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Is Your Site Mobile-Friendly?

Mar 16, 2015 | SEO, Web Design

Quick! Grab Your Phone

It wasn’t too long ago that you had to power on your computer, wait a few minutes to dial into your internet service provider, and spend 2-3 minutes waiting for a web page to load. Today, most people have the internet nestled safely in their pocket.

The age of the smart phone is upon us and Google has taken notice.

Having access to the internet in the palm of your hand is nothing new. What is new(ish), however, is that mobile internet traffic has eclipsed and overtaken desktop/laptop internet traffic to the tune of 60% of all internet traffic. That number is slightly skewed because mobile apps tend to eat up great deals of bandwidth that you wouldn’t ordinarily use at home. Mobile apps such as Pandora, Instagram, and many others account for large chunks of data usage.

That doesn’t mean that a good deal of users aren’t still utilizing search engines on their mobile devices. Those numbers are still also climbing. With mobile devices so easy to use and often within reach, it’s easy to see that the majority of internet traffic is going to go mobile.

April 21, 2015

What significance does this date hold for you? That depends on the state of your website.

If your website is mobile-friendly, then you likely won’t see much happening. If your site, however, is not mobile-friendly, then your site may disappear from mobile search results altogether. So… I take that back. If your site is mobile-friendly, then you may see a bump in your mobile search engine results ranking. Win/win for you.

WHY?!

Why is Google doing this? It’s fairly simple. Google is the world’s number 1 search engine. That means that people generally trust the results they get from Google. Either that or everyone just loved the term Google over Yahoo so many years ago and we’ve been stuck with it since.

Back in reality, though, Google needs to make sure that people continue to trust their results and continue to use their search engine. Why is that important? Because Google makes a fortune off of paid advertising through their search engine. If people stopped using Google, no one would advertise with Google, and Google as a search engine would eventually cease to be. This is in part why Google isn’t fond of SEO agencies. SEO agencies help push pages to the top of search results, and it may not be what Google wants to return for different searches.

This is why they want to make sure that the top results for any given search term offers the most relevant return as well as the best user experience. If you have ever tried using a non-mobile-friendly site on a mobile device and found that everything just didn’t work, you’d understand the frustration. And Google wants you to have a pleasant experience so you can keep them in business.

What Should I Do?

If your site is not mobile-friendly, you (or your webmaster) should have received an email from Google informing you what you need to do to get in line. If you’re unsure if your site is mobile-friendly, you can find out at https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/.

If your site comes back as not mobile-friendly, you need to take action immediately assuming you want to retain your mobile search engine rankings. You should contact your webmaster/site designer first and start implementing a design/redesign to fall in line with what Google determines to be mobile-friendly. Keep in mind that this could actually end up resulting in a complete site redesign and overhaul.

If you are unable to reach your webmaster, you should contact your friendly San Antonio website designers (us) immediately and we can provide you with a free analysis and game plan to help get your website mobile-friendly.