When it comes down to whether your site will be affected by Google’s mobile-first indexing, the short and sweet answer is this: if you’re doing it right, you won’t see any issues in search. The thing is, even if you’re doing it wrong, you probably still won’t see any issues in search.

For the last few years we’ve all seen it coming: mobile, mobile, mobile. With Google’s  “Mobile-Friendly” update in late 2014 leading to the apocalyptic “Mobilegeddon” in early 2015, mobile only continues to rise.  Already surpassing desktop search, we should expect mobile to double desktop at some point over the next five years. So, it’s time to get it together and make sure the desktop and mobile versions of your website are seamless.

Will This Affect My Site’s Rankings?

Probably not. Paul Haahr and Gary Illyes of Google both came out and said that mobile-first indexing should not affect site rankings. Great, right? Maybe. It’s way to early for us to know if this will have any sort of long-term effect on rankings.

Even though Google has said that this indexing will not affect rankings, there are two things to keep in mind. First, it’s Google, so we should continue to monitor ranking results and mobile traffic with the assumption that things can change as quickly as tomorrow. Second, Google did say that mobile-unfriendly content will not rank as well as mobile-friendly content, which has been known to get a little “boost” from Google’s mobile rank system. That being said, I wouldn’t be surprised if at some point there was a direct relationship between mobile-friendly content and mobile indexing.  Still too early to say, but again, keep an eye on traffic and rank.

How Does This Affect SEO?

Google is, and will continue to, rank websites based on relevant content, so as long as you’re working with an agency that continues to create good, custom, and relevant content, you should not see any kind of long-term effects on content.

One thing to be aware of is that Google has said that they will be looking at mobile content as a primary ranking factor, regardless of what device you are searching from (desktop or mobile). Again, this is showing the importance of having both a good mobile site and good, relevant content. In the case of a dealership, content should be localized.

What Should I Do?

Currently, there isn’t much to do in regards to mobile-first indexing because we aren’t seeing a change right now. Moving forward, dealers should continue to build out their website with relevant content and make sure that anything they do looks good on the mobile version of their website. All websites should be seamless when comparing desktop content to mobile content.

Second, take a good look at your current content. Many dealers still rely on their website provider to be doing SEO and creating relevant content. Take a look at your current content and ask yourself a few questions:

Is my content relevant to what people are searching for? For example, people will never search for a “Jeep Chrysler Dodge Ram dealer” but they will search for a “Jeep dealer.”