With the fast rise of mobile devices, the terms “mobile-friendly” or “responsive design” are working their way into the public’s vocabulary.
If you’re not sure exactly what mobile-friendly entails, it’s really simple: mobile-friendly websites are designed to be seamless and easy to use and browse on a smartphone. You shouldn’t have to zoom in to read the text, you shouldn’t have to scroll horizontally and you should be able to easily click links to navigate the site. If you or your business have a website, go ahead and see if it passes the Google Mobile-Friendly Test.
Now of course you want all those mobile users coming to your site to explore your website without frustration. That’s a huge chunk of people, after all, since last year mobile now exceeds PC internet usage.
But that’s not the point of this article. I’m telling you that soon, if your website is not mobile-friendly then the mobile users may not be able to search and find your website at all.
Google is now sending out warnings to webmasters with non mobile-friendly sites telling them that they will experience ranking issues on search results with their current website. While browsing the internet on your phone, you may notice that Google search results now indicate to you if a site is mobile-friendly or not.
With some serious Google algorithm upgrades coming this year, it’s clear that Google will start seriously penalizing websites that aren’t mobile-friendly. It’s 100% vital to Google that users find the most relevant content in the most deliverable manner, and people are beginning to expect a seamless experience while browsing on their device. Non mobile-friendly websites are quickly becoming archaic and frustrating to phone users.
Not to fear though, there are solutions available for existing websites to add mobile-friendly functionality. If you use a CMS like Drupal or WordPress, Google has a guide to help you through this process. Turning a website into a mobile friendly one is a service we’ve happily provided to clients in the past, and is in some cases a better solution than building a brand new website. In the meantime, there are other easy ways to boost your site’s SEO, including getting clients to write Google reviews.
The upcoming evolution of Google’s algorithm may have significant impact on businesses, especially those that gain a large amount of their customers from the web. Now is a perfect opportunity to gain a leg up on the competition by ensuring your website is responsive and useable by all thumb twiddling phone users.
