Since the growth of the Internet trend in the business industry, more and more companies are now looking to go digital to boost their rate of customer conversion and attract more traffic. Among the most important techniques that Google requires is mobile-first indexing. With the recent announcement of desktop-only websites demolitions, most companies are seeking the best SEO consultant to make their site mobile-ready.

To inform you of the best practices your chosen expert can implement, here are some of them that you can consider doing:

Shift your mindset

A lot of local marketers still test content and landing pages on desktops or laptops even though many people are using mobile devices now to surf the internet. Since it’s only going to be a matter of time before Google shifts all websites to mobile-first indexing, your local SEO consultant needs to start training yourself and your team to prioritise testing your content and landing pages on mobile.

Don’t forget your desktop

As you prepare for the shift to mobile-first indexing, don’t make the mistake of setting desktop user experience aside. While Internet use and conversions on desktops and laptops have decreased, the percentage is still significant enough to affect the overall success of your inbound marketing campaigns. Hence, make sure the local SEO consultant will keep your website’s desktop version along with your mobile-optimised one.

Don’t jump the gun

In making your website mobile-ready, your technical SEO consultant should not just depend on a mobile-friendly test. Many websites rolled out sub-standard changes simply to avoid a ranking drop when the April 2015 mobile-friendly update rolled out, negatively impact the UX of sites for visitors. Google has said that it is better to not sacrifice a fully functional desktop-focused site and wait to roll out URLs that provide a positive user experience for mobile visitors rather than rushing and producing something substandard just for mobile-first indexing.

Flash is a total no-no

Completely avoid presenting content to users on mobile devices which require Flash to be installed as mobile devices do not support this. You should collaborate with your technical SEO consultant to seek for any alternatives to flash by looking at HTML5 and JavaScript, or CSS3. Many of the features Flash has provided can be at least in part emulated or entirely replaced by these newer markup and coding technologies.

Servers hosting the site are ready for the increased crawl rate

If you have a lot of web pages, mobile-first indexing might put extra strain on your hosting, which will slow the page down for your visitors. According to Google, their try not to degrade site performance but ultimately, it’s hard to judge from a distance.

The SEO consultant you’ve hired should make sure that you need this first as it can cost lots of money. But you should monitor your mobile speeds closely as Google rolls this out and pay special attention to customer complaints about load speeds.

Verify your mobile site in Search Console

This tip is quick and easy but ignoring it can cause your site to be improperly categorised or even missed by Google. In case you haven’t already, visit Google Search Console to verify your existing site or add one if you haven’t yet.

Don’t serve incomplete or buggy mobile sites

Google has said that if they can’t find a mobile site for your domain, they will continue to index the desktop version without an explicit penalty – for now. If your company has a half-baked or slow-loading mobile site, you should take it down immediately. It wasn't an issue in the past because Google relied primarily on your desktop site to compile its search index. For mobile sites that are broken or glitchy, it might hurt your business in other ways, but your index was safe.

Now that you have reached the end of this article, making your website mobile-ready will be easier for you. After all, this is something crucial to the revenue and visibility of your products and services. Hence, it’s just right that you include this as one of your priorities. Also, don’t forget to hire the best SEO consultant that can help you apply all of these to generate results as more time passes. This includes increasing your search engine ranking and visibility, as well as driving more traffic to your website.