You may or may not have already heard the news…..
Google have recently announced it is “making significant changes” to its search algorithm for ranking the mobile search results starting from 21st April, 2015.
Have you ever tapped on a Google Search result on your mobile phone, only to find yourself looking at a page where the text was too small, the links were tiny, and you had to scroll sideways to see all the content? This can be an extremely frustrating experience for searchers using their mobile devices. This usually happens when the website has not been optimized to be viewed on mobile devices or is not “mobile responsive”.
To make it easier for people to find the information that they’re looking for, Google are adding a “mobile-friendly” label to the mobile search results. Google see these “labels” as a first step in helping mobile users to have a better mobile web experience.
This change will be rolling out globally over the next few weeks. A web page is eligible for the “mobile-friendly” label if it meets the following criteria as detected by Googlebot:
– Avoids software that is not common on mobile devices, like Flash
– Uses text that is readable without zooming
– Sizes content to the screen so users don’t have to scroll horizontally or zoom
– Places links far enough apart so that the correct one can be easily tapped
Do you know if your website is considered “mobile-friendly” by Google? If you want to make sure that your website meets the criteria and is a mobile responsive website you can check here:
– Check your pages with the Mobile-Friendly Test
If your website isn’t optimised for mobile devices, it will now be harder to rank highly in the search results, on Google. Now that a large majority of people use their mobile devices to search for products and services, not having a mobile responsive website may have a negative impact on your business, through loss of potential customers, as searchers do become quickly frustrated if they are unable to easily view and navigate through your website.
Interested in finding out more on how to make your website mobile-friendly? We would be more than happy to have a chat with you and talk you through the process.
You can contact us by completing our website enquiry form and one of our friendly staff members will get in contact with you, or you can call our office directly on (08) 9228 2088 to arrange a free website audit.
