A Fish Needs a Bike by millinaround on DeviantArt
This Fish Needs a Bicycle
As of April 21, your website will be penalized in Google search results, if it is not mobile friendly.
Let’s repeat that. In two short weeks time, your hard earned website ranking could be affected (ie. lost off the first page) if your website does not have a design that is mobile responsive.
Your website needs to get mobile today (hence the pun “This fish needs a bicycle”! Lol, I’m such a card 😉 )
This latest change to Google’s algorithm, due to roll out in just two weeks away, has kept many web designers/developers busy over the past couple of months.
The chances are, if you’re website is more than a few years old, it may very well be affected. Even websites ‘newer’ than that can encounter problems.
The how, what, why?
Google uses what is called algorithms to rank websites in their search results – algorithms are computer programs that run and ‘read’ millions of web pages in order to deliver to you what you are looking for when you make a search engine search.
Basically, with these changes, Google is recognising just how much web ‘surfing’ takes place on mobile devices these days and necessitating that websites be able to be viewed well on these devices.
And by necessitating, I mean delivering/not delivering your website in search engine results according to its mobile ‘friendliness’. To rank or not to rank.
Google is continuing down the path of forcing business owners to be responsive to customers via their websites – most recently to deliver quality content, and now to deliver it in such a way that it can be viewed across the users device of choice.
While it may seem as if these changes are forcing business to invest unnecessarily in their already ‘functioning’ websites, actually the focus for Google is the other way around. The algorithm changes are essentially introduced to improve the customer experience. Ie for this one, to ensure that customers are able to view/read your website on their mobile devices.
Sure, this change will only affect mobile searches but…
Do you actually know how many visitors access your website via a mobile device?
If you’re not sure, let me tell you about my website. It is 41% desktop (ie. PC or laptop computer), 43% mobile (phone device) and 15% tablet. Overwhelmingly my site is visited by devices other than a computer (58%).
And overall, in Australia, over 80% of users report using their mobile/smartphone to browse the web (Google Consumer Barometer 2014). That’s a whole lot of search results not to feature in.
We can say that mobile viewing of websites is in fact already a big deal, and it was only a matter of time until Google made the changes.
Why is it so important to take notice of what Google thinks?
Well, remember from The Marketing Tacklebox‘s “Top 10 things to do to improve your mobile ranking” post (on the resource page, if you’re not already signed up, get if for free here), we know that Google is responsible for almost 70% of all internet searches. That means that Google is directing 70% of all internet searches and rankings – which you want your website to feature in. Don’t you?!
Want to test your website?
Is your website responsive for mobile devices, ie., mobile friendly? Test is here.
It says my site is not mobile friendly, what do I do?
I’ve compiled a list of options for making your site mobile friendly in the members-access resources. Not signed up yet? Why not, it’s free! For members the link is in your email.)
It doesn’t necessarily mean a call to your web designer, though they can certainly help.
