Google is turning mobile friendly – it’s time you should too!

by Guna Nadar - 4/21/2015 4023 Views

Why google will rank mobile-friendly sites higher starting April 21st?

Google is soon going to change its ways of search done through smartphones and tablets. The new move, which is expected to be working by April 21^st, is going to affect million of decisions every day, including places to stop, eat or find information. The revised search algorithms will be favoring websites that are eligible to be labeled as “mobile friendly”. Websites who won’t be fitting the description by April 21^st, 2015 will be paying a huge price via drop in search engine rank and traffic.

The new “mobile friendly” regulation won’t be affecting desktop searches but it will be a criterion in influencing where users choose to spend their time and money. While more people are relying on smartphones today looking for both local and global businesses, Google’s new ranking system has been billed by experts as the “Mobile-geddon”.

This is being hailed as the most significant change that Google has places on mobile search engine ranking. Mobile-friendly labels were already being seen since November 2014, but this would be something huge – something that no online marketer can choose to ignore.

To be able to stay in the good grass, websites need not do anything extraordinary. All that Google expects is a responsive design, quicker page load and an interface that supports mobile browsing. The target is to make it easier for the end to use the websites that Google provides in its search queries. According to United States browsing statistics, more than 29% of queries were done through mobile devices. This amounts to about 18.5 billion in traffic. For several online brands, especially in the ecommerce category, mobile has been the fastest growing browsing platform. Here are the things every online business owner needs to think about:

Create a valuable mobile experience

Mobile browsing is quite different from websites. Responsive design is the key to deliver a smooth experience, regardless of the platform or device it is being accessed through. Developers should be looking at a platform that offers easy-to-consume content, intuitive navigation, and easy text entry. Recommended techniques involve using collapsing sections to support easier page parse, auto suggesting / pre-populating entries, filtering content while limiting the display to the width of the screen and providing visible target links to navigate. Horizontal scrolling is not an option here and Google even suggests tools that access mobile friendliness.

Smart app downloads

Depending upon the users, there would be preferential takers of both the web experience and the alternative app interface. The best way to market your brand is to promote a high app up-sell and offer a contextual service without compromising on the mobile web experience. If you are looking to transfer more number of users to your app platform rather than having them on the mobile browsers, it should be backed by aggressive app marketing such as splash screens. Alternatively, if you are aiming for conversions, you should be looking to create an experience that seeks to complete the task with less emphasis on app up-sell. Both ways, you need to push the app up-sell gently to maintain a positive ranking in the app stores.

Performance leverage

Latency has been the popular idea behind driving the mobile web engagement. For end users, the biggest pain with mobile browsing is slow loading page, be it on web or mobile. Developers are suggested to review their site performance using tools like Google PageSpeed Insights. You should be checking the performance of your website on sluggish networks as end users are always on the move and the network strength varies. However, they will detest cumbersomeness.

A mobile first culture

Bringing in a mobile specific experience should be a company-wide effort. Regardless of the breadth of your business, you should be working on ways that takes your website from being decent to great. The best way to test yourself is to have a review of your mobile website by each of your employees. They will give the correct feedback about the end user demands than the company perspective.

April 21^st, 2015 is going to be a significant date for every online business that chooses to take the advantage of the growing online market. Mobile friendliness is something that you cannot choose to ignore any more.

Category :

Google

Tags :

Mobile Friendly, Google April 21st Update

About Guna Nadar

Brief Info about Guna Nadar +

I mostly write technical aspects and not much into creative writing. For the past decade I worked along with top notch SEO & Internet Marketing professionals which naturally lured me into the world of Search Engines. When I am not writing I read from comics to philosophy.Antiques, Fishing, hunting are my passions. Currently I am working on Google Penalty protection and .... more info about the author