Are you ready for April 21 2015? Google will be expanding their use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal in their Search Results. This transformation will affect mobile searches worldwide and will have a significant impact in Google’s search results. Ultimately this designed to make finding relevant searches for users.
This is a great move by Google. If you think about the ways that you search online, most likely you have a variety of ways to access the world wide web, either a desktop, laptop, tablet or smartphone. Having a website that can adapt to all devices is essentially for moving forward in 2015.
Just think about the sites that you visit on your smartphone that are not properly optimized for your screen. The font is way too small and virtually impossible to read. The site is hard to navigate and/or the site loads slowly.
If for some reason, you have been putting off changing your site over to WordPress or some other CMS platform that can handle your website on different devices, now is the time.
If you already have a WordPress site, you can test your site with Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test. This can be a good testing tool for any WordPress/Joomla themes that you are thinking on trying out. Google PageSpeed Insights is another good tool to test your site, or test a theme you are interested in as well. If you have a Google Webmaster Tools account, you can also access some information regarding your Mobile Usability Report.
Quick Takeaways on Google’s Mobile algorithm for April 21st, 2015
According to Google, it may take a few days to a week for the full algorithm to roll out and it will only affect Mobile Search Results, not Desktop. According to Google, your website will be seen as mobile-friendly or not within the new algorithm.
Tools to Test and see if your website is Mobile Friendly for Google
How Much Mobile Traffic are you getting that could be affected?
To find this, one option is to use Google Analytics (assuming you have it linked to your website property). When you log in, you can see via the screen shots below, you will need to go to the Audience tab, then Mobile and Overview. For the actual percentage circle below, just click on the percentage tab.
Gerard Manning is the owner of Manning Search Marketing and has been working in the SEO industry since 2000. Originally started with Enquiro Search Solutions (now known as Mediative). Was previously a Research Assistant on Inside the Mind of the Searcher that was released in 2005.