Mobile Usability Algorithm Update on the Way
So we’ve been saying for some time now (years in fact!) that it’s important to ensure that your website is mobile friendly. Well if you didn’t listen and are now in a position where your website still isn’t, then you need to act quickly. Google have announced that the mobile friendly ranking algorithm will launch on April 21st 2015. They have also confirmed that this will have a bigger impact on search results than either Google Panda or Penguin did. So if your website isn’t mobile friendly then ALL of your mobile traffic could be at risk.
[learn_more caption=”Click here to learn more”] If you aren’t sure, simply check your website on a smart phone and tablet to see if it’s easy to view and navigate without changing the view by zooming in. The only up-side I guess is that it is only thought to impact mobile traffic and so if you are a little behind and the vast majority of your visits are from desktop users then the belief is that it won’t impact your search results on a desktop or laptop and therefore your traffic overall. But we don’t know for sure that this is the case until the algorithm is released. We do know that the real focus for Google is user experience and mobile has to form a major part of how a site is viewed overall. You can check the amount of traffic you are currently receiving from a mobile device by checking your analytics. If you don’t have analytics installed then, firstly why not and secondly, you really should get this done. Google Analytics is free to use and easy to install and will give you a whole host of valuable information about what is happening on your website. Don’t however think that if you have a low percentage of traffic from mobile that it will stay this way. It may not be an issue for you right now but more and more people are relying on mobile to do their web searching. Our advice would be to absolutely ensure you have or will very shortly have a mobile friendly website in place.
About 50% of searches on Google are currently done via a mobile device and to potentially lose 50% of your traffic could mean losing 50% of new customers, sales, leads etc. into your business, so don’t sit back and hope it won’t effect you.
Sill not convinced? Well, give me a shout on the 22nd April.
