Is Your Business Website Mobile Friendly – Does It Matter

If your current or prospective clients or customers are likely to use search from their mobile; then the answer is YES! But it is a bit more involved than that as Google has started to tag and show preference to pages that are mobile friendly.Mobile Friendly

But it will get even more important as mobile traffic increases especially as Google has announced some time ago that  mobile friendliness will become a ranking signal. So with everything else being equal, sites that are designed to be viewed across multiple platforms will potentially rank higher on mobile search than those that are not.

What is Mobile Friendly

Simply put can your website be viewed from a mobile device without having to zoom in or scroll the screen from side to ride to read the content.

Google has developed a number of tests that it makes on webpages to see whether they are mobile friendly.

What Denotes a Mobile Friendly Page in Google’s Eyes?

Google looks at the content

  • to see whether it can be read without horizontal scrolling.
  • to see whether it uses technology which does not work on all mobile devices.
  • to see whether the text is the right size to allow it to be read.
  • to see whether links are spaced far enough apart to allow easy navigation

How Can I Tell if Google Thinks My Site Is Mobile Friendly?

The easiest way is to look in your Google Search Console account. Google has started notifying webmasters if it thinks a web page is not mobile friendly.

But Google also has a Mobile-Friendly Test Page where you can enter a URL and Google will tell you what it thinks.

What Should I Do If It Is Not Mobile Friendly?

The main thing is not to panic and rush into something that you will regret. Chances are that if your site is not mobile friendly then the amount of conversions you were getting from mobile users was small anyway so this is a useful wake-up call that something needs doing.

However, there are some important issues to be aware of.

Google is progressively adding the mobile rendered version of webpages to its index. So if it isn’t on the page when viewed on a mobile then it will not appear in the search index.

Therefore it is important to consider what you need on your mobile web pages to convey the message you want to provide your visitors; whilst still maintaining a good user experience.  The content may need to be different to that on your desktop site; but it still has to do its job.  Talk to an SEO consultant and let him tell you how best to sort the problem.