Is your website mobile-friendly? Better catch up!

Google recently threw down the mobile gauntlet. On April 21, 2015, changes went into effect that raise the importance of the mobile friendly website.

The changes greatly expand Google’s use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal, which impacts mobile organic search. So make sure you’re ready!

Simply put, these changes are huge. To put it in perspective, Zineb Ait Bahajji of Google’s Webmaster Trends team said at SMX Munich that the changes would be more significant than their Google Panda and Google Penguin updates. Need we say more? You can read the official Google announcement here.

Here’s the gist: Mobile-responsive sites will will have preference in mobile search rankings, thus increasing your traffic. On the flip side, non-mobile-friendly sites will see a measurable drop in mobile organic search traffic. So if you’re not mobile friendly on or after April 21, 2015, you’ll experience a drop in Google search results from mobile, the fastest growing source on the Web. And you don’t want that.

To gauge the mobile status of your current website, take Google’s quick mobile-friendly test.

Then read this to learn how Google will determine a site’s mobile readiness.

What the upcoming changes to Google’s ranking algorithm mean for your business.

The main changes include:

  • Mobile friendliness will be determined on a page-by-page basis, so ALL of your pages must pass as mobile friendly. Not just some, but all.
  • Googlebot must be allowed to crawl CSS and JavaScript to pass as mobile-friendly, so be sure to unblock CSS and JavaScript.
  • Google announced that it is working on a dedicated mobile index though no date has been issued yet on when that will be complete.
  • This update will not affect tablets at this time.

What this all means is that website responsiveness is now a necessity since mobile search is growing rapidly – and will continue to grow – and Google wants all websites to work equally well on all devices whether it’s a smartphone, tablet, desktop, or laptop.

So if your site isn’t mobile friendly, then now is the time to fix that. Or, if you’ve been putting off building a site for your business, now is the time to get it done. April 21 has come and gone and this is still very important. The return on your investment will be more traffic, higher conversion rates, and increased revenue. Questions? Need help building or optimizing your mobile site? Contact VereNorth. We’re here to help.