A few months ago, I wrote an article about the correlation between Google search rankings and mobile friendly websites. There was ample time for all website owners to comply with Google’s simple rules to go mobile friendly.
Now, the time has come and we are experiencing “mobilegeddon” – a term coined due to the impact of Google’s new algorithm on website owners.
Google’s newest algorithm favors those websites that are mobile friendly and penalizes those that are not. Usually Google just releases these new algorithms but this time, they gave us plenty of time to get compliant.
Considering that well over 60% of Internet users do so from their smart phones, this is a smart move for Google and for you.
Google’s making it easier for everyone to navigate websites from their mobile devices. I am happy about that because trying to navigate non-mobile-friendly websites from my smart phone is not worth it.
I noticed some website owners are creating a secondary website specifically for mobile devices. You can make it easy on yourself by creating a one “responsive” website. That means the pages easily adapt to the size of the viewing device screen.
Google Boosts Rankings of Mobile Friendly Web Pages
Yes, Google’s latest algorithm update will boost the rankings of mobile-friendly pages. If you are an Internet marketer, this should be of great interest to you. The opposite is also true. If your website is not mobile friendly and built for desktop computer viewing, the rankings can decrease. Yikes!
Don’t get penalized. Head over to test your site for “mobile-friendliness” using the Google Mobile-Friendly Test.
Google put together a good FAQ here to get all your questions answered – it’s a must read for all website owners.
Google Adds Breadcrumbs to Mobile Search
Separate from today’s mobile friendly announcement, Google also added breadcrumbs to mobile search results, replacing the URL just below the site’s title.
Before, you would see a URL like this:
http://www.google.com/about/company/
Now, this is represented in a breadcrumb format:
Google > about > company
I like it! It’s more understandable to everyone.
Hey Lisa,
Great article as usual! You are always right on top of things. I appreciate the mobile friendly link. I knew this day was coming and had my main two sites ready. It was nice to have it confirmed by Google that they are mobile ready.
Something your readers may appreciate that I didn’t realize. My third website was not mobile optimized and what I found was…
The WordPress plugin called “JetPack” that is available on most themes, once enabled, offers a one click button that will make any WordPress site mobile Optimized. It was super simple to activate and after running the mobile friendly test again, I am good to go.
Thanks for always providing such great and relevant content!
Richard
Thanks for stopping by Richard! Great tip about JetPack – I was not aware that it made any WP site optimized! I’ll check it out.
Take care.
Lisa