As of today (April 21st 2015) Google will be giving mobile friendly websites a ranking boost, and if your website isn’t mobile friendly, your rankings could be significantly impacted in a not so great way!
This quote from Google, sums up the changes:
“Starting April 21, we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in our search results. Consequently, users will find it easier to get relevant, high quality search results that are optimised for their devices.”
More and more people are using their mobile devices, such as smart phones and tablets, to browse online. This means that it is really important to make sure that your website is optimised for mobile devices, to ensure that it ranks well in Google whilst also offering the user the best possible experience.
What makes a mobile-friendly website?
Google began labelling sites within their search results as ‘Mobile Friendly’ last November.
If your search pulls up the Divine Aesthetic website, for example, you will notice a ‘Mobile Friendly’ tag.
This means that the website is responsive, and the design targets the width of the user’s browser and displays the website using the correct dimensions for the device. A mobile-friendly website should have flexible images that adapt to each device, and similarly flexible grids. It should also have menus, links and buttons that are formatted for easy clicking on mobile devices, so that you don’t accidentally click on the wrong link.
Having a mobile-friendly, responsive website, means that your website looks consistently great when viewed on any device, creating a smooth user experience!
So, is your website mobile-friendly?
It is easy to check whether your website is mobile-friendly. Firstly, you can use your mobile device to search for your website on Google, and check whether it has the ‘mobile-friendly’ tag, as seen above on our Divine Aesthetic search.
Google have also put together an easy way to check whether your website is mobile-friendly. Head over to their Mobile-Friendly Test page, and type in your website URL. If you get an ‘Awesome! This page is mobile-friendly.’ Then your website is responsive, and ready for the new Google regulations!
If you don’t get that response, then it might be time to think about updating your website, to ensure that your online visitors have the best possible user experience, if they are viewing your website from their mobile device.
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