The Mobile First Index is already being rolled out, as Google confirmed at SMX East 2017. The Mobile First/Mobile Only Index has been deployed to a “handful of websites” that are being “closely monitored” by the Google Search team for testing purposes.
Now, Gary Illyes has published some tips on how to prepare a website for the mobile-first index.
6 tips for mobile-first design and mobile-first indexing
- High-quality content
Like the desktop version, the mobile version of the website must offer important, high-quality content. This includes text, videos, and images (with appropriate alt attributes) as well as the associated crawl and index formats and instructions.
- Structured data
Structured data is important for indexing and the search functionality that users love. Structured data should be available on both the mobile and desktop versions of the website. Links within the structured data must be formatted so that they point to the mobile version and not to a non-mobile version of the page.
- Metadata
Metadata contains information about a page’s content. This information helps Google index the page and provide relevant information. Metadata should be present on both versions. It’s important to ensure that the title and meta description are the same for both versions of all pages on the website.
- Links between mobile and desktop pages
When linking to separate URLs (e.g., subdomains starting with m., e.g, mgoogle.de), it is important that the existing links are properly linked with rel=canonical and rel=alternate between the versions.
- hreflang links
To internationalize websites, the hreflang links for the mobile and desktop versions must be linked separately. In the mobile version, the hreflang links must link to the corresponding language or regional version (e.g., DE or en-GB, etc.).
- Crawl rate
The server must have sufficient capacity to handle a potentially increased crawl rate. This doesn’t affect websites with responsive design and dynamic delivery, but it does affect websites with mobile versions, for example, on a separate host (e.g., example.com).
If you want to know whether your website already meets the requirements, you can perform Google’s mobile check or commission a service provider to conduct an audit.