Google’s mobile-first indexing is yet to roll out completely.

I am getting asked by my respective clients–

“Will the Google’s Mobile-first indexing sway the ROI?”

The question is legitimate.

Google is probably a few quarters away from launching its mobile-first index.

And, being prepared to face any new challenges is good to sustain values and grab the Search Engine Ranking.

To get the answers, we need to ensure:

1. whether the mobile-first indexing will influence the search engine ranking;
2. how search engine ranking, driven by SEO technique, affects the revenue;
3. what the possible ways to meet this challenge.

1. Google Rankings and Mobile-First Index

It’s too early to predict that mobile-first indexing will sway your ROI, as the ROI partly depends on the Search Engine ranking.

Also, it’s not easy to say that this update will influence the Google rankings.

Anyway, it’s true that –

Google updates its search algorithms to feed users’ needs, or we can say to make the search engine more user-friendly. The goal is not to affect the current rankings too much.

The same reason may apply to the advent of the mobile-first indexing.

Googlers understand that users are using mobiles for most of their online activities and have become reluctant to search on desktop devices. So, Google is spending more time catering to those users.

Mobile-first indexing may come in response to this new search norm.

This update may prioritize those websites that are ready to accept its challenges.

To take an example, the sites that have important structural changes to make may have fewer chances to be hit by the update than those that won’t be catering to the update requirement. If your site isn’t ready for the mobile -first, it will have a slight effect on its ranking.

Google’s aim to launch mobile-first index is to create and rank its search listings based on the mobile version of content.

With the full implementation, Google will shift the way it indexes content. It will primarily index mobile content and, based on the results will decide how to rank its results.

Till the mobile-first indexing isn’t fully effective, the desktop version of a site is Google’s main priority leaving the mobile versions of sites the secondary one.

But once the update is fully rolled out, the search engine will uphold the reliance on both, a single index of pages and apps. However, the mobile version of pages will be considered first for ranking.

Thus, we can assume that the mobile-first indexing may have a slight effect on the search engine ranking and you need to be ready for it if you don’t make some changes to your site.

2. Google Rankings and ROI

Every business owner is happy to invest in SEO as they know a successful SEO campaign has a great value, which is, in fact, completely incredible. You may also have already figured out that SEO doesn’t quite work instantly and is not a quick way to achieve the goals. It takes time, but gives established and long term results.

In so far as the ROI is concerned, if you grab the #2 rank for a specific keyword, you will probably get 60 to 65 percent increased clicks. This means if there are 6000 searches for the targeted keyword each month, you can reasonably expect to get around 3500 visitors to your site if you continue to hold the #2 position. This can be an outcome worth investing in the SEO, depending on the visitors converted.

Higher the rank, better the revenue.

Search engine ranking, somewhere or the other, has impacts on the business revenue.

Mobile-First Indexing May Sway Your ROI

In the above context, we find that the mobile-first indexing may influence your ranking marginally. And since ranking being a major factor behind the rise and fall of revenue, the mobile-first may sway your ROI indirectly.

What can be the way out then?

Let’s be Prepared

We are giving you some general tips and tricks recommended by Google itself to webmasters and search engine optimizers to get prepared for the change:

• Develop a responsive or a dynamic site. Put the equal amount of primary content and markup across mobile and desktop. If you have done this already, you shouldn’t worry.
• A site configuration with different primary content and markup across mobile and desktop, some changes are required to the site. Make sure to serve structured markup for both the mobile and desktop version.
• Verify equivalence of structured markup between desktop and mobile. It is easy to verify. Just type the URLs of both versions into the Structured Data Testing Tool and compare the results.
• When you are set to add structured data to a mobile site, avoid adding too much markup that isn’t relevant to the specific information content of each document.
• Verify that your mobile version is accessible to Googlebot. To do this, you can use the robots.txt testing tool.

To conclude, the mobile-first index may hardly affect your site and business ROI much directly. But, it’s important for you to know its effects. I suggest you for prioritizing your mobile users in order for pleasing Googlers and standing on their positive side.