Mobile friendly websites will rank better in Google

In previous blogs I’ve talked about how mobile friendly websites are great for your visitors, and that they will eventually be helpful for Google to rank your website in their results.  So here goes… from April 21st 2015 Google will be changing the algorithm they use to determine a sites ranking and you need to be ready for it!

To quote Google directly from this blog article

“Starting April 21, we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in our search results. Consequently, users will find it easier to get relevant, high quality search results that are optimized for their devices.“

So am I going to be affected by this?

First of all if I have built a website for you, then you don’t need to worry as all my works are mobile friendly websites!  I also practice what I preach as you can see from the image on the right of this blog (even Google thinks I’m awesome!)

If your website was built by someone else then you can use this simple tool provided by Google to test it – Google Mobile Friendly Test

Simply visit the site, enter the address of your website and click the Analyze button.  It should take less than a minute for your site to be scanned.

What should I do if I don’t have a mobile friendly website?

Technically this only affects search results from mobile devices, but as I’ve covered elsewhere more and more potential visitors to your site are using mobile devices.  If say just half of your visitors find you from a mobile Google search result, that’s a big potential drop in visitors to your site when they can’t find you. Also your competitors may also be getting an extra boost in the rankings because they are ahead of this curve.  There is also a chance that a drop off in visitor traffic can affect your rankings negatively too.

If your current website does not provide a mobile friendly experience then you need to take action sooner rather than later.  From all the information that Google have provided so far your sites ranking for mobile results will be impacted – as to how much you are personally affected won’t be immediately obvious.

You need to start looking to get your website rebuilt, or modified so that it becomes a mobile friendly website.  In most cases trying to modify an existing website to become mobile friendly costs more than to rebuild it from scratch.

If you have any questions on how this is going to impact you then give me a shout and I’ll be glad to talk you through your options.