In case you happened to miss it – this week Google rolled out their latest update and it’s focused squarely on mobile friendly sites.
First thing you should do is – not panic. Words like Mobilegeddon are doing the rounds but it doesn’t have to be as frightening as it sounds.
The second – check whether or not Google thinks your site is mobile friendly. It’s not enough that you think it’s alright on a mobile phone – Google needs to think it is. So, head to this link and run your URL through the Google Mobile Friendly test.
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/
If you got ‘Awesome! This is a mobile friendly page’ then your current search engine ranking is unlikely to fall due to this update. In fact it’s likely to get better because of any competitors usually above you who are not mobile friendly – a little win for those who were prepared.
If you got ‘This is not a mobile friendly page’ then you need to talk to your website developer or the team at Website Design Centre as soon as possible. Still don’t panic – the result you received from Google isn’t the death knoll of your website – it can be fixed and you won’t be punished permanently. As soon as you have a mobile friendly site and it’s indexed you should be able to regain any lost ground relatively quickly, assuming everything else on your site, such as content and SEO is good.
What this update has taught us
Mobile phone searches are the future and Google recognises that fact.
Getting knocked down in Google’s search rank will cost you real money in lost business.
We had plenty of warning about this update so most sites should not be drastically affected.
While the mobile friendly change is important, Google still uses a variety of signals to rank search results – meaning not to take your focus off other very important issues such as high quality content.
This update is important even if you don’t believe much of your traffic comes from mobile searches. If you don’t receive that traffic it could be because you site really doesn’t look good on a mobile device – this update is the opportunity to grow your mobile search traffic for the future.
A fix doesn’t have to be complicated
To gain a mobile friendly site it could be as simple as reworking your content to more it more readable on mobile devices or ensuring that your site has fast load times – the team at Website Design Centre can evaluate why your website is not considered mobile friendly by Google and offer solutions of how to change that.
This Google update was an obvious tweak – it had to happen eventually and should be viewed as a timely chance to ensure that your website fulfils the needs of your readers.
