Digital Marketing Summit Southampton 2018, Jon Myers, Southampton, #Dmsso18, #DMSSO, #DigitalMarketing @JonDMyers

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The Mobile First Index: What?
Why? And More Importantly
When!
Jon Myers - MD and Founder

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Google is our world…

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2 Trillion searches per year!
Google is our world…

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16% of searches new each day!
Google is our world…

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60% of search are on Mobiles!
Google is our world…

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There has been a lot of hype…

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Nothing New Really…

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They Have Been Keeping us Informed…

16. @jondmyers DMSSO18Source: https://www.smartinsights.com/digital-marketing-strategy/100-
must-see-marketing-stats/
“Users who have a bad mobile user experience are 60%
less likely to revisit and purchase from that brand in future”

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The “Mobile World”
How it evolved and how we knew
it to be?…

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History of my Devices…

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WAP
HTML
1999 2007 2009 2014 2015 2017
Separate Mobile Pages
(Mobile Site or
Dynamic Delivery)
Responsive
Design
Deep App
Linking
AMP &
Progressive
Web Apps
Mobile-
first
Indexing
History of Mobile SEO…

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Desktop
Mobile
Responsive
AMP pages
Mobile first
One version for desktop devices
One to rule them all - one version designed to work equally good
on desktop and mobile
Dedicated light weight version designed for a fast loading
Dedicated mobile pages served on a separate URL e.g. m.domain
or dynamically served on the same URL
Mobile becomes the PRIMARY version.
History of Mobile SEO Configuration…

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Responsive Dynamic Separate Mobile
Would expect Google to use both user-
agents on the same URL to validate
that the same content is returned.
Google needs to crawl with both user
agents to validate the mobile version.
Hint: Use the Vary HTTP header!
Google needs to crawl the dedicated
mobile URLs with a mobile user agent to
validate the pages and confirm the content
matches the desktop pages.
How does Google crawl different types of configuration…

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Desktop
Page
INDEXABLE
AMP
Page
Rel=canonical
Rel=alternate amp
NON-INDEXABLE
www.domain.com
/shirts/amp
www.domain.com
/shirts/
Mobile
Page
m.domain.com
/shirts/
NON-INDEXABLE
Rel=canonical
Rel=alternate mobile
* The decision which page is shown for
mobile users are on the Google side
Desktop + Dedicated Mobile + Amp

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Responsive /
Dynamic Page
INDEXABLE
AMP
Page
Rel=canonical
Rel=alternate amp
NON-INDEXABLE
www.domain.com
/shirts/amp
www.domain.com
/shirts/
* The decision which page is shown for
mobile users are on the Google side
Responsive/Dynamic + AMP…

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What is Mobile-First Indexing?…

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John Mueller

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Gary Illyes

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“Our algorithms will eventually primarily use the
mobile version of a site’s content to rank pages
from that site, to understand structured data, and
to show snippets from those pages in our results.”
-Google
The Mobile First Index at Work…

30. @jondmyers DMSSO18https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly
Google Allows you to Check…

31. @jondmyers DMSSO18https://developers.google.com/search/mobile-sites/mobile-first-indexing#best-practices
And gives you best practice…

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Can it really be that easy???

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Google will NOT have a separate mobile index,
it is the same single index.

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Mobile-first indexing can be explained
with an analogy...

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Desktop pages will be phased out where
there is a mobile alternative.

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Impact on Website Performance…

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Will keyword rankings be
affected?

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Yes, if your mobile content is reduced and doesn’t contain
terms the page was previously ranking for on desktop.

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The following need to be consistent across
desktop and mobile:
• Content
• Metadata
• Markup
• Hreflang
• Images
• Alt attributes
• Indexing rules
• Canonical tags
In order to maintain rankings…

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These elements must also be crawlable
and indexable.

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Does internal linking need to
be equivalent?

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No, but internal linking on mobile needs to be
accessible for users and search engines.

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Be mindful of orphaned pages, or
increased levels in site depth
which could be keeping search
engines away from your content.
Internal Linking on Mobile…

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“Page Parity” Please!

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What about External linking and the
Google Link Graph?

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1,410
Backlinks
303
Backlinks
303
102
Backlinks
Desktop
Page
AMP
Page
Mobile
Page
Rel=canonical
Rel=alternate amp
Rel=canonicalDesktop
Page
Mobile
Page
1,815
Rel=alternate mobile
102
* There is no need to change the canonical setup. The page
Authority should be passed via “mobile rel alternate”
External Linking and Google Link Graph…

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Structured data will play a vital part in the
mobile-first world, and beyond.

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“The biggest challenge for mobile-first will be understanding the
lightweight needs of the user and applying this via condensed
content. Structured data and markup allows for disambiguation
when content is not so prevalent on a page in an unstructured form.”
Dawn Anderson
MD, Move It Marketing
Structured Data on Mobile…

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This applies for ALL cases…

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Be cautious of stripping back too far
for the mobile experience.

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Lets talk about speed

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https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-resources/data-
measurement/mobile-page-speed-new-industry-benchmarks/
It is VERY Important!…

55. @jondmyers DMSSO18Source: https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/about/
What does Google say?...

56. @jondmyers DMSSO18https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-resources/data-measurement/mobile-
page-speed-new-industry-benchmarks/
Performance Per Vertical…

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https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-resources/data-measurement/mobile-
page-speed-new-industry-benchmarks/
The Problem may be here…

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Hreflang!

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Hreflang!?…#goodnews 

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Important Checks for Mobile First…

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1. Make sure important resources
aren’t being blocked e.g. images, JS
& CSS.
2. Check for legacy issues such as
existing dynamic or separate mobile
pages - these will be indexed
instead!
For Responsive Sites…

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1. Check that the vary: user agent
HTTP header is in use.
2. Make sure the right user agent is
being served the correct version of
a page, whether that’s mobile or
desktop.
For Dynamic Sites…

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For Dynamic Sites…

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1. Guide the mobile and desktop user
agents to the correct page version
with 301 redirects.
2. Make sure your servers have
capacity to handle increased crawl
rate from Googlebot Smartphone.
For Separate Mobile Sites…

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1. Test robots.txt files to make sure Googlebot
Smartphone can access your mobile setup.
2. Check your mobile configuration for any display
or UX issues.
3. Test mobile-first readiness by using SEO tools that
support mobile crawling.
For All Sites…

66. @jondmyers DMSSO18Source: DeepCrawl

67. @jondmyers DMSSO18Source: DeepCrawl
Mobile Specific Crawl Insights…

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• Google is backing the AMP page hard
• Google preloads AMP pages, images, and
scripts to force them to be fast
• Not just for news: AMP added support for
accepting payments via Android pay,
opening the way for ecommerce websites
which are 100% AMP
Source: https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/7623
AMP Pages…

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• In A/B testing the AMP experience versus the responsive
experience with AdWords traffic, they saw a 20 to 30 percent
conversion lift on AMP pages across all mobile campaigns.
• More than 70 percent of the 100,000 ad groups in their
mobile AdWords campaigns pointed only to AMP pages.
That’s now at 100 percent.
• AMP pages from organic traffic are converting at a 100
percent lift over responsive and the bounce rate is 10%
lower.
AMP Pages Work – The Proof…

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Desktop-first optimisation and desktop-first
focus are things of the past.

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Mobile should be your number 1 priority.

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When is it happening???…

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What Google said on the 30th April

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• Traditionally desktop
crawler would do about
80% of the crawling and
mobile 20%
• This will flip when you are
switched over!
• Monitor your logs!
Spotting if you have switched…

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Also check what is cached…

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Progressive Web Apps is:
• Progressive
• Responsive
• App-like
• And more...
Progressive Web Apps can fall
back to AMP.
• Hint… first load as AMP.
You should think about it now.
Progressive Web Apps is
THE FUTURE.
Going beyond this with PWA’s…

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At the end of the day…

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If we cant figure it out…

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There is always Bing!

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Jon Myers
Founder & MD | Ascending Media