Man hands touching smart phone with green tree background
Most Google algorithm updates come with vague or no warning, but Google recently announced, “Starting April 21, we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in our search results. Consequently, users will find it easier to get relevant, high quality search results that are optimized for their devices.”
“There are a lot of cleaning and restoration companies who still need mobile-friendly website,” said Derek Preece, owner Spot On Solutions. “It’s one of those game-changing announcements which will have many cleaning and restoration businesses scrambling to get their site mobile-friendly.”
Google posted a blog titled Helping users find mobile-friendly pages. Google highlights the current problem with mobile sites: “Have you ever tapped on a Google Search result on your mobile phone, only to find yourself looking at a page where the text was too small, the links were tiny, and you had to scroll sideways to see all the content? This usually happens when the website has not been optimized to be viewed on a mobile phone.”
Start Preparing
If your site is already mobile-friendly, you won’t have much to worry about. However, if you haven’t implemented a mobile strategy for your website, now is the critical time to get it done.
• Ensure the mobile version of your site is active and functional. Responsive designs are the most popular, but you can also have a separate hosted mobile version of your site. Google doesn’t have a preference, as long as mobile users’ experience isn’t interrupted.
• Ensure Google’s mobile bots can crawl your site. If Google can’t see it, it may as well not exist.
• Check all of the pages on your website for mobile navigation ability. Just because your home page is mobile friendly doesn’t mean the rest of your site is.
