Mobile-First Indexing: It’s Here, and Funeral Home Marketers Must Take Action

You might have already read about mobile-first indexing, but if you haven’t yet taken action to make your website mobile-friendly, now is the time to act.

Mobile-first indexing is an initiative of Google. Basically, it means the search engine uses the version of your site meant for mobile as the context for ranking your pages in SERPs.

Given Google’s goal of serving up the most relevant, best content for each query, this turn to mobile-first isn’t a surprise. Mobile access to the internet started to outpace access via desktop devices in 2015 and 2016, and Google announced this change in 2016.

But the search engine giant knew it would take time for many sites to catch up, and it certainly wasn’t going to gut its own SERPs by a one-and-done launch of mobile-first. It’s been evaluating sites for readiness and rolling them into the new indexing for years.

As of July 1, 2019, however, all new websites are getting indexed based on mobile-first. Google says that its analysis shows that the vast majority of new sites are hitting the web with viable mobile versions.

Google is continuing to monitor older sites for conversion to mobile-first indexing whenever they’re ready. But chances are that a time is coming when the search engine will flip the switch fully and mobile-first indexing will be the only game in town.

For funeral home content marketing, that means taking action now so you aren’t left out of SERPs in the future. Some things to do include:

• Ensuring your website design is responsive—that it works equally well on all screens
• Creating content with mobile in mind, which means small, digestible chunks broken up via subheadings, bulleted lists, and other factors that read well on smaller screens
• Amping up site speed: internet users have little patience with slow-to-load sites, but mobile users are especially impatient
• Building content that keeps mobile search and keywords in mind

By acting now, funeral homes and other death care companies can ensure their sites are mobile-friendly before Google goes the full mile with its mobile-first indexing.