SEO Beware – Crawlers Are on a New Path

SEO Beware: Crawlers Are on a New Path

If your brand is targeting the top of search engine results, crawling is mandatory. Crawling in this case is the digital mechanism used by Google to scan and index websites. Think of electronic operatives looking around and firing reports back to mission control. Websites that rate the best reports get the best ranking. And you thought it was all about ‘who you know’.

Brand marketers should know that crawlers are on a new path. Once steering themselves primarily into desktop territory, the digital bots now are fully shifted into mobile space. In fact, since 2016, Google has carried out a mobile-first indexing policy. Before crawlers stop at your desktop site, they visit the mobile. In certain cases, they’ll shun the stationary location altogether.

Given the current preferences of the crawling bot, brand marketers must offer ample enticement. And that requires mobile optimization. Without it, SEO will misfire.

Speed is one of the primary considerations of mobile optimization. In this arena, mobile must surpass the desktop pace – by one second. Currently, Google gives desktop sites three seconds to load. Mobile pages, however, must do it in two.

So what’s the big deal about a one-second difference? Ever hear of the Olympics? Same applies to the digital world; one second is huge. In numerical terms, it’s a 33% jump in speed. Clocking a mobile site can be done with PageSpeedInsights, which is found on Google’s Search Console.

Impressive speed, however, will be overshadowed if a mobile site launches in unfished form. As a rule, a partially-completed site throws mud at your crawler report. And Google loathes mud – enough to kick your rankings into the gutter. The takeaway: stick with your desktop site until the mobile is off the assembly line.

If you have any questions or comments about mobile optimization, or about any other brand-related topic, feel free to send them our way.