Google recently announced that on April 21, 2015, it will be releasing a new mobile-friendly algorithm update, that as Google said, will have a “significant impact” on mobile search results.
What this basically means is that, unless your website is mobile friendly, it will not benefit from this algorithm update. In fact, your website will slide down in search ranking position, because Google will now favor those websites that are mobile friendly. That is those websites that make it easy for people to browse on them using their mobile devices.
This is a natural progression for Google ever since the dawn of smartphones, which meant that more and more people would be surfing the web on their mobile devices, i.e smartphones and tablets.
In fact, 60% of all online traffic is on mobile devices and this trend will to continue to increase, where gradually most of our user experience online will be through our mobile devices.
So what does this mean for my website?
Simply that you have until April 21 to make the necessary changes to your website to make it mobile friendly. Because if a lot of the traffic to your website comes through mobile devices, then you are at risk of losing this mobile traffic to your site. That will have a significant impact on your business and bottom line.
Google released its own mobile friendly site test tool, which you or your website designer can use to test whether your site passes the criteria of what Google considers mobile friendliness. And this is the key here, because it’s Google that determines whether your website is mobile friendly or not, based on the results of this tool. Not a web designer, or a website owner.
So if your website passes Google’s test, then you can expect to benefit in the mobile search ranking position, provided you have done proper on-page and off-page website optimization.
Test Your Website To See If It’s Mobile Friendly With This Tool Below:
The results are either a pass or fail. Mobile friendly, or not!
Now for some websites, to switch the whole site to be mobile friendly will be relatively easy, but for some websites that may prove a little difficult and challenging. This includes websites that have specialized pages that make it difficult to browse easily on a mobile device.
No worries! Google confirmed that the mobile-friendly ranking factor will be run on a page by page basis. Meaning that, for example, lets say your site has 20 pages and only 12 are mobile friendly, while the rest, that is 8 pages, are not. Then the pages that are mobile friendly, i.e the 12, are the only ones that will benefit from this new Google mobile ranking factor.
This also means that for a website owner, its crucial to make sure that your most important website pages are mobile friendly, so that they can benefit in search ranking results, and website conversions for mobile traffic.
In addition, if you are able to make your entire website mobile friendly without any or too much difficulty, then even better for you.
The ranking benefit will also be in real time, meaning if Google detects your site or page has changed to be mobile friendly, it will update quickly on the search results.
We at Garden Grove Media are experts at web design, and we would love to help you get your website ready for this update. Making your site mobile friendly is not just about taking advantage of a mobile friendly web design, so as to have a higher visibility and ranking on Google search results.
More importantly, it’s also about the user experience on your website, making it easy for people to browse your site using their mobile devices, and having an awesome experience while doing so.
When that happens, you will have a higher chance of converting many of your site visitors into customers, and grow your business as a result. We can help you do that.
Fill out our contact form to get you started.