If you haven’t heard about Google’s April 21 deadline, it’s time to read about it now. Here, here and here. Basically, your website better be mobile ready. Your website’s visibility is at stake.
“But hardly anyone reads my website from their mobile phone!”
If most of your traffic is still coming from desktops, and your website is not mobile friendly but does have good SEO, you may be okay for the short term.
However it’s estimated that about half the searches are made on mobile now.
Now is the time to revise your website. Google is about to change their search engine formula for mobile results. While I’m not sure how they will give priority to websites that are mobile ready, I think that is the main point of this algorithm update.
“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.”
It’s called responsive. The website actually will change and show up differently if it’s viewed from a phone, a desktop or a tablet. Even Android and iPhone phones don’t show necessarily show a website the same way.
Even if you’re on a WordPress platform, you may not have a responsive theme installed.
You can use this website to plug in your URL to check the responsiveness.
Don’t let your SEO tank, now’s the time to get responsive! Especially since mobile search is growing so quickly.
Hi, I work for WindowSquare which is a branding agency in India. Thanks for the update on the google search engine’s priority and well of course we already have a mobile friendly website.
I believe google wouldn’t inherit too much from mobile version while rating the quality of page when someone is search in desktop because google knows he is looking in desktop and so I believe that it will not inherit too much from its mobile flexibility..
Saikrishna:
You are so right, the desktop browser will not lower the results of websites that are not set up to be responsive. The problem is, so many people are now using their phones instead of their desktops to access the internet. If your audience is more a phone user than a desktop user, it’s important that your website is converted to a responsive format going forward.
Thank you for taking the time to comment!
Chris