The Google Mobile Friendly Update: Is Your Site Mobile Friendly?
It is one week since the Google Mobile Friendly algorithm update was launched, how is your website effected?
On April 21st Google launched it's Mobile Friendly algorithm update.
The update is designed to give users browsing the web on mobile devices the best experience possible and to ensure that the sites that are ranking highly in mobile search results are mobile friendly. Google is trying to ensure that the sites users are presented with in their search results are "optimised for their devices".
This represents a significant change in for website owners as now how mobile friendly a site is will be used as a ranking factor according to Google. In order to combat this change website and business owners need to check if their site is mobile friendly. It's important that website owners start to review their sites in order not to lose valuable traffic from mobile devices if their site is not compliant.
Why Make Your Site Mobile Friendly
Making a website mobile friendly will not only help to maintain or increase rankings on mobile devices, it was also help to improve the user experience and make it easier for them to browse through the site and convert into a lead or customer. So there are many added advantages to making your site mobile friendly outside of mobile search results.
Is My Site Mobile Friendly?
In an effort to help website owners, Google has introduced a Mobile Friendly Test tool, which enables users to specific URLs through the tool to check whether they are mobile friendly.
If you run a URL through the tool, hopefully you will see the following message, which confirms the page is mobile friendly.
I would run several URLs across the site through the tool to ensure that the internal pages on the site are also mobile compliant.
However, if your site is not mobile friendly you will see a message similar to the following:
Some of the issues that you may see identified by the Google tool are as follows:
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Text too small to read
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Mobile viewport not set
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Links too close together
Its important that you try and address these issues in order to make your site mobile friendly. Google has provided a list of resources to help website owners and developers can use to make their site mobile friendly. Depending on what CMS (Content Management System) you use, their maybe plugins that you can get to make your site mobile friendly, for example Drupal a mobile switch plugin. WordPress also offers a wide variety of plugins to make a site mobile friendly.
If you however your site is on a custom CMS or a static site, then you will need to get a developer or designer to implement changes on the site to make the site mobile friendly.
While you are making all of these changes I high suggest you also run your site through the Google Page Speed Test to look for other technical onsite issues that need addressing.
If your site is developed in WordPress then you will be able to install W3 Total Cache which will help fix many of the issues raised on the test and help you get a higher score.
Check Pages Across The Site
It's important that when you are running pages through the Mobile Friendly Test that as well as checking the homepage, you check the internal pages on the site as well to make sure they are compliant with the test. This is particularly relevant to sites that are running on custom CMS systems, as some pages may use a different template that is not mobile friendly.
Tracking Mobile Rankings
If your site receives a lot of traffic from mobile devices, its important that you track rankings on mobile. AuthorityLabs has recently launched Mobile rank tracking. Mobile tracking, meaning users can create campaigns to track rankings on mobile devices separately from desktop devices. AWR also offers a mobile ranking tracking tool and it maybe that other rank tracking software offers mobile rank tracking, I suggest searching for "mobile rank tracking" if this is a must for your SEO campaign.
Its important that you fix any issues that occur on mobile devices, not only to help improve website rankings , but also to improve the overall user experience to help increase engagement and conversions.
About The Author
Mik Dunne is Director at digital marketing company ROI Digital Marketing, that offers B2B Digital Marketing and SEO services.
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