Free Mobile/Desktop Code Comparison Tool: Is Your Site Mobile-First-Index Friendly?

On March 5 Google announced what we all knew had been coming: The Mobile-First index is now the default for the whole web.

Previously, you had to wait for a notification in your Search Console to be sure Google is using your site’s mobile version to index your pages. Now it is the default for everyone.

And while this has been coming for ages, the SEO community is still struggling to grasp the consequences.

What does this really mean and why should we care?

What is Mobile-First Index?

Google keeps a record of all URLs it is aware of to promptly match any to any search query. This record is called “index.” Mobile-First index means Google is keeping a record of whatever your page looks like on a mobile device.

Why does this matter?

For years, both Google and usability experts have been telling website owners to adapt their sites for mobile browsing. We’ve been encouraged to build clear and clutter-free experiences for mobile users to be able to navigate our pages on smaller screens.

This advice is perfectly legit as mobile browsing is different from desktop browsing, so we need to build somewhat different user experiences for both.

But this also means that the majority of websites out there now serve “stripped” (for lack of a better word) versions to mobile users now. In many cases, there are fewer links and images on mobile sites allowing people to easier navigate through sites.

This also means that Google doesn’t “see” those missing links or images, or even text any more.

In other words, if you have had a smart interlinking strategy sending search crawlers to other sections of your site, or if you had well-optimized text to help search engines understand what your page is all about, chances are Google chooses to no longer access any of those important SEO elements.

Why would this happen?

There is a multitude of plugins and themes that help create cleaner mobile experiences by re-arranging and removing excessive HTML elements. Most website owners I’ve seen are not even aware of those mechanisms working behind the scenes and optimizing their pages for mobile browsers.

And Google is very vocal (for once) about making sure the mobile version of your site is as full as possible, or else Google might not be seeing everything you want it to see:

In particular, we recommend making sure that the content shown is the same (including text, images, videos, links), and that meta data (titles and descriptions, robots meta tags) and all structured data is the same.

John Mueller

So are you following this recommendation? Is there a quick way to check?

Yes:

Here comes the free SEO tool

Because so many people are struggling with making sure their sites are Mobile-First-Index-friendly, we have come up with a free and easy tool to use:

Mobile/Desktop Code Differences Analysis Tool

I recommend running your most important pages through that tool now: The tool gives you the most important information on top so you don’t have to look any further.

Unless you see any difference in the number of links and words right away, there is no need to look any further. Unfortunately, this is not the case in this particular case:

This may mean that your page is missing 19 unique links on your mobile page, and 117-word-worth of potentially important anchor text.

Once you see there are obvious differences, you can scroll the page to see differences and links and in code to identify what is different and how to fix it.

On a side note, if you have a link on any page and desperately trying to decide if Google can see it, you can run the tool to make sure the link exists on a mobile version of a page.

All in all, the tool is quick and easy, and requires no registration, so you can run it any time when diagnosing a page or a drop in rankings.

If you have an idea for an improvement, feature requests or bug reports, please comment!

The post Free Mobile/Desktop Code Comparison Tool: Is Your Site Mobile-First-Index Friendly? appeared first on Internet Marketing Ninjas Blog.

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The SEO Plugin You Have Been Waiting For

Google search results are getting richer and harder to deal with. You cannot copy URLs of search results until you click them. It is impossible to copy the list of URLs ranking on page 1. You cannot do much when trying to analyze search result pages.

To make SERP analysis doable, we have come with a new Greasemonkey plugin helping you make sense of Google search engine result pages and easily copy anything you need: Get URLs from Search Results Plugin

To Install the SEO Plugin:

• Install Greasemonkey plugin here:
  • Firefox
  • Google Chrome
• Install our plugin here

Keep these options unchecked for the best results:

Keep these options unchecked

The SEO Plugin for Google SERPs

As soon as you install the plugin, make sure Greasemonkey is active in your browser and head to Google’s search. There you will immediately notice several improvements:

Numbered Search Results

The SEO plugin will display all organic search results at the bottom, numbered and easy to copy-paste anywhere you need:

The plugin makes it easy to figure out the actual organic position of any page ranking for your target search query. You can also easily obtain the full list of your organic competitors

There will be as many links as you have your search results to show within one page. If you have 50 (like me), the plugin will list all 50, conveniently numbered.

All links in the list are direct, so you can copy any without having to open the link.

People Also Ask Results

If you have this plugin running you’ll be able to easily copy-paste “People Also Ask” results that appear for your target query, as well as see the featured URL:

An easy way to copy questions from Google’s “People Also Ask” search element

Related Searches and Brands

Google shows a lot of types of search suggestions these days prompting its users to dig deeper into the topic. These educational search elements driving users deeper into all kinds of search results include:

• Searches Related To
• Related topics
• Related entities (similar brands or places), etc.

This SEO plugin will give you a good overview of all of those:

These are great for content development and SEO research purposes: Find which entities, categories and keywords Google deems your target query relates to

Video Carousel Results

You can also access links to top video results which made to Google’s carousels:

Direct links to video results from inside the Google’s video carousel

Knowledge Graph Links

The plugin will also extract links from Google’s Knowledge Graph and list them below the search results. For example, for a navigational queries, it will look something like this:

Google’s Knowledge Graph links for the search query [amazon]

And for an informational queries, it will display all data sources Google is using to create an info box:

Google’s Knowledge Graph data sources for the search query [pizza]

Finally, while you can easily copy-paste any block, there’s also an Excel expert for you to play with.

The implications of this plugin are truly limitless as it makes any SEO task much easier and faster. Use it for competitive research, reputation management, SERP analysis and more.

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