Googles Mobile Update – Should I Be Worried?
April 21st. That’s the date that Google have said they are going to begin to roll out their new mobile search algorithm, details of it can be found here http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/finding-more-mobile-friendly-search.html
Why Google is doing this?
Its mainly down to us the public and our increasing love of tablets and smart phones.
More of us are spending more and more time on things other than desktops and laptops and more of us are searching for services and products using devices.
Until now, websites have enjoyed good mobile traffic without really catering for those people by ensuring that their website displays correctly across different screen sizes. This is a huge turn off for users and so Google are now forcing people to pay more attention to their mobile visitors by updating their algorithm.
Should I be concerned?…..It depends.
If you currently get a good % of your current traffic from a mobile device then the answer is “Yes”.
If you do nothing then you’ll see a drop in mobile traffic and this will only get worse as the months go by.
If you get a small % of traffic (lets say less than 10%) then you should still look at making your website mobile friendly but look to do it in the next 6 months, not in the next 3 weeks.
If you get good mobile traffic but they deliver a poor sales conversion rate then you should take this as a sign that improving the way your website is displayed on a device should deliver improved mobile conversions.
If you are unsure of the % of device driven traffic you get then go to your Google analytics account and look for this screen.
Audience – Mobile – Overview. Then add the mobile and tablet traffic figures together.
As you can see by the screen shot, this website gets around 63% of its traffic via a device.
Is my website mobile friendly?
Finding this out is easy. Google have provided a simple way to find out if your website is liable to be impacted by this latest update.
Visit this link and add your website URL to find out how mobile friendly Google think your website is www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/
What if I do nothing?
Lets forget about Google for a second.
People, otherwise known as “your website visitors” like to explore the internet using mobile devices of one form or another and this is only going to increase in the future. Doing nothing means that you are choosing to ignore these peoples needs and ignoring customers is seldom a route to success.
This is not a good mobile strategy.