecsummit by @aleyda from @oraintihttp://searchengineland.com/report-nearly-60-percent-searches-now-mobile-devices-255025
Since a couple of years ago, most of Google’s  
searches are done from mobile devices too

This is why Google also announced a couple of years ago  
they would use the mobile version of sites for rankings
https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2016/11/mobile-first-indexing.html

A couple of months ago they announced that the  
rollout of the mobile ﬁrst index had already started
https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2018/03/rolling-out-mobile-first-indexing.html

But what changes with Google’s Mobile First Index?
https://developers.google.com/search/mobile-sites/mobile-first-indexing#best-practices

Some sites are not prepared though  
https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly

It’s time to make sure you’re prepared  
for Google’s Mobile First Index

#mobilefirstseo at #gpecsummit by @aleyda from @orainti#mobilefirstseo at #gpecsummit by @aleyda from @orainti
I’m just an SEO -not a jedi- but today  
I’m going to show you how
* SEO Consultant & Founder at Orainti
* SEO Speaker at +100 Events in +20 countries
* Author “SEO. Las Claves Esenciales.”
* Blogger in Search Engine Land & Search Engine Journal
* Featured in Forbes, Entrepreneur, Huffington Post
* European Search Personality of the Year in 2018

Start by checking
if your site has
been already
migrated to
Google’s Mobile
First Index

“We are notifying sites that are migrating to  
mobile-ﬁrst indexing via Search Console”

#mobileﬁrstseo at #gpecsummit by @aleyda from @oraintiScreaming Frog Log Analyser & SEOlyzer.io
“Site owners will see signiﬁcantly increased  
crawl rate from the Smartphone Googlebot”

“Google will show the mobile version of pages  
in Search results and Google cached pages” … oops!

Verify if your
mobile Website
is correctly
conﬁgured

This goes beyond than passing  
Google’s Mobile Friendly Validation

Responsive Web Design Dynamic Publishing Independent Mobile Site
There are 3 main types of Mobile Web conﬁgurations

Responsive sites using CSS Media Queries to modify the
design size, format and organisation of the same HTML

Dynamic serving shows different HTMLs through  
the same URLs based on the user agent

Independent mobile sites serve different HTMLs  
based on the user agent through different URLs

Each one of them have pros & cons
https://developers.google.com/search/mobile-sites/mobile-seo/
Less
personalisation
options & bigger
page size
More work to
maintain &
difficulty to show
the relevant Web
version
More work to
configure, serve,
crawl and maintain
Responsive Web Design Dynamic Publishing Independent Mobile Site

But all are recognised by Google

… as long as their conﬁguration follow certain best practices 
Don’t block images,
css, js
Add the vary: User-
Agent in the HTTP
Header
Correctly identify and
serve the relevant
HTML version based
on the user agent
Include the rel
alternate and canonical
tags between the
mobile and desktop
URLs
Implement 301
redirects between the
mobile and desktop
URLs in case of
accessing to the non-
relevant version
Responsive Web Design Independent Mobile SiteDynamic Publishing

These conﬁgurations shouldn’t be changed for the mobile  
ﬁrst index, even the independent mobile URLs ones

It’s fundamental to start by validating that whatever  
the mobile conﬁguration, it passes Google’s validation

Use Google Analytics to identify which are the  
most used mobile devices by your visitors
Google Analytics

Emulate the most used devices to verify how your  
top pages look with them with Chrome Dev Tools
RIGHT CLICK + INSPECT
bit.ly/chromedevicemode

Check what the mobile googlebot “sees” from your top  
pages vs. users through the Fetch as Google functionality
Google Search Console

Verify if there are errors shown in the Google  
Search Console “Mobile usability” report

You can use SEO crawlers to validate any  
or all pages mobile usability in real time too
Sitebulb

As well as check if they’re effectively conﬁgured 
Deepcrawl, Sitebulb, Botify

Although
conﬁgurations
won’t change
with the Mobile
ﬁrst index, there
are certain
additional best
practices in some
cases…

More best practices need to be followed when  
showing speciﬁc HTMLs for mobile user agents
https://developers.google.com/search/mobile-sites/mobile-first-indexing#best-practices

>
It’s usual to ﬁnd independent or dynamic mobile pages
showing less content than their desktop versions

With Google’s Mobile First Index there should be content
and meta data equivalence between mobile and desktop
http://searchengineland.com/faq-google-mobile-first-index-262751

Titles and meta descriptions should be equivalent  
across both mobile and desktop versions of your site
MOBILE
DESKTOP
=

However, there’s no problem to hide the content
with CSS in this case as long as it is in the HTML

MOBILE
=
DESKTOP
The same should be done with structured data,  
that needs to be included also in mobile HTMLs

Which is fundamental to show rich results

Independent mobile sites will also  
require the following best practices too…

Make sure to not block your m-dot subdomain and  
that your robots.txt is consistent with the desktop one
MOBILE
DESKTOP

International sites should add hreﬂang annotations in the
Mobile pages too, many sites only do it in the desktop ones
MOBILE
DESKTOP

You also need to update hreﬂang annotations in the Mobile
pages, to refer to the Mobile URLs as alternates in this case
MOBILE
DESKTOP

Like this, but without changing the canonical tags,  
that should keep pointing to the desktop URLs
CORRECT
INCORRECT

You can easily generate the hreﬂang tags for your  
mobile URLs by using the hreﬂang generator tool
https://www.aleydasolis.com/english/international-seo-tools/hreflang-tags-generator/

Remember to keep following already existing
general mobile Web optimisation principles

Avoiding intrusive mobile pop-ups and insterstitials
displayed when loading your mobile pages
https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2016/08/helping-users-easily-access-content-on.html

Use app banners or pop-ups that don’t cover  
the whole screen instead
YesNo

Mobile speed is also now more important with the Mobile
ﬁrst index as it is becoming a ranking factor
https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2018/01/using-page-speed-in-mobile-search.html

However this is our mobile speed reality
https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/insights-inspiration/research-data/need-mobile-speed-how-mobile-latency-impacts-publisher-revenue/

Also in Romania
https://testmysite.withgoogle.com/

What about your own mobile Web speed?

#mobileﬁrstseo at #gpecsummit by @aleyda from @orainti#mobileﬁrstseo at #TuringFest by @aleyda from @orainti
Use Google Analytics to verify which highly  
visited mobile pages take longer to load
Google Analytics

Verify the speed of your top pages using  
Chrome’s dev tool Lighthouse functionality

Obtaining directly the resources that need to be optimised 
as well as the best practices that should be followed

If you can’t optimise your own speed at all, you can use AMP
instead as its speed will be taken into account instead
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-speed-update-25094.html

AMP was launched by Google 2.5 years ago in order to  
provide an alternative for faster mobile pages
http://searchengineland.com/amp-top-stories-now-live-243314

It uses a simpliﬁed, pre-optimised and cached  
version of the pages and resources

That’s why Google made it a requirement  
to be included in their “top stories”
AMP RICH RESULTS  
IN TOP STORIES
AMP NON-RICH,
ORGANIC RESULTS

AMP pages are then usually published in parallel  
to the original, slower mobile pages
ORIGINAL MOBILE PAGE AMP VERSION

To be shown and given preference in mobile search
results thanks to its faster Mobile Web speed
ORIGINAL MOBILE PAGE AMP VERSION

However, if these pages are not used as canonical, they are  
not indexable nor a replacement for your own mobile site

Eg: BMW is using canonical AMP, using it to show not only its
mobile but also desktop version with a responsive design

It was also announced that soon the AMP principles and
beneﬁts will be also feasible to achieve for non-AMP content
https://amphtml.wordpress.com/2018/03/08/standardizing-lessons-learned-from-amp/

When it is worthy to use AMP then?  
You’re building a new
site and AMP offers the
best way to implement
your desired
functionality so you will
use it as a canonical
version for it
Your own mobile site
speed issues can’t and
won’t be fixed in the
mid-long term
You need to be
included in Google’s
Top Stories Carousel
ASAP and can’t wait
any longer*
You can replicate your
original mobile Website
look and feel,
functionality and
content with AMP
Ok, use AMP

If you implement AMP is critical to keep content, design
and functionality consistent between your mobile versions
=ORIGINAL MOBILE PAGE AMP VERSION

Instead of this 
<>ORIGINAL MOBILE PAGE AMP VERSION

If you want to learn more about AMP take a look  
at my slides and video from the AMPConf
https://www.aleydasolis.com/en/search-engine-optimization/amp-accelerated-mobile-pages/

It’s time now to revise all these
principles by doing a parity
Mobile vs. Desktop Audit

Crawl your site with the desktop and mobile Googlebots
by using SEO crawlers and compare their results
VS
Screaming Frog, Deepcrawl, Botify, OnCrawl, Sitebulb

WHY THESE RESOURCES
SHOWING ERRORS?
HOW ARE YOUR MOBILE
PAGES RENDERED?
Verify that they’re both consistent and there are no errors,
non-relevant redirects, non-indexed or blocked pages

Validate also the consistency of the titles, meta
descriptions, content, structured data and hreﬂang
ARE THESE THE SAME AND
ALSO RELEVANT FOR THEIR
PAGES?

You can now use Deepcrawl’s new functionality to check
independent mobile vs. desktop pages in the same crawl 
Deepcrawl

You will be able to validate the mobile site conﬁguration,
crawlability, indexability and compare its content 
Deepcrawl

Check out Everett’s guide to easily check and compare
desktop vs. mobile conﬁguration and content too
https://moz.com/blog/mobile-parity-audits

Last but not least: Don’t forget to also
monitor your organic Mobile search activity

Remember to register the independent mobile site proﬁle  
in the Google Search Console to monitor its activity

Check the mobile vs. desktop queries and pages trend  
to identify issues, opportunities and gap of behaviour

As well as any potential crawling and indexing issue to be
additionally solved following the previously shared principles

Sadly, time is up! 

There are more Mobile First questions to  
address to maximise your visibility though
https://moz.com/blog/mobile-seo-stack-tools
What’s your
Mobile
Audience
Search
Behavior?
What’s your
site Mobile
Search
Visibility &
Traffic
Performance
?
What’s your
competition
Mobile Web
Search
Visibility?
Does your
site have a
Mobile Web
Version?
How Mobile
Search Crawlers
access to your
site?
What’s your
Site Mobile
speed?
Is your Mobile
Web Content
effectively
Rendered?
Is AMP
effectively
Implemented?
How do your
ranked pages
look in Mobile
SERPs?
What’s the
AMP impact
on mobile
visibility &
traffic?
What’s
your Mobile
Visibility
impact on
Conversions?

Here’s how to answer them by using SEO tools
#mobileﬁrstseo at #TuringFest by @aleyda from @orainti
https://moz.com/blog/mobile-seo-stack-tools

It’s time to grow your mobile organic search results …

Mulțumesc!

Mobile First SEO: Getting Ready To Maximise Results #GpecSummit

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Mobile First SEO: Getting Ready To Maximise Results #GpecSummit