Recently, two weeks ago in fact, google announced some changes to their search algorithm for mobile phones. Put simply, if you have a non mobile friendly website, you are going to suffer in the rankings. If your site is responsive or at least mobile friendly, you are fine.
And don’t worry, it won’t affect your search rankings on desktop and tablets searches. For now.
Who searches on a mobile phone anyway?
Well I do for one. As do many many more people. Infact, searches on mobile devices are increasing all the time. Many people consume information differently and are happy searching for stuff while out and about or sat on the sofa watching TV. From personal experience, I often watch TV (usually sport) and will browse alongside and end up often down a rabbit hole of websites searches, usually to do with what I am watching. I often browse when on public transport and when sat in the car waiting for someone.
I use my phone a lot. So it’s important that I get the right results .
What I don’t want is for good content to be missed in favour of poor content but mobile friendly sites. So this mobile update affects me both professionally and personally for different reasons.
I bet the web and SEO companies are cashing in?
Yep. Many christened the launch “Mobilegeddon” End of days for many websites. “Your site will drop off google” was one headline I saw but to be fair, it’s not hard to be mobile friendly. Configuring the viewport is probably enough to do it although maybe look at the size of fonts, how close links are together.
So I’m not expecting a big change to be honest.
Should I just go responsive?
Hold fire and think about what you are trying to do. More often than not, responsive is the way to go but just because you can doesn’t mean you should. You’ll hear a lot about being responsive but like most things, it depends on what you are trying to do. Get all the options, weigh them up and go from there. Don’t be afraid to ask questions. A good web person will help.
Your first port of call should be Google Mobile Friendly Site Tester and Google Page Insights. This will tell you a shed load about your site.