Today is the day marketers can either love or dread: It's "Mobilegeddon." Google is making a major ranking change to its search algorithm and it’s in regard to mobile friendliness.
Who will it affect?
Firstly, this update will not affect desktop search results.
Websites that are not deemed mobile-friendly will likely not rank nearly as high as their counterparts that are mobile friendly. You may have already seen some of these indicators in mobile web searches.
Is my site mobile-friendly?
Luckily, Google has provided a free tool to check your site’s mobile friendliness.
Mobile-friendly problems
Problem: Content that is wider than a mobile device’s screen.
Solution: Leveraging the meta viewport tag informs Google that you are likely taking steps to ensure your content fits on a mobile screen. This tag is a staple of responsive web design. Unfortunately, it’s a change that would require technical assistance by your web development team.
Problem: Your website is not sending proper hints to Google.
Solution: This often deals with websites that present differing content based on what device is being used. This dynamic serving technique should utilize the Vary HTTP header.
Problem: You are blocking critical files that help Google figure things out!
Solution: Ensure your robots.txt file does not block any files that help tell Google if your site is mobile friendly! These files are typically CSS, image, and JavaScript files.
Problem: You are not redirecting visitors properly.
Solution: If you have separate content for desktop and mobile, you must ensure that each desktop page has a proper redirect to its mobile counterpart. Because responsive design techniques serve the same content to all devices, this is the preferred technique by Google.
It's a must-have
With 80% of internet users using smartphones for search and 70% of mobile searches leading to online action within an hour, making sure your site is mobile-friendly is now more important than ever. The big takeaway is to use Google Webmaster Tools to help you with diagnostic info. With this free tool, you can see crawl errors, redirect issues, and more.
