Google Mobile First indexing is what search engines use to crawl and index your site on mobile. Smartphone users account for 58%+ of website traffic - a figure that continues to rise year-over-year.
If your restaurant website design doesn't cater to mobile users, the user experience for more than half of visitors will be poor.
Search engines focus heavily on user experience and try to serve sites that meet quality standards. If your restaurant isn't ready for mobile-first indexing, it's time to make it a priority going into 2025 if you want to receive organic search traffic.
What is Mobile-first Indexing?
Google's engineers announced mobile first indexing in 2020 for the whole web. Years prior, the company started working on this type of indexing because it was clear that more search traffic was coming from mobile than desktops.
The shift in user behavior changed the way that Google's crawlers act.
For example, in the past, crawlers would find your website and work through your sitemap and pages to try and find every page. Desktop users were a top priority originally, and desktop user agents were used to mimic the experience a desktop user would have on the site.
Smartphones are smaller and have different resolution sizes, so it makes sense that a mobile user agent would have a different experience on your site than someone searching on their desktop.
Responsive website design addresses this issue. It caters to different-sized screens so that the user experience remains the same across all resolutions and devices.
A switch from desktop-first indexing to mobile-first indexing means:
- Google uses the mobile version of your site to index your new pages and blog posts.
- Poor mobile experience can now cause your restaurant to not show up in the search results or negatively impact search engine rankings.
If your site is older and no one has put a focus on mobile experience, you may be missing out on valuable search traffic.
Before tracking any drastic measures and hiring someone to redesign your site, be sure to check your current mobile responsiveness. Why spend time and resources on a redesign if it's unnecessary?
Checking If Your Site Has a Mobile Responsive Design
Google recommends following responsive design practices because it's easy to implement and maintain.
The way responsive design works is that it adjusts the sizes of key elements, such as your menu or images, to the screen size. This means that the same coding can be used whether a user is on a tablet, mobile or desktop.
Checking your site's design on mobile can be tricky. We're going to show you an easy way to verify how your site looks on mobile.
How?
Using tools such as:
User-Agent switcher is a Google Chrome browser extension that allows you to change user agent strings and see how a site looks on multiple devices.
You can also use Chrome Developer Tools to achieve the same results. First, you'll need to install Chrome and open it up. Next, go to your restaurant's website and do the following:
- Tap the three vertical dots at the top right of the browser.
- Go to More tools > developer Tools.
- Adjust the screen size on the top left where it says Dimensions: Responsive.
Multiple mobile devices are listed, and you can toggle through them to learn what your site may look like on these devices. Experiment with the options to be sure that your restaurant's website is easy to navigate and use on any device.
If your site doesn't perform as expected, work with a web designer to correct the issue and allow you to benefit from mobile-first indexing.
How Restaurant Mobile Website Design Will Impact Rankings
If the mobile version of the website is outdated and doesn't adhere to the best practices below, it can impact your rankings in a few ways:
- Google may opt not to index your pages, causing your site not to be found in the search results.
- Search engine rankings may be lower than they would have been if your site were mobile-friendly.
If you want search engines to find your restaurant and all new pages you create, mobile website design is a must-implement.
Google offers best practices to follow to cater to mobile-first indexing and avoid negatively impacting your site's rankings in the process.
Mobile-first Best Practices
Tech-savvy restaurant owners who don't mind diving into their websites and making changes can follow the best practices below. But if you're not comfortable making these changes, a web developer can easily make them for you.
Best practices for mobile-first indexing are:
- Avoid lazy-loading main content that requires user interaction. At this time, Google does not use interactions, such as clicking or swiping, so it won't see lazy-loaded content on your mobile site.
- Keep content the same on mobile and desktop because it will maximize the user experience and help you rank for more keywords.
- Verify that you use the same structured data across mobile and desktop. You'll want to keep Product, Breadcrumb and other structured data the same.
- Maintain consistent metadata on both versions of the site, such as using the same meta title and description.
- Use the correct rel tags between mobile and desktop versions. For example, rel=canonical is one tag you should learn how to use properly.
- Focus on site speed because you want to make your site load quickly for users and search bots. You can speed up your site by optimizing images and videos, minifying CSS and JS, and using a website cache.
- Simplify your site navigation by avoiding pop-ups on mobile and certain elements that expand, such as expanding menus that are too large for mobile devices.
If you use a content management system, such as WordPress, you'll find plenty of themes that follow responsive design practices. These themes make adhering to mobile-first indexing recommendations fast and easy.
Mobile responsive design is more than just about mobile-first indexing - it's about user experience. If you offer online ordering or sell products through your site, providing the best experience for visitors will boost sales and revenue on top of ensuring that you maximize search traffic.