By now maybe you have heard the rumblings and announcement that Google will penalize non mobile friendly websites starting on April 21st, 2015. Much has been written about this subject ranging from the mainstream press such as Entrepreneur magazine to more esoteric SEO sites such as Search Engine Land’s piece discussing that this update will be further reaching than Panda or Penguin. (for those who may be painfully aware of those G0ogle game changers.
What Do We Know? The Known Knowns
-Sites that are mobile friendly will be “rewarded” via rank and will have a mobile friendly designation next in the search engine result page.
-Sites that are not mobile friendly will be “demoted after the implementation of the mew algorithm
-The rollout will start on April 21 but will take at least a week to populate Google noted on March 25th.
-Sites are either mobile friendly or they are not. Pass or fail.
-This only affects mobile searches…does not affect desktop.
What We Don’t Know
-How much will a site be demoted? Are we talking a few spots or a few pages.
-How will it affect brand searches? Will I still come up for my company name if I am not mobile friendly?
-Will this gradually affect desktop as a ranking factor?
What You Should Do Now
-Check your Google Webmaster Tools and see if you have received a notification from Google that your site is not mobile friendly.
-If you are not signed up for WMT then check this Google mobile test page and run your own test. It only takes a minute and the BIG G will tell you what issues you might have or give you the big OK and you can relax.
-Log into your Analytics program to see what percentage of your traffic is mobile. (Don’t tell us you don’t at least have Google Analytics or why would be even reading this post?) This way you can see how much of your traffic is at risk. For most of the Industrial sites I review, mobile (which is both smartphones and tablets) accounts for about 12 to 25% of all traffic in the last 12 months. Also, this traffic has generally grown by about 40% in that period.
-FIX YOUR SITE
If your site is not mobile ready, fix it. Even if Google was not pushing it, why would you NOT want your site to be acessible and easy to use by mobile users. Traffic is hard to come by and expensive to attract. This segment of the market is only going to grow.
Generally it should not be overly expensive to adapt your site, especially if your site is on the WordPress Platform.
Give us a call today to discuss your site