Feb 07 2018
With the growing trend in mobile phone usage – a trend that is not looking to slow down any time soon – Google has begun to place more importance on mobile websites when it comes to their Google ranking. In the contemporary web environment, it is a must for websites to be responsive if they want to rank well.
As you may or may not be aware, Google regularly updates its search algorithms so that the sites that appear from Google searches have more relevance to the user’s query. In early 2015, they released an update that heavily related to mobile friendliness. Websites that weren’t very functional on mobiles were hit fairly hard in their rankings, and since then, mobile friendliness has become one of the most important factors in a good search engine ranking.
As mentioned earlier, and something you’re likely already mindful of, mobile phone usage is growing every year. 60% of internet traffic nowadays comes from mobile devices and by 2019, mobile devices are predicted to account for 79% of all web traffic, so you can clearly see the importance of a quality, user-friendly mobile site.
More important than website responsiveness however is a mobile site that is user-friendly.
Often, mobile sites are created in a way where the content is auto-resized so as to suit a mobile device. While this can be effective in some cases, its likely the content and display will make it difficult to navigate and so forth. The smartest option is to change the site quite considerably in terms of layout and to simplify the content. Mobile sites create a good opportunity for you to expand your business image and appeal to prospect customers, so it’s a wise choice to take that opportunity.
You don’t want your mobile site to fall victim to graphics that are not to scale, to navigation that is very confusing and to unnecessary pop-ups, so the user experience should be at the top of your list of priorities.
While you may already have a mobile site, it may not meet all of Google’s search engine requirements and thus your ranking may be lower than you deserve. Website health checks are the best way to see where improvements can be made. See what we wrote about website health checks here!
