“Mobilegeddon” — Will It Affect Your Google Ranking? Probably!

Beginning April 21st, Google will begin considering website’s “mobile-friendliness” as a criteria in mobile search result rankings. What exactly does this mean and why are people referring to it as “Mobilegeddon”? How will it effect small business owners?

What is Mobile Friendliness

The number of people searching the web from from PCs and laptops is decreasing as searches from smartphones or tablets continues to increase. Google’s goal with the new mobile algorithm is to help searchers get the most relevant results that also are easily read on their mobile devices. Google believes that the accessibility of a site should be considered part of it’s relevancy — if people can’t read the site on their phone, they will ignore it.

Google looks for the following when considering if a website is mobile-friendly:

• the site avoids software that is not common on mobile devices, like Flash
• the text is readable without zooming (including forms)
• the content is automatically sized to the screen so users don’t have to scroll horizontally or zoom in
• links are spaced far enough apart so the correct one can be easily tapped

Why “Mobilegeddon”?

Websites that meet all of the above criteria will be ranked higher in Google’s search results. Those that do NOT have a mobile website will be ranked lower. This could have a huge impact on the organic ranking of sites that are not mobile friendly as your site can be bumped to page 2, 3 or lower making it difficult for people to find your website. A drop in visitors to a business’ website can quickly lead to a drop in new customers and sales.

Many small businesses, particularly, have not had a reason to adapt their sites to work well on mobile. But now they do!

How will this effect you, the small business owner?

If you are not already working with web site designer, now would be a good time to start. The longer your site is not designed for mobile, the longer it will be ignored by Google and unavailable to potential customers using smartphones to search for your products or services. The higher a site is ranked in a search, the more visitors it has the potential to draw. Even if the content of your site is highly relevant to the search, it will be ranked further down on the results list if it is not mobile-friendly.

Make your website mobile friendly

Don’t get left out, contact HD Marketing & Design in Fort Wayne today at (260) 432-8437 to learn how to make your website mobile-friendly and stay in the search. Because what’s the point of having a website if no one can find it!