Mobile friendly websites will soon rank higher in a Google search

As of the 21st April 2015, Google will be using mobile-friendly websites as a ranking signal in their search engine results page. This will have a significant impact on how people find your business because when they search on a mobile phone or tablet, the mobile-friendly sites will appear more prominently in the search results.

What this means for your business

This is great news if you have a mobile-friendly website, however if your site is not optimised for a mobile phone, you can expect to see lower rankings on a Google mobile search and fewer customers will find your site. This is concerning for businesses because as we are constantly being told, in extraordinary numbers people are turning to mobile devices for most of their web browsing, online communications and to find and research our businesses.

According to Ofcom research, although the actual numbers of people with access to the internet as a whole remains fairly unchanged at around 82%, it is the way in which people connect to the internet that’s more interesting, with almost 60% of people using their mobile phones for this purpose, a substantial rise from around 30% at the beginning of 2010.

Google already tags sites ‘Mobile-friendly’ in mobile search results and this warns people who are browsing on phones, kindles and tablets when a website isn’t mobile-friendly. Consequently mobile-friendly websites are swiftly becoming ‘the norm’ so we can no longer ignore the importance of mobile search marketing; so it’s definitely time to start thinking about changing your website.

How to check if your site is mobile-friendly and what to do if it isn’t:

1. First and foremost, find out if you have a mobile friendly website
   Test your site in Google’s mobile friendly website checker
   This will tell you in seconds if your website is configured properly and viewable on mobile devices.
2. Start thinking about getting a mobile-friendly website
   A mobile responsive website will keep your  Google search position (in searches performed on mobiles) higher and give your users a good experience no matter what their choice of browsing tool.
   Please feel free to get in touch with us here at Belluber about making your site mobile-friendly.
3. Reassess you web presence and do a full website review at the same time
   Web technology changes constantly so take this opportunity to consider:
   • Improving your site’s usability and architecture
   • Undertaking some keyword research to identify the mobile search levels for your business sector
   • Design changes to ensure your website is compatible with every screen, both small and large. This can make a great difference to mobile conversion rates if your loading speed is consistently fast across all devices

If your business can successfully adopt a mobile marketing strategy, then you can be reassured that you will not be falling behind the times. If you’d like your website to be mobile-friendly, please feel free to call us. All websites we develop are responsive and mobile-friendly.