Google SEO Goes "Mobile Friendly"

April 10, 2015 By Kalah,

In the land of SEO, Google is king -- actually Google is the whole royal family combined. It’s no secret that accessing the worldwide web from mobile devices rather than computers is the future. Because of this inevitable transition, big brother Google has stepped in and decided there’s no time like the present to enforce mobile-friendly sites as the industry standard. On April 21, Google will be taking mobile-friendly features into account for mobile search results. The update will “significantly impact” rankings by improving SEO positioning for mobile-friendly sites and demoting sites that haven’t embraced a mobile platform yet. The goal is to create a better mobile user experience. The algorithm adoption won’t affect desktop or laptop search results, but it will influence worldwide mobile SEO -- not just mobile search results in the states. Additionally, the algorithm is applied page-by-page on a real-time basis.

Sidebar for a little digital marketing vocab 101:

Page-by-page -- each page’s mobile friendliness is judged separately, meaning unfriendly pages won’t necessarily bring the entire site down a notch.

Real-time -- mobile ranking benefits will be immediately effective worldwide. As soon as a site becomes newly mobile friendly -- the Google algorithm is on it, improving mobile SEO for the site.

We appreciate Google’s forward thinking outlook on the future of mobile interaction. Google’s stated goal to improve searcher experience seems commendable -- it is frustrating to land on a mobile unfriendly site from your phone and get a page so tiny that you bounce immediately. However, it’s not necessarily good news for start-ups and small businesses participating in e-commerce. It can be a huge hit to checkbook to make sites mobile friendly, but potentially worth the investment in the long run. The cost of losing traffic and revenue might be more detrimental than postponing the switch. If you are ready to embrace mobile compatibility, give us a call. We’d be happy to talk about getting you squared away for the mobile-friendly future.