Mobilegeddon: Get Mobile Responsive or Google Penalty Hits!

Google has announced that mobile-friendliness will become a significantly stronger ranking signal starting April 21, 2015. If your website is not mobile optimized by that time, you risk losing rankings in search results.

Mobilegeddon, the term coined for the day your websites mobile-friendliness starts to matter on Google, is expected to strike in two weeks, with additional fallout occurring in the subsequent weeks. The search engine algorithm change has two primary goals: increase the number of mobile-friendly websites deliver better mobile search results and add relevant app content to search.

Over 60% of all Google search queries originate on mobile devices, and we are already seeing mobile websites outranking their nonresponsive counterparts. Furthermore, mobile-friendly websites now feature an exclusive tag in search results that tends to result in higher click-through-rates.

How Can You Prepare Your Website for Mobilegeddon?

While Mobilegeddon will diminish many websites search rankings, it does not have to harm your place in Googledom. Those businesses prepared with a mobile-friendly website may even see a boost in rankings.

Keep in mind thatin the search engines eyesyour website is either mobile-friendly or it is not. Luckily, Google has developed a helpful tool for evaluating your websites mobile friendliness. Give it a trial run and see if your website passes the Google test.

Some of the top errors websites receive include:

Blocked javascript
Faulty redirects
Unplayable content
App download interstitials
Irrelevant crosslinks
Slow mobile pages
Mobile-only 404s
Blocked CSS and image files

After testing your website, review Google Analytics to determine how the majority of visitors engage with your website. If you find that an overwhelming number of website visitors are coming from mobile devices, you need to act immediately to avoid losing valuable traffic.

If, on the other hand, you find that very little traffic comes from mobile, you can extend the timeline for mobile-friendly implementation. Don’t wait too long though. Mobile internet usage is projected to grow thirteenfold by 2017, and it wont be long until Mobilegeddon affects your business online.

Dont Wait Until Its Too Late!

If your website is not optimized for mobile, mobile-friendly, we recommend contacting your web developer as soon as possible to make the necessary improvements

The team at Horton Group is happy to help and has extensive experience optimizing websites for mobile as well as developing full scale mobile apps for both large and small brands. Contact us today to learn more about making your website mobile-friendly.