SEO Executives: 3 Action Items to Help Keep Your Website Relevant

As an SEO your priorities are making sure your website is in tiptop shape, noticeable by those organically searching for your site or those who happen to click on a paid link; but in an environment that is constantly changing, it is hard to keep up with new developments since it seems there is one weekly. As a graduate student at Northwestern University’s IMC program specializing in Digital & Interactive Media, I have found two articles to help your website stay relevant in these times of change.

In Entrepreneur’s “Google's New Mobile-First Index and the Death of Desktop SEO,” JohnLincoln tells readers that Google has now replaced its desktop web crawler with its “mobile-first” index, which means Google will now crawl your website as a mobile user. There is very little information out there yet about this index, but as of right now, Lincoln says desktop websites need not to be worried if they don’t have a mobile website yet; but they should start to look at ways to migrate to a mobile site. However, if the bot finds that a website loads slowly or is “hostile to mobile users,” this may cause the site to lose ranking. In conclusion, start migrating your desktop site to a mobile site but don’t worry if you don’t get there immediately.

(Image: Source)

PaulAdam’s article, “What Matter is Screens, Not Devices” on Inside Intercom, says that you should focus on Jobs-to-be-Done framework rather than the current “mobile first” framework. You should focus “on the screen best suited for input, and the screen best suited for output.” Hence, studying the screens your consumers use the most (be it a desktop, laptop, mobile, watch) help to then know which screens to focus your efforts on. Don’t assume that just because everyone is heading in the mobile direction that it is the best direction for your website.  

Based on my review on the two articles and my studies done at Medill’s IMC program, these are the 3 action items to consider when thinking about your own website: 

• Design Mobile First—The number of mobile users has exceeded the number of desktop users, which means more searches are being done on a mobile than on a desktop.
  
  
• Abandon Desktop SEO—Google’s new “mobile-first index” is forcing SEOs to optimize their mobile sites first rather than their desktop sites.
  
  
• Don’t Go Desktop—Only because more searches are done on a mobile does not mean it is the death of desktops—most people spend 8 hours a day on a desktop.

By following these three steps, your website will be able to reach different platform users while satisfying Google’s web crawling bot, thus staying relevant.

Ilse Raven Espinoza

Ilse is a former Digital Marketing Coordinator in the pharmaceutical industry. Currently she’s a Master of Science in Integrated Marketing Communications Candidate at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications, graduating December 2017.

You can find me on LinkedIn and Twitter.