In 2018, Google will judge the ranking of your office by the signals of your mobile site.
The Google mobile index, the update of the algorithm that will rock the importance of desktop sites compared to mobile, has not yet launch date , but is expected to arrive in 2018. While the details are scrambled and speculative, Google is communicating how it could roll out the mobile-first index.
Google Search Console
Google Search Console comes into play: Google uses the Search Console to communicate impressions on your site and to provide additional data on the performance of your natural search string that you will not find in any other tool.
If Google has anything to say about how its mobile-first index will have a specific impact on your site, it will use messages in your Search Console account.
But you must have a Search Console account first. Sign up for Google Search Console and check with Google that you're managing your sites. These verification steps ensure that only someone with the ability to post to the site or influence items posted to a site can access Search Console. Google searches for one of the five verification methods and tells you how to complete the process.
There are many other tools in Google Search Console. Do not miss the Google Analytics Search section – Search In Traffic> Google Analytics Search – where you will find data on the number of impressions and clicks generated by the keywords and URLs that you have received. You'll also find the average ranking, which is the most accurate way to determine the performance of your site in Google's search results pages. Indeed, you can not check it correctly in your own browser.
In addition, you can link your Search Console account to your Google Analytics account to access more complete data. The same can be done with paid search data when you link your Search Console account to Google AdWords, which allows you to better manage your integrated search presence.
Farewell note about Google Search Console verification: Data is limited to the exact subdomains. Make sure you record and verify each protocol, subdomain, domain, and top-level domain that you need to track performance. For example, if you have a mobile site and a desktop with separate canonical URLs, you must register and verify six separate sites: http://www.site.com https: //www.site.com http://site.com https://site.com http: // m.site. com and https://m.site.com .
Each of these variants can load unique sites and work differently. Google treats them as unique properties in the search console. Each site variant may have different messages and different data.
Yes, it's annoying. Yes, you should check them all. Yes, if you have international domains or multiple top-level country code domains – such as .de – save all your protocols, subdomains, and domains for those too.
About the Google Mobile-First Index
Changing your ranking with the "Google Mobile" index depends on the difference between your mobile site and your desktop version.
The first thing that everyone in Google said about moving to mobile is that it's "neutral in terms of quality" – there's hardly any change in existing rankings. For reactive sites, this is apparently quite easy. And for those who do not have any site optimized for mobile, the desktop site should still be ranked as well as it is today.
The fact that your rankings vary based on the Google Mobile First index depends on the difference between your mobile site and your computer version.
Full and dedicated mobile sites, where URLs that serve mobile content are different from desktop, will be the next type of Google site to go to. These are harder to launch in a state of neutral quality because the signals that a mobile site sends because of its downlink profile are usually smaller than the signals coming from it. an office site.
In addition, separate mobile sites require specific technical optimization that can be tricky to implement properly. In other words, the signals that the dedicated mobile sites send are generally weaker than their desktop counterparts, making it harder to rank them as strongly.
Google is also struggling with mobile sites that only have some of the content or functionality of the website. These mobile sites typically send different ranking signals relative to desktops, making a neutral-quality launch even more difficult.
Google has not given many answers. Most of what we know about Google's mobile index comes from various Google employee interviews and Google employee presentations at conferences.
Up to now, we still hear a lot of "should be" and "could do" in these communications, which shows a level of uncertainty that worries many SEO professionals. One clear way to get through the mobile first shift is to have a responsive website. For e-commerce companies that rely on natural search traffic to generate revenue, but do not yet respond to sites, it's time to start planning for the move.